With the current release of Mozilla Firefox 0.8, and in the excitement to try out something new, FlexBeta decided to compile 13 Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE.
Thirteen Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Even one reason is good enough.
Firefox seems to be definitively faster than Opera. This is the first time I’ve actually seen a visible speed difference between the two.
However, I’ll keep Opera for the time being until I don’t need dozens of plugins to accomplish the basic functionality I want, such as zooming all elements on a page, saved sessions, gestures, fast forward/rewind, child windows, and page/tab selection via the scroll wheel.
this is one of about 3 decent peices of software that OSS has produced for windows
I have nearly all of these features (except mabye “open source advantage”) with MyIE2, an alternate browser front-end to the IE engine. Additionally, I have ad filtering *and* image blocking.
The thing about the toolbar size was especially dumb. IE, Opera, and Mozilla all have configurable toolbars that can be made as small or big as you want.
That’s not to say that Firefox isn’t good of course, it’s certainly much better than the regular IE interface. But MyIE2 let’s me use the IE engine so that those silly IE only pages still work. And no, plugins don’t run by default on my browser.
this is one of about 3 decent peices of software that OSS has produced for windows
Would the other two be MirandaIM and CDex?
I downloaded Firefox onto a Windows Xp Box and it doesn’t remember passwords (never asked me) and it screwed up every link I get in my email or MSN Messenger. It just won’t open and displays an error msg. Never had a problem with Firbird. Could be a screwed up installation.
However, I’m typing this on my iBook within Firefox. I haven’t noticed any of those bugs. Works great. Still love Safari though.
——————-
http://www.sideliners.ca
sure its not to everyones fancy but its decent. on the comment of MyIE2, thats a patch if I remember so it really doesnt count as a browser. FireFox comes with these things preinstalled and popup blocking is on by default. That and the security errors with IE make Mozilla a nice alternative
that freaking article has no wordwrap or anything applied.
I have to scroll alllll the way over to the right just to read to the end of a line.
people who make sites like that should be shot.
“IE, Opera, and Mozilla all have configurable toolbars that can be made as small or big as you want.”
Not as configurable as Firefox. I have the location bar, google bar, and file/edit/etc. menus all on ONE BAR, in that order. That’s the tiniest space any browser can cram the essential items into at this point. I don’t even use any buttons, because gestures do all the work for me, but there would be room for the common buttons too if necessary (forward, back, etc.)
It seemed to display fine in FireFox.
True, it’s a half browser I guess. The rendering engine is IE, the rest is new. And yes, any IE engine security holes, assuming there are holes still left, will still affect MyIE2.
Thunderbird is also cool btw. I’m using it on my work Linux box. Although I have some odd interface glitches.
Does anyone know why no browser other than IE supports vbscript? Is it because Microsoft won’t let them (or wants to charge sky-high license fees for it), or because makers of rival browsers look down their noses at vbscript?
I’ve tried all incarnations of mozilla/phoenix/firefox, and I prefer MyIE2 to them all. I appreciate the effort that goes into that project, but myie2 is a great piece of software that does everything I need it to, even if it is an ‘add on’ so to speak.
I used FireBird and now FireFox on WinXP and it works SUPER great!! I never had problems with it. Aa about IE… it really sucks. Dozens of bugs and security issues.
I came one day at work and found my start menu full with “enlarge your penis” links just because my workmate surfed some porn sites.
And hey, MyIE is *NOT* a browser!!!!
[i]Not as configurable as Firefox. I have the location bar, google bar, and file/edit/etc. menus all on ONE BAR, in that order. [i]
Just tried that in IE and it can be done. I put all bars (minus google bar because it’s not installed) into one bar. I can also do that in MyIE2. Dunno about opera. Really, that point is just not right.
I am a happy Firebird/fox user and have been for months. I haven’t used IE as a primary browser in _years_. However, in my experience IE in Windows XP is the fastest-rendering browser by a couple hundred percent. My Firefox install doesn’t even touch it, and Opera is better but still not really close. IE is just plain instant, even on large pages.
Does anybody else experience this? Does IE run with a higher priority (or Windows equivalent)? Or is my system just weird? All I see on the web are people talking about how Firefox renders faster than IE. I use Firefox for a bunch of other reasons, but I sure would like to enjoy the speed everyone is talking about.
System:
IBM Thinkpad T20
700MHz
256MB
Windows XP Pro
I came one day at work and found my start menu full with “enlarge your penis” links just because my workmate surfed some porn sites.
LOL! There are IE bugs that can do THAT? Ok, that made me chuckle. Never had that happen to me. I keep wondering if some of these *bugs* are actually just people who can’t press “No” buttons.
I am a happy Firebird/fox user and have been for months. I haven’t used IE as a primary browser in _years_. However, in my experience IE in Windows XP is the fastest-rendering browser by a couple hundred percent. My Firefox install doesn’t even touch it, and Opera is better but still not really close. IE is just plain instant, even on large pages.
My experience is exactly the opposite. Firefox is faster than Opera, and Opera is faster than IE. I say this as a fairly zealous Opera user… Firefox is visibly faster, but as I mentioned earlier, doesn’t suit my needs…
Anyone else have anything as far to say in the realm of speed? When the differences are noticible on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, I’d say they’re fairly pronounced…
A.K.H., can you walk me through that in IE? I’m not seeing how to do it at all. I was relying on my experience to state that IE can’t do it, and a friends to state that Opera can’t.
