OSNews

it is free software. Free as in freedom.

I can block anything I dont like on a page.

I can force all new pages to stay in one browser, reload all tabs between sessions, and reorganize tabs when I need to.

I can run the same browser on any computer with any OS I'm using.

Because it handles URL history better than IE.

But then I like IE much better for a ton of other reasons.

The way it handles...

Bookmarks (I have hundreds...and categorized),
Seceruity people tell me it is safer so I use it. The way I can customize the bars/toolbars, Extensions, Tabs, lastly the download manager just rocks.

I wish it would just autoupdate and I wish I could export my favorites to the IE folder for it. But otherwise I would be a permanent user of Firefox if some sites did not require IE like most internet updates that require ActiveX and what not.

I guess that with the Firefox leading developer posting not thought about ramblings about an alternative html rendering module, and in the process claiming that it's better to release on time (quantity) than to release quality, I'm starting to look a bit different towards Firefox.

It's a good browser, but, it's just another face in the crowd which got some good marketing and hype going on.

I prefer, in order (most used on top):
Opera
Konqueror
Firefox
IE

I like it because it is so easy to roll out patches to all my company's PCs.

Having used Firefox from version 0.5 (when it was called Phoenix), now I use Konqueror on Linux and Opera on Windows.
What I don't like Firefox is that it's such a huge memory hog. Its speed is the same as the old Mozilla suite but with 1/10 of its features. And in the meantime its main competitors have become faster and more usable, so no need to use Firefox anymore for me.

Because it's open source - sometimes having ideals is nice.

I switched to Phoenix from Opera for this very reason and although I think Opera is still superior in some fields (though not all) Firefox fits better with my overall life philosophy. I like to think of it as being an ethical consumer .

You know, some of us did use Netscape 4.x back then. I never liked IE, and used Opera for a very long time after I stopped using Netscape 4.x and begun using Firefox, rather then ever using IE. I thought, I still think and probably will always think that IE is shit (no I don't think that's too harsh).

Because FF allows me to view webpages how I want to...without big flashing banner ads. Granted this is a plugin, but no other browser has it so easily integrated.

I view IE like I do those fake spyware removal tools. It's like, "I'll block out all of my competitor's ads..I promise, oh and since you have all this extra space now here are some of our friends' ads to fill it." M$ does this. It's characteristic of corporations. FF is corporation free!

I like Firefox because I can easily unistall from my machine if I dont want it anymore. Unlike some other browser.......

I don't like Firefox. I'm a Khtml/WebCore guy. Gecko feels (note: *feels*) slow, and other than that Firefox itself (the UI) is unbearably slow on my Mac. Safari loads in a few seconds, whereas Firefox takes 25 seconds to load. Tha't unnacceptable.

Yes, the Gecko engine is much slower than Safari on the Mac. If you have a mac, stay with Safari (if you don't mind its javascript deficiencies). But if you are on the PC, and your PC is kinda fast, go for Firefox.

I like firefox because it's very clean, simple but not limited

i voted tabs, but it's actually tabs AND performance. and to lesser extent cross-platformness - combined, they hook new users and later ease migration to linux and/or other FOSS alternatives.

Extensions, tabbed browsing, reliable, free (in all ways), and sane rendering.

Well tabs are a must, but I'd have to say security and performance. Ultimately that's what got me away from using IE addons. I needed some extentions as well such as drag and drop, but Firefox is a much better browser because I'm not likely to bork my entire system just by accidently going to a site.

