Firefox Or Internet Explorer?

POSTED BY: Haze
UPDATED: Saturday, February 25, 2006 20:03
VIEWED: 15669
PAGE 3 of 7

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT PAGE

SNAP

Saturday, February 4, 2006 4:49 AM

Also here is a short list of must-have extensions:

SessionSaver
Tab clicking options
Adblock Plus
StumbleUpon
ForecastFox

There are other nice extensions out there but these are VERY useful.

HAZE

Saturday, February 4, 2006 4:44 PM

Ok adblocker has now convinced me that Firefox is the greatest thing in the history of the internet ever!

--------------------------------------------------
Who do you suppose is in there?

DIANASPR

Saturday, February 4, 2006 5:54 PM

firefox definnetly, it has the extra tabs it easier to use, i tell you cus at work i have to use explorer n at home i use firefox so much better

EDISON

Saturday, February 4, 2006 6:36 PM

Opera and Firefox are both terrific: you never go back after using tabbed browsing.

Among my favorite Firefox extensions:
Nuke Anything
(right-click to hide items on a web page, nice for cleaning up a page for printing or for blowing away annoying content like animated GIFs)

Add Bookmark Here
(Bookmark pages directly into a specific bookmark folder/submenu)

FoxyTunes
(Control any media player from a little controller in the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window)

Probably the single greatest reason that I end up using Firefox most is SMART KEYWORD SEARCHES: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/smart-keywords.html

"Say you visit The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) all the time to look up things. You go to imdb.com and click in the search box and enter whatever you're searching for, and click Search. Lots of clicking, lots of steps." With a Smart Keyword that you specify--say, "imdb"--you can type imdb Firefly into Firefox's Location bar and hit enter and be taken right to the results--bypassing IMDB's search box entirely.

I use this feature all the time for referencing dictionary definitions, encyclopedia entries, Amazon, song lyrics, etc.--any site that has a search box. Each keyword is stored in a bookmark. Tip: Include the keyword in the bookmark name and put all the keyword bookmarks in a single bookmark folder/submenu. That makes it easy to check or share your list of keywords.

My favorite web browser tip for all the browsers is: Don't forget the F11 toggle for full-screen browsing.

Edison

SIGMANUNKI

Saturday, February 4, 2006 7:32 PM

Adding another voice to the choir: Firefox.

I use it when in MacOSX and OpenBSD. Sweet browser!

----
"We're in a giant car heading into a brick wall at 100 miles/hr and everybody's arguing about where they want to sit."
-David Suzuki

JRC

Saturday, February 4, 2006 8:24 PM

I've been using Safari, with Firefox a distant second. I gave up on IE a long time ago, because that POS is slow, not too mention it has big-time security issues. If you are using a Mac, you may want to give Camino a try. It's a version of Firefox specifically for the Mac.
By the way Haken, FFF with Safari looks pretty damn shiny to me!!

Everyone dies alone.

CLEANER

Saturday, February 4, 2006 8:24 PM

As for Firefox being more secure. 99% of IE spyware infections come down to 1 thing....... User Stupidity!

Hey lets install Smiley Central and Screensavers.com Wow if I click on this button it says it will scan for spyware on my computer for free!

People will do the most stupid things and yet seem completely incapable to run the Microsoft updates once in a while.

I'm a computer tech, I don't run an active virus scanner and have no firewall on this computer (filesharing reasons) and after 2 years of running IE on this install never a virus or spyware infection.

If u want a customizable interface use Firefox otherwise feel free to ignore all the fanboy talk.

"If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak!!!"

CITIZEN

Saturday, February 4, 2006 11:26 PM

Khyron:
I write code for two browsers, IE and Standards compliant browsers.

Unfortunately in some cases Opera is less standards compliant, sometimes more so. Also Opera can be configured to report itself as IE, which can cause problems since it identifies itself as IE and behaves like Opera.

It can take a lot of code to support multiple browsers, and sometimes you can't support two browsers at the same time, meaning you have to pick one or drop that feature. If you've got the choice between IE and Opera, which one would you drop?

Fact is Opera isn't widely used, best figures suggest <1% share, about 2.5% for KHTML based browsers like Konqueror, 11% for Gecko based browsers like FireFox and 82% for IE, with the final 3.5% made up of older browsers like Netscape 4 and web devices.

All browsers have their little quirks, so sometimes you have to write different code for different browsers, but it's an enormous amount of work to support every browser and sometimes it's just not possible.

On a site I'm working on the usage statistics so far indicate 15,946 requests from MSIE, 10,217 from FireFox and 383 from Opera. The fact is if it turns out Opera is causing problems that will require a large amount of work or a design change to fix I doubt it would be worth doing.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Opera, it’s certainly superior to MSIE (but then so is a carrier pigeon…) and it is the originator of the multiple site interfaces with MDI way back in what 1995? It’s done a lot for improving the usability of the net. Thing is because it’s not widely used it has to be the one of the first on the chopping block.

It's not laziness, its practicality.

Personally I'd like nothing better than to give Opera support a higher priority than IE support, simply because IE is so broken when it comes to the standards, and requires so much extra work to create sites for I'd like to drop it entirely. Unfortunately with an 82% share of the web users IE support is a necessity.

Anyway, I run FireFox, MSIE and Opera, the last two mainly for testing purposes. MSIE is really a poor browser and the sooner people wake up and start using something, anything else, the better for everyone.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

KHYRON

Sunday, February 5, 2006 1:00 AM

Thanks for the info, Citizen, I didn't realise that there were so few Opera users around. I guess in a way Opera's sort of like Firefly in that it has a small yet dedicated fanbase. So maybe I was being harsh when I said "lazy" programming, but there's still something to that claim if one considers that most websites do work with it. So why do those few ones that don't work not work? There must be something that the web designers didn't bother putting into their code that most other web designers did put in.

Anyway, as someone that obviously knows something about browsers, what is your preference between Firefox and Opera, not from a market-share or "well, it's better than IE" point of view, but from a technical point of view (without getting too technical)?

CAIUS

Sunday, February 5, 2006 2:23 AM

Firefox, although I use the full Mozilla version since every once in a long while someone (usually an in-law) sends me an attachement, and one clearly can not view attachements in a shell account.

Tabed browsing Rocks.

You need to keep Exploder for a handfull of website that are not compatable, usually poorly written e-comerce sites. For example I just ordered a camcorder form B&H photovideo, and there was a popup that I had to use IE to clear.

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT PAGE