Firefox test run
Wikipedia's article on Firefox says: "Mozilla Firefox (originally known as Phoenix and intermittently as Mozilla Firebird) is a free web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers. Before its 1.0 release on November 9, 2004, Firefox had already garnered a great deal of acclaim from the media, ranging from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal. With over 5 million downloads in the first 12 days of its release, Firefox 1.0 is one of the most-used open source applications among home users."
I'm one of the millions who are giving Firefox a test run. The advantage most sources quote is that virus writers are writing for MS Internet Explorer so it's safer. So far I'm pretty happy with it, and my guess is it's a bit faster than MSIE, but these are the things that would make me stick with MSIE:
1) I noticed that when I look at omniparticle's homepage in IE I can see a javascripted mouse trailer. Can't see it in Firefox.
2) I like my Favorites (Firefox calls them Bookmarks) to open in a sidebar on the left of the page. Maybe Firefox can do this but the default is a tricky thing to use and I'm searching how to change this.
3) I've had two pages load that will not show the up-down scroll bar no matter what I do.
4) When I'm in a picture-saving frenzy, some stupid "Cleanup" box pops up. WTF is that? Also, if I'm saving images off a few pages simultaneously in a hurry, it gets confused as to which page and image I'm on, and also the saving time seems awfully slow to me, compared to Explorer. On the plus side, if I have a zillion pages open, the images seem to keep downloading on most or all of them, not give up on them as MSIE quite often does.
5) When opening pages it asks if you want to open in a new window, which is fine as MSIE does that and I'm used to it. But it also asks about 'tabs', and what they are I have no idea ... it doesn't tell you.
6) I like blue and don't like orange. Hate it in Blogger too.
7) This one's a biggie for me: if I copy from a webpage and paste into Front Page 2000, it doesn't paste in hyperlinks nor pictures at all, just plain text. Baz le Tuff says it works in FP 2003 but I have other issues with that version and can't use it.
For me, the jury's still out.
Shit, I'm talking like a talking head on TV. At the end of the day ... hit the ground running ... outcomes ... I have no ambition but if the people insist ... send a message to the electorate ... just a fishing expedition ...
Spread Firefox reports 6 million downloads.
Wikipedia's article on Firefox says: "Mozilla Firefox (originally known as Phoenix and intermittently as Mozilla Firebird) is a free web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers. Before its 1.0 release on November 9, 2004, Firefox had already garnered a great deal of acclaim from the media, ranging from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal. With over 5 million downloads in the first 12 days of its release, Firefox 1.0 is one of the most-used open source applications among home users."
I'm one of the millions who are giving Firefox a test run. The advantage most sources quote is that virus writers are writing for MS Internet Explorer so it's safer. So far I'm pretty happy with it, and my guess is it's a bit faster than MSIE, but these are the things that would make me stick with MSIE:
1) I noticed that when I look at omniparticle's homepage in IE I can see a javascripted mouse trailer. Can't see it in Firefox.
2) I like my Favorites (Firefox calls them Bookmarks) to open in a sidebar on the left of the page. Maybe Firefox can do this but the default is a tricky thing to use and I'm searching how to change this.
3) I've had two pages load that will not show the up-down scroll bar no matter what I do.
4) When I'm in a picture-saving frenzy, some stupid "Cleanup" box pops up. WTF is that? Also, if I'm saving images off a few pages simultaneously in a hurry, it gets confused as to which page and image I'm on, and also the saving time seems awfully slow to me, compared to Explorer. On the plus side, if I have a zillion pages open, the images seem to keep downloading on most or all of them, not give up on them as MSIE quite often does.
5) When opening pages it asks if you want to open in a new window, which is fine as MSIE does that and I'm used to it. But it also asks about 'tabs', and what they are I have no idea ... it doesn't tell you.
6) I like blue and don't like orange. Hate it in Blogger too.
7) This one's a biggie for me: if I copy from a webpage and paste into Front Page 2000, it doesn't paste in hyperlinks nor pictures at all, just plain text. Baz le Tuff says it works in FP 2003 but I have other issues with that version and can't use it.
For me, the jury's still out.
Shit, I'm talking like a talking head on TV. At the end of the day ... hit the ground running ... outcomes ... I have no ambition but if the people insist ... send a message to the electorate ... just a fishing expedition ...
Spread Firefox reports 6 million downloads.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 12:53 PM | Permalink
3 Comments:
I have been using Firefox/hoenix for years. It beats the pants off of IE. Here's my thoughts on your issues:
1) I noticed that when I look at omniparticle's homepage in IE I can see a javascripted mouse trailer. Can't see it in Firefox.
I can live with that. Remember that IE still has more market share. As more and more people use Firefox, authoring tools will take it's differenes into account and web developers will test for it. It does have some relatively minor java and JS issues. There are a couple of sites I will only use IE for. In fact, exactly two.
2) I like my Favorites (Firefox calls them Bookmarks) to open in a sidebar on the left of the page. Maybe Firefox can do this but the default is a tricky thing to use and I'm searching how to change this.
This is the old Netscape way of doing things. Not sure if it can be changed, but maybe it can. I'm used to it.
3) I've had two pages load that will not show the up-down scroll bar no matter what I do.
The only time I have ever seen this happen is when the page is not large enough to be scrolled anyway. What sites are these? I'd like to see that, really...