Firefox is not good piece of software, but:
1) everyday anti-MS people heroldize that IE is complete crap, though I suppose these people silently use all MS products, so most of people reading these articles think that all their computer problems are because they use IE. Ridiculous, but obscurants are great tool for establishing public oppinion
2) anyway it is free, people like free stuff.Though sometimes freewares are quite dangerous, but in this case the fact that it is open-source makes it more reliable
3) why not to test something new. I know a lot of people are mad to download something and install onto their computers. Some people just cannot live even day without installing new piece of software
Despite IE is outdated and it does not support many features that are in fashion now, it is very good backbone browser. Nothing to do here. IE4 was crap, despite its novel features to those days and I and most of people used Netscape, but IE5+ still gain over.
Personally, I use Maxthon as it is more friendly than IE, but sometimes I need to use IE. I have Firefox and Opera also installed on all my computers, and I attempted to give them credit, but they have a long way ahead, though Opera is much better than Firefox.

I like firefox because of a combination of those options mentioned.... security and standards compliance is great; Tabs and Extensions (and performance) make me more productive... in comparison to IE, I'm definitely much more productive working in Firefox.

It's nice to be able to just hit a button and have an simple interface to various sites, mass link downloading and other added features. I also like the idea that if the browser doesn't have a function that I'd like, it's not to hard to create it. The open sourceness of Firefox is nice and all, but it's the extendability that makes it neat. I like to know that Abe Vegoda is still alive and that I can, in theory, spell check before I post.

More importantly I've seen a few full apps and games created quickly using nothing more than some simple xul and a few graphics. Of course this is available in Mozilla, but Moz tends to be kinda bloated.

Does anyone know if there is an OSNews extension? Cause if there is I'd use the hell out of it.

I guess I didn't add the java plugin after I upgraded FF because I don't get options to vote on the poll. I'll do it when I get home.

Why I like FF, I like tabbed browsing. Its convienent to middle click on a link and have a new tab pop open while keeping the original page and spot open. Also that it prompts me to download a file instead of just downloading and installing (think spyware) which has saved my butt more than once.

I like FireFox, essentialy for the Tab-browsing. Extensions are bonuses.

Opera has Tab-browsing, but FireFox transfer automaticly all my IE bookmarks, and has all standard plug-in already in.

I still need IE for some site.

ADBLOCK.

Tabs and speed of the browser is the only reason i use it. It doesn't work with all sites though hence the need to use IE. If Microsoft put out a version of IE with Tabs tommorrow i would dump Firefox in a heart beat.

x) all of the above

Tabbed browsing, adblock, and popup blocking. No spyware as well. Other browsers can do similar things, but when I was trying out alternatives Firefox seemed the fastest and and had the friendliest GUI. JMHO

All the good things.

I like Find-As-You-Type. Makes my whole browsing experience so much more enjoyable. BTW, it's implemented a lot better in Mozilla Suite than in Firefox (due to bugs with the Find bar), but that's another story.

Yes, I hear much noise about XP SP2, IE 7, etc...


But what about WINDOWS 98/me? Firefox is the _one_ safe option (well, and opera) for those OSes. So, security is THE reason for me

Scrapbook (http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla) makes it all worthwhile for me: it's the sole reason I switched from Opea to Firefox.

For those not in the know, Scrapbook allows you to:
-Save whole web pages, and even more useful, just a selection from a web page. Complete with graphics, plugins and whatnot

-You can highlight and annotate saved pages

-It has a DOM eraser tool that allows you to eliminate arbitrary DOM objects from saved pages

-Categorisation into folders

-Full-text searching thru all saved pages

I seriously think it should be integrated into the main Firefox distribution, it's that good. It you're doing research on the Web, or on dial-up it's a godsend.

Other nice features of Firefox:
-Right-click on search field, select "Add keyword for this search" and bang! instant search thru the address bar. Nice.

-Many, many extensions

-Profiles, with the ability to use multiple ones simultaneously

-Checking for updates to extensions and the browser

What I don't like:

-Not fast enough on Linux. On Windows it feels much snappier.

-Extensions can sometimes conflict among themselves and cause slowdowns. Not much can be done about that save to ask extension developers to be more careful and to write tighter code.

-No binary updates: updating Firefox involves downloading the whole pile once again. To be solved in 1.1 apparently.