I’m talking about:
[URL field ] [Google field] File Edit View Go Etc.
LOL! There are IE bugs that can do THAT?
Yes, it’s a bug called “Idiots who write spyware ActiveX controls seem to have no trouble getting them signed”
It has also been my experience that the IE engine renders much faster than anything else I’ve ever tried on a windows system. The others aren’t exactly slow, but there is no doubt, at least for me and the dozens of windows machines I use, that IE renders noticeably faster than any other engine.
” Does anyone know why no browser other than IE supports vbscript? ”
VBscript is very MS specific, much like DirectX and other MS technologies. There’s no point in competing with MS using their own products, especially when MS is known for using their technologies to shut out competition. Also, VBscript is not cross-platform and it is a security nightmare. You’re best off avoiding all applications which use VBscript, or at least turning it off.
A.K.H., can you walk me through that in IE? I’m not seeing how to do it at all. I was relying on my experience to state that IE can’t do it, and a friends to state that Opera can’t.
In IE it’s as simple as unlocking the toolbars and dragging the address bar around until it pops into the same row as the menus. It should look like this when you’re done:
http://xem.us/j/sarg-ie.jpg
Opera can do this too, but it requires hand-editing your Opera configuration. Search the Opera forums if you’re interested in configuring Opera in the same way.
Unfortunately, the page bar and address bar/menu will still be on separate rows.
>>Also, VBscript is not cross-platform
Isn’t that just because no other browser besides IE can understand it, and IE is not cross-platform? If Mozilla could read and understand vbscript, it would be able to do it in Linux, correct? What would prevent it?
Yeah well. 14th reason:
http://www.safecenter.net/UMBRELLAWEBV4/ie_unpatched/index.html
http://www.pivx.com/larholm/unpatched/“ rel=”nofollow”>http://web.archive.org/web/20030603192725/
PS: Raised Fist, great band!
Isn’t that just because no other browser besides IE can understand it, and IE is not cross-platform? If Mozilla could read and understand vbscript, it would be able to do it in Linux, correct? What would prevent it?
Supposing the Mozilla implementers wished to implement VBScript, where could they turn for a specification? Certainly not w3.org.
Attemting to interpret a programming language when you have no specification for it is a difficult prospect.
I am sorry but I have tried myIE2 and it ‘sucks’. Does not handle tabs well. You click on a javascript ‘window.open’ links and it opens in a new tab. Mozilla browsers you actually have the ability to decide which windows you want in tabs.
MyIE2 has nice extensions and themes, but they are still ugly hacks to an ageing ugly web browser.
Furthermore since I have started doing more web design using CSS, IE is just plain terrible with so many well know flaws and the lack of good support for CSS2 is depressing. Right now IE users and for that matter MyIE2 users are holding back the web.
You have to design with IE in mind because so many people use it. Its a real catch 22 situation.
I just installed it and it is nice and fast. But I’ll stick with Konqueror. I like Konqueror’s clear the address field button, that you can type gg:something to search for something, and many of it’s other features. But it’s nice with a nice backup. Konqueror is not so good when it comes to javascript. But it just got hotkeys incl. opera-style mouse gestures http://datschge.gmxhome.de/khotkeys.html.
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/
K-Meleon also uses the Gecko rendering engine, but without the GUI bloat the Mozilla browsers have. It’s much snappier to use. I tried Phoenix/Firebird/Firehox but didn’t see any improvement over Mozilla. So I’ve been using K-Meleon for the last few months and it’s great. It’s still a bit spartan since it’s at version 0.8.2 (I had to manually set http pipelining and a close-tabs button in the preferences text files), but is coming along nicely.
i donno why but my browser screen bounces..quite strange
VBscript is an MS technology and is really onnly supported in IE because of legacy.
Javascript was popularized by Netscape (I think that may have even named it, but it follows the ECMAscript specification). VBScript was promoted by IE. Javascript won the battle and MS included Javascript in IE because they lost. But they still have VBScript.
The W3C recommends Javascript for client side scripting. If you write your client side script in vbscript you really are a bit stupid.
<off point>ugh, fixing the subject…</off point>
Bascule: My experience is exactly the opposite. Firefox is faster than Opera, and Opera is faster than IE. I say this as a fairly zealous Opera user… Firefox is visibly faster, but as I mentioned earlier, doesn’t suit my needs…
Anyone else have anything as far to say in the realm of speed? When the differences are noticible on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, I’d say they’re fairly pronounced.
I just installed it and I would say it’s depending on what website. Opera load OSNews.com and Sourceforge.net faster than Firefox (on both empty and not empty caches), but FireFox loads MSNBC and hotmail faster than Opera. Must be related with JavaScript and etc.
The big improvement for Firefox is that it does startup much faster than Mozilla, Firebird, Phoenix and etc. Opera is still faster in my test with ‘time’ command.
The feel of UI and options, Opera is a big winner for me. But, I do like few features of what Firefox has.
Tested on FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT with www/opera, www/linux-opera and www/firefox.