4) When I'm in a picture-saving frenzy, some stupid "Cleanup" box pops up. WTF is that? Also, if I'm saving images off a few pages simultaneously in a hurry, it gets confused as to which page and image I'm on, and also the saving time seems awfully slow to me, compared to Explorer. On the plus side, if I have a zillion pages open, the images seem to keep downloading on most or all of them, not give up on them as MSIE quite often does.
The "cleanup box" is called the "download manager." It's actually a nice tool because it keeps the link alive, so if your download fails, you don't have to hunt up the page, you only need to use that box to try again, even if you have closed and reopen your browser. There are several options available under the tools/optiuons menu. You can turn off the download manager. You can automatically close it. You can do lots of stuff. Like any novel tool, you ned to learn how to use it. Change can be good.
5) When opening pages it asks if you want to open in a new window, which is fine as MSIE does that and I'm used to it. But it also asks about 'tabs', and what they are I have no idea ... it doesn't tell you.
Try it and see what it does. You'll be hooked on that immediately (in fact, it was this feature that sold me on Firefox in the first place. Imagine, instead of having 6 or 8 pages open in different browsers, tou had them opened in tabbed windows all in the same browser. It's sweet.
6) I like blue and don't like orange. Hate it in Blogger too.
Yeah, the color scheme is weird. But you can get "skins" with different color schemes...
7) This one's a biggie for me: if I copy from a webpage and paste into Front Page 2000, it doesn't paste in hyperlinks nor pictures at all, just plain text. Baz le Tuff says it works in FP 2003 but I have other issues with that version and can't use it.
This I don't know because I don't use, nor do I like Front Page. I develope in Dreamweaver, which is much more powerful, and does not have this problem. I do sometimes paste stuff in MS Word and that preserves links and graphics, too.
You are right about the IE attack problem. Since IE is so tighly integrated into the OS, if you can take it down, you have control of the entire machine. That's actually very easy to do, but not with Mozilla...
Actually, most of the iussues you raise here are discussed on the Firefox web site. Had you read about its features, you would know, for example, what "tabbed borwsing" is. RTFM!!
I have been using Firefox/hoenix for years. It beats the pants off of IE. Here's my thoughts on your issues:
1) I noticed that when I look at omniparticle's homepage in IE I can see a javascripted mouse trailer. Can't see it in Firefox.
I can live with that. Remember that IE still has more market share. As more and more people use Firefox, authoring tools will take it's differenes into account and web developers will test for it. It does have some relatively minor java and JS issues. There are a couple of sites I will only use IE for. In fact, exactly two.
2) I like my Favorites (Firefox calls them Bookmarks) to open in a sidebar on the left of the page. Maybe Firefox can do this but the default is a tricky thing to use and I'm searching how to change this.
This is the old Netscape way of doing things. Not sure if it can be changed, but maybe it can. I'm used to it.
3) I've had two pages load that will not show the up-down scroll bar no matter what I do.
The only time I have ever seen this happen is when the page is not large enough to be scrolled anyway. What sites are these? I'd like to see that, really...
4) When I'm in a picture-saving frenzy, some stupid "Cleanup" box pops up. WTF is that? Also, if I'm saving images off a few pages simultaneously in a hurry, it gets confused as to which page and image I'm on, and also the saving time seems awfully slow to me, compared to Explorer. On the plus side, if I have a zillion pages open, the images seem to keep downloading on most or all of them, not give up on them as MSIE quite often does.
The "cleanup box" is called the "download manager." It's actually a nice tool because it keeps the link alive, so if your download fails, you don't have to hunt up the page, you only need to use that box to try again, even if you have closed and reopen your browser. There are several options available under the tools/optiuons menu. You can turn off the download manager. You can automatically close it. You can do lots of stuff. Like any novel tool, you ned to learn how to use it. Change can be good.
5) When opening pages it asks if you want to open in a new window, which is fine as MSIE does that and I'm used to it. But it also asks about 'tabs', and what they are I have no idea ... it doesn't tell you.
Try it and see what it does. You'll be hooked on that immediately (in fact, it was this feature that sold me on Firefox in the first place. Imagine, instead of having 6 or 8 pages open in different browsers, tou had them opened in tabbed windows all in the same browser. It's sweet.
6) I like blue and don't like orange. Hate it in Blogger too.
Yeah, the color scheme is weird. But you can get "skins" with different color schemes...
7) This one's a biggie for me: if I copy from a webpage and paste into Front Page 2000, it doesn't paste in hyperlinks nor pictures at all, just plain text. Baz le Tuff says it works in FP 2003 but I have other issues with that version and can't use it.
This I don't know because I don't use, nor do I like Front Page. I develope in Dreamweaver, which is much more powerful, and does not have this problem. I do sometimes paste stuff in MS Word and that preserves links and graphics, too.
You are right about the IE attack problem. Since IE is so tighly integrated into the OS, if you can take it down, you have control of the entire machine. That's actually very easy to do, but not with Mozilla...
Actually, most of the iussues you raise here are discussed on the Firefox web site. Had you read about its features, you would know, for example, what "tabbed browsing" is. RTFM!!
Thanx for your comment. I was wrong about Bookmarks ... you can customize so that there's an icon on your toolbar and when you click it the Faves show in a left-hand sidebar. Apart from the prob I have copying and pasting into Front Page, Firefox is good, and tabs is good, as you say. I'm sure Explorer will copy that one. Download Manager ... I still can't see a use for it. If I want to go back to where I was, I use History. Hopefully in time Firefox will get compatibility with Front Page, which is by far the most popular html editor. Then I'll be a convert :)
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