-Native tab handling not powerful enough: tabs cannot be moved, no tab-list as in Opera, no option to open tabs next to the current one. Some of these niggles (or maybe all of them?) can be solved thru extensions.

-Hierarchical bookmarks should be thrown out of the window. Come to think of it, all pure-hierarchical info-management systems should just go. Labels. extended attributes, tags, these are much more powerful, and are featurewise supersets of hierarchical systems.

Why isn't there an 'All of the above (except for the last one)' option?

I like Firefox because:

1) More secure and security updates are WAY faster than Microsoft's
2) Extensions. I have 54 extensions installed in my Firefox and it's STILL blazingly fast. Each of those extensions adds a nice ability not in the default program.
3) Stability. Firefox is incredibly stable now.
4) Tabbed Browsing. I'm sorry but I just can't ever use a browser efficiently again if it doesn't have tabs.
5) Standards Compliance. It renders fantastically and is getting better all the time.
6) Bookmarks management. I still don't understand how people can like the way IE does it. Firefox's bookmark management is just fantastic.
7) AdBlock. This can be classified under #2 but god damn. There simply is no better browser experience than Firefox + AdBlock together.
8) Speed. After tweaking it a bit it can be very fast. The default settings are a little tame unfortunately.

I'd like FF even more if it automatically calculated a MD5 for each download file. Still miles ahead of IE though :-)

I think the GUI of Firefox feels slow, but the loading of webpages feels much faster than IE (which seems to wait until the entire page is loaded until it's shown, very annoying).

I also like the Find toolbar, which is the best findbar I've ever seen in any application.

I like the bookmarks system, it's much easier to find back a bookmark than it is using IE.

I like AdBlock & co. (though I'm not disabling every ad out there, just the most annoying ones).

I like the Javascript console.

I like that cute little fox in my taskbar and menu's

I like the built-in RSS functionality.

I like the weatherbar that's in the statusbar of each FF view (yet another fine extension).

I like how FF puts the cursor into the location bar each time when I open a new FF view so I can start typing the web address without moving the cursor into that location bar first (IE doesn't).

I like the popup blocking and the anti-spyware attitude of the Fox.

FF seems to be a happy memory drinker, that's the only thing I don't like.

FF is slower than IE and has Java probs. I am still using IE and using FF for those few web sites that requires up to date HTML rendering.

I wish they'd drop XUL.

I still like Mozilla "Seamonkey" much more: Only one programm that needs to be updated. Better usability for power users.

If I want Calendar functionality in Mozilla Seamonkey I install the Calendar extension.

With the new programms I can:

- install Calendar extension in Firefox
- install Calendar extension in Thunderbird
- install standalone Calendar programm

so:

Calendar code more difficult to maintain.
In worst case I have 3 programms running using quite similar code, but not sharing them in RAM, so 3-times the MemoryUsage. Security hole found => updating 3 programms, somehow silly.

Why?

Standards
Tabs
Security
OSS

Why Not?
Only one: You are on a Mac, like I have at home (just use Camino or Safari)

If I am using Windows or Linux, Firefox it is. On a mac, firefox is next to unbearable compared to Camino or Safari.

personally i love firefox on a linux or windows install. it's really fast and clean.

i have to agree with thom on the mac thing though. as much as i'd love to use it as my default browser i can't. the interface is just frustratingly slow.

FireFox is FASTER than other browsers I have used (both in launching and browsing). It has a huge assortment of available plugins (as opposed to IE). It gets security fixes out QUICK.

Oh, and all you who only like FireFox because "it uninstalls" and because it's "open source" are lame. IMHO, those are NOT good reasons to use software.

You'd have to be a damn idiot not to like Firefox. At least on the PC platform. Mac performance is spotty anyway.

Or you prefer something smaller and faster, such as K-Meleon or Opera. Opera's also got Firefox beat in customization, UI, security, and standards-compliance.