I just installed it and I would say it’s depending on what website. Opera load OSNews.com and Sourceforge.net faster than Firefox (on both empty and not empty caches)
I just repeated the same thing on Windows, and didn’t notice a difference loading OSnews. The speed at which the page rendered after loading was about the same, and the image server seemed lagged as images appeared about a second or so after the layout was displayed on both browsers.
IE, on the other hand, could only display the logo and banner ad in roughly the same amount of time Opera and Firefox took to render the entire page layout, and the rest of the page loaded a bit later. Perhaps it was because it was busy loading a popup…
So, my opinion is IE loses, and Opera and Firefox tie on osnews.com.
In the case of Sourceforge, I thought Firefox and IE both loaded it faster than Opera, and that Firefox loaded it faster than IE.
but FireFox loads MSNBC and hotmail faster than Opera.
Both of these loaded fairly slowly and quite differently in all three browsers, and I didn’t really notice a considerable difference in rendering speed.
I’m now noticing that my initial assesments of Firefox were all on valid XHTML 1.1 pages, which makes me wonder if Gecko now implements a more lightweight parser for XHTML… many of the other pages I’ve tried loading have been virtually the same in Opera and Firefox.
The article links to a popup-killer testpage. Interestingly enough, the Google toolbar does better than Firefox. (Firefox fails Element Events test; both fail Non-navigational Click Test.)
try konqueror before u judge mozilla as the best.
I just did the test on the other machine that has 450Mhz and Opera is a winner. Firefox does the better job on the faster/today machine, but not old machine. Some how, Firefox (well, all gecko engine browsers too) still feel kind of little heavy compares to Opera for me.
Well i have been using Firebird(fox) since about version 0.6 and have been very happy with it(even tho it had a few bugs. e.g. text version of rar files etc). But this new version i notice a big difference in start up speed and page rendering speed. With that, the bugs fixed, and some new features i am even happier now.
And to Andrew G:
one of the best extensions for firefox for webdeveloping is the webdeveloper toolbar found here:
http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/
And yes, IE is a big pain in the a** for developing webpages. The fact that it doesnt even render pngs properly is bad enough… dont want to get started
firefox rules! hehe
Thanks for the link.
No prob,
just so ya know you can drag all toolbar icons up to the top right and then turn off the webdevel toolbar and that way you dont waste any browser space.
I too have noticed that on older machines Mozilla and its breathren are a bit “heavy” feeling. I just assumed it was Xul and not Gecko itself.
i guess you’ll only use vbscript on your web site if you cater only to IE users
the power of vbscript comes with its use of activeX technologies browser-side; that certainly is not safe for most people. maybe they have their place in corporate intranet apps where everyone uses IE, but not on the internet.
in the company i’m working for, i only use IE for the intranet since sections of it work only on IE. but for the rest of my surfing, nothing touches the speed and memory footprint of firefox
Overall, I like Firefox 0.8. It seems faster than Firebird 0.7, both in terms of UI speed and rendering (and to me it renders actually MUCH faster than IE). True, on my slow machine the first start is about 11 sec, but after that (even after it’s unloaded) it starts in about 5 sec.
But there’s one annoying bug: most of the time I cannot close Options window by clicking OK. Sometimes I can, but it happens randomly. For example, when I change theme and click OK, the look changes, but the Options window doesn’t close itself, and I have to click Cancel. Has anyone experienced that? (Windows 98 SE)
Just tried loading Slashdot in a few browsers. Firefox is by far the fastest. I don’t think this is rendering time, but /download/ time. The I tried Opera 7 and the IE 6. IE is definately the slowest (but not by much). Firefox is still a little sluggish on startup, for me.
BTW I cleared the cache before I did this.
I have a friend at college who hasn’t been using computers for very long, he had a bunch of hijacks on IE and AdAware couldn’t remove them all. He had heard of ‘Mozilla’ so I directed him to Firefox 😉
I extensively browse the web on either a Windows 2000 machine and a RH9 GNU/Linux one. I use Opera, Mozilla, Galeon, Firebird and Konqueror on a daily basis.
The two things I love about Firebird/fox is the ability to open a link in a new window (mouse left click + SHIFT) and a background tab (mouse right click + CTRL). By default, Firebird/fox will browse the new tabs on the chronological orders as you close them. Opera isn’t bad either at multi-tab browsing, but it really has a hard time dealing with Javascript menus and DHTML pages.
I find the password management to work much better on Mozilla than on Opera, where it seems inactive. Also, the Mozilla family is very convenient for web developers. If one work with forms, the “view page info” in Mozilla browsers will allow to check the name and value of form inputs, not to mention the Javascript console present on Firebird/fox.
The only matter on which Opera beats all the competition is the ability to zoom and the ease of use of the text-only mode.
one of the best extensions for firefox for webdeveloping is the webdeveloper toolbar found here:
http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/
.. even for casual developers
You can optimise Firefox further by altering a couple of the advanced settings as described at:
http://www.farrokhi.net/blog/archives/000235.html
The Mozilla/Firefox team really need to get these settings into a proper UI though (IMO). That’s probably the only thing really wrong with Firefox now.
Fill in about:config > nglayout.initialpaint.delay = 0 in the titlebar and press enter.
Really improves if you have a fast connection. Eventually put it a big higher than 0 ms.
