Firefox: Google's Turkey
I was quite late to the party on Firefox, the Mozilla browser. It wasn't until this site crashed last year and I was trying to reconstruct it that I downloaded Firefox, to make sure things on the blog looked o.k. through that browser.
That was pretty much the last I bothered with Internet Explorer. In my mind, there's no comparison between the two programs.
But little did I know about how Firefox came about, who's behind it, and how awash in big bucks the whole thing has become. If, like me, you haven't been following the drama behind the computer screen, here's an interesting summary of where things currently stand.
Comments (9)
I've been using Firefox for about a year and a half. Like you said- there's no comparison with IE. I love the tabs, the add-ons (Especially NoScript), and the ability to increase/decrease text size.
But what I like best about Firefox is that it doesn't crash or lock up frequently. It actually works.
Posted by Robert Canfield | November 11, 2007 7:07 PM
Several lockups on IE turned me on to Firefox, too, and I use it exclusively now (at home, anyway). I loved Netscape in the old, pre-AOL days, so I'm happy to find & use Firefox now.
Posted by Rob at Kintropy | November 11, 2007 8:18 PM
the new ie7 does pretty much suck (the refresh and stop button the right side of the browser? wtf?) anyway, there is a program for ie7 that is called ie7pro and you can get it at, shockingly, www.ie7pro.com. has the ad blocking stuff, etc. most useful is the super drag and drop. click a link and drag it to ANY open space and the link opens up in a background tab. quite nice.
the program actually makes the ie7 usable. quick tip if you have google toolbar. click on the "Top IE menu" option on the first "page" of the preferences. it lets you move the toolbar up to your menu bar level. god i hope that makes sense to ya'll
Posted by Geoff | November 11, 2007 11:04 PM
I spent so much time trying to convince people to dump IE for Firefox that people asked me if I owned stock in it. Strangely, I recently dumped Firefox in favor of Opera. I kept having Firefox hang up on my Mac, and Opera doesn't. That said, Firefox still works better than IE.
Posted by roy | November 12, 2007 12:18 AM
Never fear Jack,
That little babe you were holding earlier in this blog and her sister will soon be old enough to start keeping you up to snuff on all the latest advances. My kids teach me all that stuff, and when they are home from college on a visit routinely will load up the latest and greatest. I had firefox years ago, also Linnix is getting better and better.
Posted by swimmer | November 12, 2007 7:03 AM
We only use Firefox at home, but even big business are tired of IE. It kept crashing on my computer at work, so they gave me Firefox. My coworkers are jealous!
Posted by laurelann | November 12, 2007 9:44 AM
And for those occasional web site that only work/look correct in IE, grab the IE tab add-on. It let's you access the built-in IE engine for those sites. You can pretty much ignore the IE browser itself completely.
Posted by wyzard53 | November 12, 2007 9:54 AM
The only "problem" I have with Firefox is that it doesn't render type as well as Safari does. But then, Safari has snit-fits when I try to work with Blogger in it. I wind up using both programs.
I've tried Opera and like it, but some things about its CSS support seem a bit wonky sometimes.
But Firefox is the best non-IE/other than Safari browser out there. If I couldn't use Safari, I'd use FF.
Posted by Samuel John klein | November 12, 2007 12:43 PM
my only problem with Firefox, and the reason I don't use it at all, is that my evil laptop has a weird monitor that uses a Windows "feature" to make everything bigger while retaining super high resolution. Firefox doesn't recognize it, and everything is too small. And no, it isn't user error. It's the result of my laptop not having the OEM screen.
For the most part, I really like my laptop setup - you have to see the way it displays small fonts to believe it. But it does occasionally make some graphics look weird and there are other bugs - the biggest one being that Firefox is essentially not usable for me.
Oh well, when I can afford a new desktop pc with a giant widescreen monitor, Firefox will probably become my default browser.
Posted by Gullyborg | November 14, 2007 1:47 PM