Because..performance and security i feel like I am on linux when on windows .. HO HO HO HO

Firefox doesn't rock, it's just slightly better. They both do essentially the same function to the end user. I use Safari personally because I prefer how it handles tabs, handles URL history, and how it blends into the native LAF of my OS.

I like it because of the extensions...

Yes, its true. I don't like Firefox, however, I do like Moz. Sorry all, I just prefer Moz to FF.

As for the comments, being slow, its not gecko that is slow, its XUL. Now, I am not preaching other browsers here but K-Melon is darn quick as a browser. It has removed some of the intermediate layer in the design.

Check the compile time options. There is better preformance with -O2 instead of -O. Makes a big difference.

That means I can browse the web in a relatively secure manner using the same tool regardless of whether I'm using my OS/2 box, a Linux box, or a Windows box.

Even my older versions of Windows can use the updated browser, unlike Microsoft's offering.

I have to agree with the Mac implementation being slow. Really, I think Firefox rocks on Windows, but on Mac it's slow, and on Linux, Konqueror is lighter, faster, more integrated, and comes with most of the important features built in (though if you count all the available extentions for Firefox, FF has a much cooler featureset). Like someone above said, Firefox doesn't rock, it's just a bit better.

Plus the whole thing about cutting corners to provide a better experience for users is hogwash. Who likes re-downloading Firefox for every x.x.X release? Why not just quit cutting corners?

Because

I like the approach Firefox uses, Give the user just the very basics needed for functionality and let the user add any extra features they might want. Get the core working fast and efficient (I know firefox still needs a lot of work in these areas)
I wish OpenOffice would take this route, just basic stuff and let everything be an extension.
The philosophy should be each part does one thing really well, and then the application incorporates all those really efficient parts together.

Apart from plugins, tabs, speed, activeX...

Because it doesn't take me back to the beginning of the url while I am typing it...

I hate IE for that most of all.

Oh, and all you who only like FireFox because "it uninstalls" and because it's "open source" are lame. IMHO, those are NOT good reasons to use software.

In your world the poll would have one option, right?

Pro: I can't stand browsing anymore without my mouse gestures and tabs.
I also like not having active X.

Cons: It does have a serious memory leak. If I leave the same window open for a day or two it easily gets over 100meg.
The way the whole program locks up while slooowly loading a .pdf and firing up reader. Yes, this is mostly Adobe's fault, but does it have to lock up all tabs? Eventually I was driven to look for a decent third party reader that loads x10's faster.

Because the point of a browser is to surf the web. Firefox lets me do that without installing spyware, allowing pop-ups, running like a dirt slow hog, trying to be smart for me by integrating with Windows Explorer or MS Office, and a bunch of other reasons.

I'm not sure how valuable that poll really is. Personally, I think there are several important features (many listed in the poll and others not) but any single feature really isn't that big of deal (except tabbed browsing). It's the combination of having all of those features available that makes Firefox so much better than IE.

I read about 30 webpages every day when I get back from work. These are divided into 6 categories. I simply use "Open in Tabs" for every category, one after another, closing each tab with CTRL-W going from page to page.

Reading 30 pages in IE would cost me at least twice the time and saves me enormous use of the mouse. And I like the idea everything can be organized.

So far, Safari does everything that I needed from Firefox, except for some reason I'm having weird DNS errors every now and then. It's definitely either Safari or the Mac itself; it doesn't happen on the various PCs running Linux and Windows in the home. Otherwise though, I simply love it. One thing that I find particularly useful is the built-in RSS feed manager; it's simple and does exactly what it should, without the complications of standalone managers.

Because I can use the same browser on any computer.

Because my browser gets better MTBF than my OS (uptimes of over a month for the OS).

Because I can choose when and why to upgrade. If there is a feature I want I can be using it as soon as it is implemented.

And yes, because of its standards compliance. Much easier to do web design on than IE (and for extensions, DOM Inspector helps a lot too).