MyIE and other IE-based browsers suffer from the same stupid bug as IE itself: the rendering maching has many security issues. Firefox doesn’t and I see most sites which used to be IE-only going for webstandards, as they should. And the ones which don’t, pity them, they lose from 5 to 15 percent of their audience. And for what? It’s so simple to design a perfectly good website which works in all standards based browsers…
I think these two reasons:
Cleaner Interface
Firefox isn’t filled with clutter such as a history button or other buttons that take up most of the area in Internet Explorer. Firefox offers 2% more space to web pages than Mozilla, 4% more than Internet Explorer, and a whopping 10% more than Opera.
Smaller Download
Ignoring the fact that Internet Explorer comes integrated with Windows, Firefox is almost half the size of Internet Explorer meaning half the time downloading.
Were stretching a bit. Ignoring for a second the IE toolbar is completely customisable and those buttons can be removed, *some* people might find the lack of a history button on the toolbar more of a PITA than a “clean interface”.
As for the download sizes, regardless of *why* IE comes with the OS, the fact is it does – so trying to say Firefox would be a smaller download “if you had to download IE”, is fairly moot.
It has tons and tons of features: Pop-up blocking, Scripting, Skinning, Zooming, Grouping, Tabbed browsing.
And it’s even more lightweight then MyIE2, GIVE IT A TRY!
http://www.morequick.com/indexen.htm
I like the software and use it for a long time but can somebody please tell me how I sort the bookmarks alphabetically. I refuse to believe this is not possible, it’s a windows standard that can be found all over the place in windows
Article = Poor form, Poorly Researched.
“Integrated Search Engine
Now why didn’t the IE programmers think of this? ”
I’m sorry, what does IE say when you enter anything in the address bar. Or even better, the “search” button! :O
“Faster Response
A typical webpage will load faster on Mozilla Firefox than Internet Explorer”
And my car goes faster than yours. And my dad could beat up your dad. Show us the stats, not your thoughts.
“Security
Because many of those malicious plug-in’s that cause your everyday web surfing into a trip to the DMV are mostly programmed for Internet Explorer, having Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser can save you tons of headaches”
Especially useful as well for the plethora of legit plugins that it WONT run.
“Cleaner Interface
Firefox isn’t filled with clutter such as a history button or other buttons that take up most of the area in Internet Explorer”
Got an issue with them? Turn them off… Configurable toolbars have been around since like Word 2.0
I like what mozilla.org has acheived. There’s definately some potential there for more. But lets face it, there is nothing in this package so hugely groundbreaking that the world will swap to firefox.
I really like FireFox, and from my quick tests here it’s faster than IE for loading OSNews… On 3 runs (with pages already loaded in cache previously) :
IE : average 3.0 seconds
FireFox : about 2.2 seconds
Still this is very fast and isn’t really a deciding factor for me. Acrobat 6 seems to work better with FireFox than with FireBird, but I think Acrobat 6 is broken to start with (I even have problems with IE)
The only thing that really bugs me is that I still have the same rendering problems on Slashdot that I used to have with Firebird. I’m not sure if it’s the HTML to blame but it’s a problem I don’t have with IE.
>I too have noticed that on older machines
>Mozilla and its breathren are a bit “heavy”
>feeling.
>I just assumed it was Xul and not Gecko itself.
You’re 100% right. I have dual overclocked Celerons (2x550Mhz) with 128MB of RAM. If I compare latest Mozilla and Epiphany (or Galeon) that uses same Mozilla as a engine, difference is huge. XUL kills performance. And, BTW, I HATE skinned apps!!! 🙂 I don’t want any app to stick out from my other apps, that’s why in BeOS I had to make BeOS theme for Mozilla. Skinning is so 90’s, IMO.
And what about security?
I’ve been using Firebird since it first came out and with each version it’s just got better and more stable. I’m totally blown away by the Firefox 0.8 release. It’s a heck of a lot faster and smoother in operation than IE and offers all the useful features that Opera does, without any charge.
Truely an impressive browser.
Overall it seems like a very nice browser and on some sites it even seems a little faster than Opera. There are still a lot of Opera UI features I’m not willing to live without, so I doubt I’ll be changing to FireFox anytime soon. But it’s certainly a browser I’ll be keeping an eye on.
People who make sites like that should be shot right in their head for writing such a dumb article and using smaller fonts
The thing that I like least about MyIE2 (besides the fact that it’s IE-based) is that you can’t right click on a link and open the page in a new browser window isntead of a new tab – super annoying.
That being said, I believe it is now possible to use gecko with MyIE2.
Faster startup time
No rendering problems (some pages still have problems with Gecko)
No need for a second browser
“IE : average 3.0 seconds
FireFox : about 2.2 seconds ”
I don’t think IE is slower than Firefox. I tried it: IE renders this page a little bit faster than Firefox.
Other sites may differ.
Better Integration with the OS. It’s good to see Apps like Kazaa rendering web sites perfectly because of using IE as middleware.
Better file manager interface. Why does firefox try to download local files instead of offering to execute them?
Better Ftp-Site representation.
Easiest integration with most third-party tools, for example flashget.
“I’m sorry, what does IE say when you enter anything in the address bar. Or even better, the “search” button! :O”
First of all that feature is imo extremely annoying because when i’d make a typo it would make some sicko URL and show a page i certainly wouldn’t like. Second, it’s MSN vs. Google. Both personal, but i think most people prefer the easy though powerful and extandable use of Google.
And 3rd i’ll name: monoculture! again. Just think fort a second, a monoculture or extreme powerful group has NEVER been good for humanity.
“there is nothing in this package so hugely groundbreaking that the world will swap to firefox.”
Believe what you want to believe. I’m getting more and more indications of people switching from MSIE to Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox (that last one sounds weird…). Not only advanced Windows users, also friends of mine and friends of friends who are in no way “technical/advanced users”.
MS also isn’t innovating IE at all anymore despite missing features (PNG, CSS 1/2) and zillions of security hazards. They’re busy with Longhorn instead.
IE of course has a snappier User Interface.
… provides easier bookmark administration
… isn’t excluded from some sites
… has better printing capabilities
… is a possible excuse for data loss (I know it never happens)
12 great reasons.
why is it good that IE offers to execute files instead of downloading it.
that is a flaw.
heres my opin of IE: slow, ugly, featureless, bug ridden, and full of security holes you can drive a truck through.
“Snappier Interface”
WOW. thats it for me.
(no MyIE2 doesnt make up for the fact IE is useless by itself. because at the end of the day, its still a halfassed core)
snappy interface. hah. i just cant get over that one.
“wow it looks like, boring”
oh yeah IE does have search, *chuckle*
msn search, i guess that counts. maybe.
IE is an ugly hack ever since 3.0
No, every reason is Ok.
Firefox wants to download LOCAL files.
You see the difference?
And I don’t care for security. That only effects beginners.
However, I’ll keep Opera for the time being until I don’t need dozens of plugins to accomplish the basic functionality I want, such as zooming all elements on a page, saved sessions, gestures, fast forward/rewind, child windows, and page/tab selection via the scroll wheel.
You’ll be sticking with Opera for a long, long, time then. FireFox is meant to stay light-weight; the extension model is intended to allow developers to *extend* the functionality of the browser without adding to the size of the basic package. What you describe as “basic” sounds pretty “advanced” to me… I don’t use any of those things and don’t want to, and I don’t want to be forced to download them if I don’t plan to use them.
All that having been said, it might not be such a bad idea for someone to make a few different bundled installers containing the base product together with well-selected extensions. Maybe even a “roll your own” installer where you could select the extensions to be installed at the same time as the base product.
Would that be acceptable to you, Bascule? I think it’s important that the FireFox base product stay small and truly basic, but your point that having to hunt down and separately install a bunch of extensions is a good one, even if you and I (and every other combination of 2 users 😉 disagree on what’s “basic”.
“Better Ftp-Site representation.”
Do really find that working well?
Mozilla has a build in IRC client. Therefore, that’s a reason to use Mozilla. Dunno. I never liked some “all purpose apps” while i did like or learned to like other “all purpose apps”.
However it should be noted that where Mozilla is the old branch which will be replaced soon (Firefox, Thunderbird are coming!), has an IRC client, E-mail client, and possibly even FTP client that is N-O-T the intention of Firefox! Neither does it have the intention to be a file explorer too (Konqueror can do, though). These programs are rather gonna follow the original Unix philosophy (though a bit different because it’s GUI): do 1 thing, and do that damn good.
This also answers:
“Better file manager interface. Why does firefox try to download local files instead of offering to execute them?”
“Easiest integration with most third-party tools, for example flashget.”
Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox support Flash. Actually Macromedia supports it too. That said there’s a huge repository of Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox plugins. Last time i checked there were more for Mozilla and since Mozilla Firefox is still rapidly developing it can indeed be true that some plugins become broken. Nice advantage is: we all have the source.
“provides easier bookmark administration
has better printing capabilities”
Care to elobarate?
“isn’t excluded from some sites”
Sure is possible. Easy to do, actually it IS excluded from a few sites i’m aware of, though this is mainly unnoticed perhaps because these sites aren’t that important.
But the fact non-MSIE browsers are excluded is mainly because MSIE isn’t according to standards (CSS 1/2 for example) and because (some) webdesigners develop not based on the standards but based on wether it works or not with MSIE. There is “activism” against this. For example http://www.ns.nl (Dutch railways) didn’t work with any non-MSIE browser including Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx. Now it supports about all these browsers and in addition has added a text interface for non-frame users (Lynx et al). All that because of loads of e-mails from users — and that’s just one example.
“is a possible excuse for data loss (I know it never happens)”
I sure know it did happen back when i still ran XP. But whatever…
In the end it’s all a matter of taste. I, for one, am happy with different flavors of ice cream (and prefer to only eat any soy ones).
I disagree regarding the save function. This is a basic option imo. Useful for anyone who’s computer is not 24/7 (home and work users). You turn the browser and computer off, and when you start it again you continue right where you were at. Are you actually always done with surfing when you’re gonna put the computer off? I think many people aren’t, and they can leave their favorite sites open ready for new usage which saves time. That said, i think it’s very useful, from newbie users to advanced power users. It’s not hard to use in Opera either.
@ SI “That only effects beginners.”
Yeah right. So what do you use to secure your MSIE?