For me it would be all the above. I chose the tabs though (relaizing Opera also has it). I didn't care, personally, for Standards compliance since I'm not a web developer. I realize its important, and there's no sense in extra programming and hours of testing for one or two browsers.

On April 6, 2005, Anand Lal Shimpi of www.anandtech.com, responded via weblog to questionable practices & ethics of hardware review websites. http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx#198

He wrote: ...
"But I worked hard these past 8 years, AnandTech grew from nothing to where it is today - with over 6 million monthly unique readers. " ...

People replied to the blog and those replies can be seen at http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/comments.aspx?bid=198

Comment #33 Posted on Apr 7, 2005 at 4:26 AM by Jon B, wrote:
"3. You use a lot of Firefox/Mozilla based benchmarks in your latest articles. Why? Has Firefox overtaken IE's marketshare or are Firefox usage more common amongst the Anandtech reader. Maybe you motivated this move in an article I missed, please point me to it if that's the case. "

Comment #38 Posted on Apr 7, 2005 at 10:33 AM by Anand Lal Shimpi, wrote:
"3) Firefox is used by more than half of the AT readership, it has replaced IE as the number one browser amongst AnandTech readers."

Anand's comment reveals that FireFox has surpassed MS IE for his site. I'm sure that IE is still dominant for many many sites, but that lead is slowly being erroded by FireFox.

I like Firefox a lot, but Opera still has it beat for features, speed, and working with some company pages I need for work. (And I really the the ability to block automatic redirection in Opera!)

When I am just surfing the web, I use Opera with everything locked down for fast browsing with no aggravation. Then if I see a page that I want to check out better, I load it in FF with adblock and all the "goodies" turned on. So they work well together.

Either way IE stays in the closet, where it should be kept at all times...

amaya 9.1 rules 'cause its 100% W3C compliant and not only a browser

While I personally use Epiphany (using Mozilla 1.7.x not firefox), because the inferface is nicer to use IMHO. Firefox does provide some nifty plugins like adblock, popupsmustdie, translate and many more. Oh and it's more secure than IE.

I'm looking forward to Firefox 1.1, bring it on!

The tabbed browsing is the only feature that draws me to it, though I rarely have more than two pages open at a time, so its not a huge benefit for me. I like the integration into windows that IE gives me, which is why I keep going back.

because it's free software and conforms to standards

because it's free software option missing ...

The big thing for me is the tabbed browsing.
#2 security (was a windows user)
#3 overall just better, and it works on any OS.
Since I dont use KDE, and never liked Opera, FF is the only way to go.
Yes its a mem hog, and some sites dont render right(there falt), and it does have its issues. I would still use FF any day of the week.
With IE(when I had to use it) I was afrade of "surfing the net", to worryed about getting hacked because of some lame script.

Adblock and Bookmarks Toolbar.

Greasemonkey!!!!

Well then, you may like Opera's UserJS I imagine that's not your only reason for liking it though,

because I stay virus and spyware free.

I prefer Dillo. It has tabs, is lightweight (less than half a meg), and fits in much better with WindowMaker. If I want to view a site that requires Flash or other heavily graphical stuff, I open it in Safari on my iBook.

Every week, Firefox have security issues.

There is nothing in that poll that makes Firefox any different than the full blown Mozilla.

I like Opera.

On a P2-400 w/ 128MB with WinXP, Firefox takes 10 seconds to load while IE takes 2.

On an Athlon 64 2800+ with 1GB of RAM in Linux, Firefox takes 3 seconds to load while Konqueror takes 0.5s.

The slow loading times of Firefox give me time to contemplate the important things in life, instead of dealing with the rushed modern world of click click click instant results.

Firefox can resize the fonts of a whole webpage very well 100 times better than IE. I have high myopia in my eyes and i need big fonts to reduce stress in my eyes.

I'm typing this in firefox, it's been a nice ride, the extensions are cool... But in all honesty lately I've been thinking about switching back to Galeon as it's back in shape after going through some real shit times...

was an opera junkie till about 5.. used firefox as soon as it was available for public consumption. ( whenever that was )

why do i like it?
well, the search plugins are pretty cool. also, tabbed browsing) esp. like Open Link in New Tab), and the Qute skin help me enjoy my browsing experience..

with regards to the bugs, i am impressed by the way the foundation handles it; fixes it as soon as possible.
i don't expect it to be totally bug free.. i don't know if anything can possibly be released bug free... and if we wait for every bug fix to be incorporated and tested, i doubt we'd get anything out the door!

I forgot to mention that I do still use Firefox here at work (I haven't talked them into buying me a Mac...yet!) and I do so because I like my tabbed browsing. Also, I run it off of my USB thumb drive so if my workstation were to die or otherwise be replaced/upgraded, I don't have to worry about losing my bookmarks.

Two reasons:
1. Bookmarking RSS feeds
2. Web Developer 0.9.3 exension

Two of the features I can't find anwhere else (yet) and have come to rely on heavily for work and play...

Check out this article on abeNd.org for a method of deploying, managing and locking down the Firefox browser in corporate environments:

http://www.abend.org/article.php?story=20050420162658991

This article describes some performance enhancements for the browser:

http://www.abend.org/article.php?story=20050502111446869

And this one just has some general news about the new release, the market share, the Frefox/KDE thing, etc.:

http://www.abend.org/article.php?story=20050512131359519&query=...

Oh and btw, IBM is converting 300,000 users to Firefox:

http://www.abend.org/article.php?story=20050513170713792&query=...

i can't stand the separate url and search entry boxes that firefox has.

While IE doesn't yet (Running it in Wine isn't that optimal...)

.. firefox.

opera rules.. i rarely surf anymore so browsers are of little use really. theres like 5 sites i visit.. dunno why i still visit this one...

That's because both IE and Konqueror are preloaded into RAM whenever Windows or KDE is started. So when you run those apps, you aren't actually starting them, you're just creating a new window for an app that's already running. I think it would be nice if Firefox had a similar option, but maybe its more difficult since it has to run on lots of platforms.


***And seriously, can we just block all comments from anonymizer.com***

One word why Firefox rules: EXTENSIONS!

They are easy to make, plentiful, and the added funcitonality can save you lots of time/annoyances. The downfall of the extension system though is extension conflicts and firefox updates. On mozillazine I read about a warning to developers that Firefox 1.1 will again change the extension API slightly so once again older extensions might break. But the good news is that extensions designed correctly will alert the user if they need to be updated and the user can then click the update button in the extensions manager.

I feel tempted to add a plug for my own LGPL'd extension MenuX since I need more testers so I am pasting the link here if people want to try it out. It allows you to customize the navigation toolbar and collapse any toolbar or menubar in Firefox. http://markbokil.org/index.php?section=mozilla&content=c_menux....

-mark

You can fix that separate search box/url box problem in Firefox. Just right-click on the nav toolbar and select customize. Pull the search box off. Now create a bookmark and give it a keyword of say 's'. Set the url of the bookmark to 'http://www.google.com/search?q=%s'. Now to do a search you can just type 's cat food' and Firefox will do a search on google.

-mark

Firefox doesn't "rule", it just so happens to suck less than all the other sucky browsers out there. Firefox seems to be getting more buggy and less stable by the hour.

Firefox rules, not because it has feature x or y, it rules because it has all these cool features while remaining cross-platform!