SI, it is good that you love so much IE as I love Mozilla, thus you know how much I care if you use IE or not
I am a happy Mozilla user since 99. Thanks Netscape and AOL for such a great free lovely browser
0.8 is definately a nice cleanup from the previous version. Much neater and more of a single package. I love all the features, but two oddities have been kind of a bother since I installed it. The download status popup insists on popping up in the bottom right even though my taskbar is on the top of the screen. And the Mozilla crew still has Firefox create a Mozilla directory in Application Data and use a Phoenix directory to store settings. Other than these two inconsistencies, you could call this version 1.0 as far as I’m concerned.
“And I don’t care for security. That only effects beginners.”
Good for you. But that attitude won’t help the zillions of Joe users out there.
Sure, if you disable ActiveX, apply a handful of patches and fine tune some settings, IE can be considered half-decent security wise (well… sort of). But go tell that to a user who only wants to check his webmail, browse the news and download some goodies.
Lets face it: IE is obsolete. Its rendering engine has reached a dead end, its code base can’t be tweaked further. Its CSS support is sorely lacking, the PNG issue already stinks, and from a UI point, it is way behind its competitors: no tabs, no popup blocking… nothing. And personally, I would put the pathetic javascript debugging (random error line numbers anyone?) at the same height, but that’s only an issue for us poor web developers.
Mozilla & co, Opera, Konqueror/Safari… they have all outraced a browser which has stagnated and won’t evolve until Longhorn comes out (how many years from now was that supposed to be?). But don’t worry, when it finally comes out, all MS zealots will rejoice at the mind blowing innovations of IE 7: yeah, you guessed it, tabbed browsing and popup blocking. Oh well.
Meanwhile, Firefox already delivers an outstanding and polished browsing experience. Nice and comfortable UI + splendid features (no one mentions keyboard navigation/searches!) + smart defaults = winner. Indeed, all IE users should try it out and see it for themselves. Hell, I even convinced my brother to switch, and he was about the most reluctant person in the world to ditch IE!
It’s because vbscript is an ugly piece of shit that I wouldn’t even use to wipe my arse with.
There’s a reason why there’s a billion vbscript viruses ..
It doesn’t work. This is the absolute worst piece of beta software I have ever used. None of the plugins work, pages are not rendered properly and it is noticably slower than IE. Back to Firebird for me.
Yes very constructive. Odd how no one else is having these problems. I mean surely it must be Firefox, it could never be you *cough*. Have you considered clearing your old user data from Firebird?
I still use Galeon, whose new version made major improvements (1.3.12) and will continually get better. I think Galeon is like a Firefox built in GTK with even more features (before 1.3.12, it suffered in terms of speed, but now the speed issues have been fixed).
I have to say, as an alternative for Windows IE, it makes a huge difference. I’ve said this here before, but a 55-year-old Internet newbie was complaining to me about his slow computer (P166 with Win98), which he was only using for web browsing, and I helped him by installing Firebird 0.6. Ever since then, every time I see him he just tells me he can’t believe how much faster I made his computer.
Firebird/fox is definitely FASTER/MORE EFFICIENT in terms of how it renders pages. This is a fact, jack. I could see it clearly on his machine. The thing is, the speed of rendering pages isn’t as immediately apparent to all of us, who use 2 Gigahertz machines. What everyone else considers “speed” is “how long after I click the blue E till I see a browser window.” The thing is, that’s just a trick, because the major components of IE are “always running” in the background, and that’s why the blue IE brings up IE quickly. But that’s not speed.
I think Firefox should offer a feature in its 1.0 release to have a firefox daemon that runs in the background and keeps most of the code resident in memory so that startup time is immediate. A lot of efficiency purists would argue against this, but I think based on how much people use web browsers, and how cheap memory is, this is a reasonable option to make people “feel faster.” This way, at least, when Windows users install it and see a 10ms startup time, they’ll say, MAN, is this fast.
Bla.
But that way you still won’t fake it for the non-newbies
I installed MyIE2 to compare it with Firefox.
MAN, THAT’S WHAT’S CALLED UI BLOAT!
I heard some people complain about Mozilla Seamonkey UI, and how cluttered it is. Haha. Try MyIE2. Yeah, I know, you can hide all those toolbars and stuff, but the menus will remain the same. Nothing like Firefox, which is clean and simple…
It does start faster, I admit. But I can’t stand the UI, sorry… Back to Firefox, even Options bug doesn’t matter
OHHH so you mean you dont have to download IE anymore
better tell microsoft that, they might be suprised.
like when they decide to up the version because of a bunch of security holes.
get with it. atleast the gecko based browsers dont HAVE to be upgraded to prevent those types of problems
One annoying thing about it, is that it seems to be unable to install new search engines in the search bar.
I use Linux/GNOME almost exclusively and as such am pretty much limited to using a Gecko-based browser (Mozilla/Firefox/Epiphany et al) and I have to say that my online experience is in no way diminished by the supposed dearth of plugins that were mentioned earlier.
The most commonly required plugin is probably Shockwave Flash, for which there is a Gecko version. Beyond that… What is there? What am I missing? I have MPlayerplug-in for media files; it ain’t perfect, but to be honest, the last place I would ever think of looking at a video is in my poxy web-browser! Windows versions of Gecko seem to be able to use Quicktime quite happily and can probably use Media Player for the videos that QT won’t display.