[quote]Firefox seems to be getting more buggy and less stable by the hour.[/quote]

Hmm. I am not certain this is based on fact. The last bug report I saw for 1.1 Firefox nightly builds showed a decrease in bugs. I ocasionally have Firefox crash when I am running a Java plugin but it is the Java plugins fault really. I leave Firefox running for several days on my linux box without rebooting it. I don't have too much Windows experience with it. Maybe it is more stable on linux.

cross platform. i use linux at home and have to use windows at work and school. firefox is happy wherever. and not having tabs is the most frustrating experience when you're researching and are bouncing back and forth between pages.

i've never tried safari because i can't afford the hardware it runs on.

opera renders things all screwy. maybe it's because of incompliant pages, but it annoys me enough that i stay away. i'd like to see more stanards compliance, but i also need my stuff to work.

konqueror... well, it sucks if you run gnome. it is so close on load times with firefox that it's not worth the hassle.

epiphany? huh... just tried it right now. seems snappy enough, but i have no where near enough experience to really judge it. hated galeon though.

and ie? no tabs... spyware succeptibility. but i will say that our oracle based expensing software at work will only open in IE, which gets really old since i do everything else in firefox. plus some big companies like rockwell software have their heads up microsofts hole and still write activex applets to run in IE.

It's Free (as in speech and beer).
It's secure (well, all software has bugs; but like any F/OSS, those are fixed in Firefox very quickly after they are discovered).
I can't browse without Adblock + Tabs...WAAY nice.
The WebDeveloper extension kicks butt.
It's cross-platform: I use it in GNU/Linux and FreeBSD at home and on Windows at work.


The only thing it's missing in my view is better font rendering. Then again, I've not tried very hard in this aspect so it's likely my fault.

GGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Firefox!!!

tabbed browsing, extensions, its not MSFT

Because the extension support makes it so powerful. There are some extensions I'd hate to surf without. I also like the fact that I am supporting an open source program.

You know of course you are all helping out the old MS hornet by telling them and everyone else what you think. But I guess they'd eventually catch on... right?

I do not trust the Microsoft and I do not want to feed its monopoly, security is also another point

It seems like a lot of people switched from Opera, switched early. Try it again.

It isn't "hot" or "sleek", but it is very nice, simplistic and powerful. It also comes with it a lot of integrated features that you need extensions for in FF.

I really like it.

My laptop has quite high resolution display (1400x1050). IE is pretty useless in this situation - everything is just way too small, and there is no way to zoom comfortably. There are some pages which IE refuses to zoom no matter what you do.

Firefox allows me to zoom to any level just the way I like without limitations.

1. extensions

2. how it looks (on Linux and Windows!)

tabs, themes, and extensions! It's a premier software product at a very good price (0.00)

You mean like Opera?

After Ben Goodger's comments about "cutting corners," and the recent slew of security vulnerabilities that are plaguing Firefox, all the reasons I like to use Firefox are beginning to evaporate.

Web Developer extension is a must for web designer.
Tab browser is essential. Hopefully it will be integrated in the incoming Firefox update version.
Using MenuX, you can customize your Firefox by removing all gui and only use mouse navigation.
Efficient rendering.

After Ben Goodger's comments about "cutting corners," and the recent slew of security vulnerabilities that are plaguing Firefox, all the reasons I like to use Firefox are beginning to evaporate.
What you don't understand is how developer reacts to fix these kind of vulnerability. Since it took less than a week to solve that issue, that just reinforce the argument about active security. No software in the planet will be totally secure. Due to its open source nature, Firefox support is more efficient than any proprietary browser support.

I like because it has TABs support, good privacy management, popup blocker, download manager, it's autoscroll is nice, good keybindings, it's free software, and i can run on any OS

it's very clean and not limited, and i like it

My experience has been that more and more spyware are written and targeted on IE than Mozilla-based browsers. They easily install spyware (tool bars, etc...) when one browses websites using IE

no, not opera. I forgot to mention that another reason I like firefox is because it's free!

Haven't tried opera, I'm sure it's great, but last I heard it wasn't free (without ads anyways).

I like it (and Thunderbrid and the Moz Suite) becase I can have all of my data on one shareable partition (or network) and share it all across any platform or computer I happen to be on at the time. My mail, bookmarks, etc stay with me whereever I go. Always sync'd. Love it. OS/2, Windows, Linux, etc. They don't care. OS-agnostic really. Like openoffice!