So really, what are these plugins that Mozilla is so sorely missing?
Their article doesn’t render right in Firebird 0.7!
“Mozilla & co, Opera, Konqueror/Safari… they have all outraced a browser which has stagnated and won’t evolve until Longhorn comes out (how many years from now was that supposed to be?).”
You should not write about browsers you ‘ve obviously never user.
Opera/Konqueror have so much rendering problems.
The majority of users just wants the browser to render nearly everything CORRECTLY.
I’m surprised that Konqueror is still so buggy. Does that mean Safari has the same problems? What’s wrong with Apple?
The article says Fire Fox takes up 10% less space on the screen than Opera… But that is impossible, if you run Opera in Kiosk mode, as I do. In Kiosk mode, there is only a very small bar at the top of the page. It might be about 15-20 pixels across, and you can make that go away.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/2094/index.html
(link found on Slashdot)
Installing search engines works here (Windows 98 SE). I used mycroft.mozdev.org.
I like Firebird/ ball and use it at home, BUT this article is wrong on several IE points. It undermines his whole argument.
First he says it doesn’t have a download manager. It does resume downloads if one gets cut off. It isn’t as configurable and is absolutely basic, but IE 5+ does do this. Not perfectly, and not all the time, but IE does have auto-resume. If you start dl’ing a file but get cutoff, much of the time it doesn’t auto-resume (only MS sites). BUT if you click that file again, it picks up where it left off. I’m guessing most people don’t remember the days before browsers had this feature and you had to start from scratch everytime you were interrupted. Only FTP apps did and IE 5 was the 1st browser to include it. As far as Fireball’s dl managers, he could have lauded the way you can create a dl-specific folder (desktop, etc) where ALL your files go and you don’t have to keep choosing a download location for every frickin file. Of course he didn’t mention that.
Second, he complains about the cluttered toolbar. In IE 5+ you can add or remove buttons to your heart’s content. You can even stick your tool bar, address bar, menu and google bar on the same line. It’s as cluttered or uncluttered as you want it to be. Right click “Customize.” Surprise!!
Third, he says IE has no Search. How about looking at those cluttered buttons and clicking on the little magnifying glass/ globe icon that MS usually uses for “Search.” Maybe if he said “Search in IE isn’t integrated into the Toolbar” or “in IE you have to open a separate frame/ pane for Search.” But it is integrated and you can choose Google, MSN, Yahoo, Alltheweb, or anyone else as your serch provider.
As far as plugins, java and flash/ shockwave are all you need.
Firebird/ ball is better than IE. It is Safari for Windows. But at least know what you’re talking about before you knock something. This guy just hates IE for whatever reason and that’s fine too. But at least be up front about it.
>> SI: “Easiest integration with most third-party tools, for example flashget.”
>>
>> dpi: Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox support Flash…
Macromedia Flash != FlashGet (http://www.amazesoft.com/)
Firebird/ ball/ fox whatever – sorry, I haven’t got used to the new name change.
As far as someone mentioning above about this or that included app (ftp integration, IRC, etc), I really don’t think most of that should be in a browser and 90% of the population doesn’t use those features. If they do use FTP or IRC then they are knowledgeable enough to go after other, more appropriate apps.
“Opera/Konqueror have so much rendering problems.”
Sure? More than IE? I’m talking about web standards here, not Microsoft’s trend-of-the-month. Btw, Opera’s CSS support is even better than Gecko’s. It’s you who got the info wrong, I’d say.
“You should not write about browsers you ‘ve obviously never used.”
And you shouldn’t judge people who you obviously know nothing of. The most difficult part of designing web content is getting it right for as many browsers as possible, and guess what: Explorer is always the worse of the lot in that respect. There’s always 2 ways of doing things: the standard way, and then IE’s way. What you call “rendering problems” of other browsers is in fact IE’s fault. As a matter of fact, I try to make my pages render well on Opera and Konqueror, so *indeed*, I use them frequently and know what I’m talking about.
I’d recommend anyone interested on web design and browser studies to take a deep look at http://www.quirksmode.org . A most excellent resource with really handy browser compatibility tables and lots of other goodies.
So go, read it through, check the browser tests and come say again IE stands a chance against any of the other major browsers.
For all the pages that people claim don’t work in Firefox, or Gecko browsers, what about all the pages that don’t work in IE? I have come across more pages that don’t work correctly in IE (Includling MSN.com!) than vice-versa.
Better Integration with the OS. It’s good to see Apps like Kazaa rendering web sites perfectly because of using IE as middleware.
You don’t need OS integration to do that. Just use a Gecko plugin. The whole thing could be in one or two shared DLLs instead of built into the OS file manager and interface.
Well said, it makes me sick that people assume that because a site does not render in Konqueror or Opera that it the browser or should I say user agents fault.
The fact is that many web developers (not sure if they should be called that) do not even know the web standards, all they know is how things work in IE5/Win and IE6/Win quirk mode or whatever it is called.
Last rant, I really wish IE would support the ‘fixed’ property for <div>’s. Would have saved me a lot of energy recently.
For example any site that relies purely on CSS rollovers.
The problem is that most sites are forced to cater for the lowest common denominator, IE. If IE had like 10% market share perhaps they would have to get with the program, but since web sites are stuck having to make their sites work with IE since it has like 96% market share, we’re all stuck
I like the progress on Firefox, they are getting to the point Opera got with v6.x but with current standards support.
Opera is currently going the other way around, they are destroying the Opera experience, instead of expanding the browser they keep spending their time on stupid panels you can only customize half way (*yes*), an email client which doesn’t feel solid and now to make the the mix worse they add a chat client which difficultly will get better than standalone chat programs and they finish with that ugly side panel which the majority of the people hate.
Hi
firefox uses the mature gecko engine and has cleared up the bloat of mozilla. opera should have stopped adding features at some point around 6.x. it should have concentrated on engine tweaking and such. featurism is what is killing it now.
ram
Have you tried Lynx? It’s fast, and automagically blocks pictures and popups. It seems immune to viruses and driveby downloads. It renders text in a clear and consistent fashion, while being available for many platforms.
Firefox is great! It is fast, stable, and seems to render everything just fine (so far, but it will take me some time to reach the end of the Web at 26.4k). I prefer it to my 2nd favorite, Avant.
One reason NOT to use it is some online apps. If you are in real estate, nearly all the browser-based apps demand IE. I have no idea why. Even our MLS system, developed in Perl, PHP, MySQL, Java, and JavaScript, only works 100% right on IE. I asked the developers how they managed to take all open source or cross-platform parts and make an IE-only product. No answer yet.
Yeah, FlexBeta could have tried *using* IE before trashing it for not having features it clearly has, but that doesn’t take away from Firefox.
flibblesan (IP: —.server.ntli.net)
I’ve been using Firebird since it first came out and with each version it’s just got better and more stable. I’m totally blown away by the Firefox 0.8 release. It’s a heck of a lot faster and smoother in operation than IE and offers all the useful features that Opera does, without any charge.
Care to tell me where I can get something as basic as gestures? I tried to get the All-in-One Gesture Plugin, which I have been informed is the one to use, from http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/ and all I find is this:
During periods of heavy use, the extensions are taken offline to help maintain a healthy, responsive server. Please check back later! For now, please use Extension Room. (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/)
Which in turn says:
Please wait while we work on the server
Thanks
–pete
Well, that’s one Opera feature down. Now answer me where I can find extensions for the following other features:
* Fast Forward / Rewind
* Saved Sessions
* Zooming of all page elements
* Page (tab) selection via scroll wheel
* Quick toggling of page versus user style sheets (^G in Opera)
* Open last page (tab) closed (^Z in opera)
* List closed pages (tabs)
None of this functionality appears to be built into Firefox per default. I think that’s a far cry from “all the useful features that Opera does”, but perhaps it’s the case that you don’t know how to use these Opera features. Personally, I now find it infuriating to use a browser that doesn’t support Fast Forward / Rewind.
Anonymous (IP: —.blueyonder.co.uk)
I like the progress on Firefox, they are getting to the point Opera got with v6.x but with current standards support.
Opera is currently going the other way around, they are destroying the Opera experience, instead of expanding the browser they keep spending their time on stupid panels you can only customize half way (*yes*), an email client which doesn’t feel solid and now to make the the mix worse they add a chat client which difficultly will get better than standalone chat programs and they finish with that ugly side panel which the majority of the people hate.
I’m not going to say that every direction that Opera has gone with Opera 7 is positive. However, Opera 7 saw the addition of some of Opera’s most useful features, most notably fast forward and rewind, two features I can safely say, without hyperbole, that I could not live without. Opera 7 provided almost the same degree of toolbar (and sidebar) customizability as IE and Firebird/fox provide, a feature noticibly absent from Opera 6. As for M2 and their Chat client, it would be nice if it were more modular and could be unchecked at install time, but it’s not like they’re obtrusive or add considerably to the download size or affect startup times. Firebird 0.7 had horrible startup times, and it’s only with Firefox that they’ve managed to catch up with Opera in this department, despite the incessant whining about bloat in Opera.
Cleaner Interface
Firefox isn?t filled with clutter such as a history button or other buttons that take up most of the area in Internet Explorer. Firefox offers 2% more space to web pages than Mozilla, 4% more than Internet Explorer, and a whopping 10% more than Opera.
I’m sure that was determined in an entirely scientific manner. *gag* I’m not really bothered by “real estate” issues with opera… the only toolbars I have enabled are the menus, the page bar, and the address bar… the navigation bar is rendered completely obsolete by gestures/hotclicks/varios keyboard combos.
Anonymous (IP: 61.95.184.—):
firefox uses the mature gecko engine and has cleared up the bloat of mozilla. opera should have stopped adding features at some point around 6.x. it should have concentrated on engine tweaking and such. featurism is what is killing it now.
Yes, and in comparison Firefox is stripped down and bereft of features. Can you tell me where I can find extensions which accomplish the various functions I’ve listed above? I’d especially like extensions that do fast forward/rewind. Unfortunately when Firefox users say an extension exists for many of those features, they seem to be full of hot air.
Those features are what make Opera the best Internet experience, and any browser without gestures or fast forward/rewind seems clunky in comparison.
I have been using mozilla browser for quite a some time. I have also installed and checked the firebird/firefox versions of the browsers. I think the feature that is still missing from firefox is preventing the images from animating. In mozilla there is an option for this.