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What disappoints me is that the Firesomething add-on, which once gave each copy of the browser its own <element><animal> name, has gone unmaintained.

Yep, indirectly.
Change your user agent.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Hey Mozilla - fuck off !/2.0.0.16 (Firefox 2.0.0.16)

Cosmic Cat Creations' FireSomething plugin is similarly fun. Only does not (yet) install on Firefox 3.
(Haven't checked if there's some incompatibility, or if a simple change in the maximum version does the trick)

Some people HAVE to use old windows, because the old proprietary controlling software that came with a given hardware (say a robot in bio-medical lab), only runs on old OS (I've even seen spectro-photo-meters that only run on DOS. Yeah. Thank goodness FreeDOS is our friend in such deprecated cases). The company has dropped support for newer OS for this peice of hardwre and is only doing hardware repairs. You either have to keep a deprecated OS for your machine, or you have to buy a newer model (Which most of the time is out-of-question because the prices are horribly expensive and the older one still does its job).

The good thing with open source software is, compared to proprietary software like IE7, is that users aren't necessarily stuck with this "won't support anymore situation".
In the IE7 world, whatever Microsoft decides, you'll have to accept it. They decide to drop support for everything before WinXP ? Upgrade to a newer more expensive software is your only hope.
In the opensource world, if there's a big enough userbase (and there is surely a big enough userbase in the scientific community), some users will start tweaking and hacking. As the source is open, nothing stops programmers to start a new separate fork that will support a separate platform that won't be supported anymore in the main line.

Once FireFox 3.0 official is out, be sure that you'll see separate Win9x branches : either FF3.0 with a patched Cairo support. Or FF3.0 with a retro-fitted (non cairo-based) Gecko 1.8 engine. Or a separate continued 2.0 branch that is kept up to date and security-patched for users who can't use FF3.0. Or a completly different Gecko-based browser specially tailored for Win9x users (K-maleon 9x ?)

The only drawback is that, because of registered Mozilla Foundation's trademarks, they'll surely have to call it IceWeasel. Or SnowCat. Or FrostBear. Or LavaBadger. Or whatever else.

You can! firesomething

I love this extension.

November 30, 2005 - 3:38 PST
Extension updates for Firefox 1.5 coming soon.

Firefox? I'm using Webwhale, which is much better!

Its first pet, Phoenix, just vanished. Its second pet, a fox, got set on fire and presumably died. Its two birds are both in bad shape -- one is on fire and one got hit by lightning.

Firesomething means even more animal cruelty problems for Mozilla. I've had everything from ants to koalas to zebras set on fire, struck by lightning, and drowned in water. Do I sense a lawsuit by PETA?

Coding misstep forces new Firefox release

http://news.com.com/Coding+misstep+forces+new+Fire fox+release/2100-1002_3-5792635.html?tag=nefd.top


well....at least we have extensions.... here's my list:

TextZoom - because I'm blind as a bat
Adblock - use with Filterset.G from http://www.pierceive.com
Session Saver - saves tab sessions _when_ firefox crashes
Web Developer - lot of web dev options
IE View - click to view in IE
Target Alert - let's me know what I'm clicking on
ForecastFox - show forecast
FindBar Switch - makes the find bar toogle hide/un-hide with CTRL+F
Download Statusbar - much better than the download window/popup
SpellBound - because my spelling sux

Then you'll hate Firesomething. It randomly re-brands your (Firefox) browser :)

Posted from Mozilla Webpanda

Dammit, where is FireSomething when we need it! It needs to be updated to be compatible with newer versions of Firefox/Lightningnarwhal/...

My favourite Firesomething name was Mozilla Superkoala, I'll vote for that.

You might also like textzoom.

http://www.cosmicat.com/extensions/textzoom/

Hold the phone! No need to change your worldview! Thanks to Firesomething, you can run SteakKnife Gun Browser and no one need know you're running that gay pansy homeosekshul Minimo.

...assuming Firesomething works in Minimo

Maybe you ought to check out FireSomething?

I have JungleSheep right now.

I'll believe it when it has a proper spin-off name. NVU? Too hackerish. How about Plasmacat, or Waterbanana... Or we can just let Firesomething suggest something.

Mine happens to be called Mozilla Spacebird right now... Just install Firesomething and get it out of your system :D

I hope that someone modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs, and you can actually view a page the way its supposed to look while using IE (and all the programs that use IEs rendering engine for inline HTML proccessing).

Why would you want to use Internet Explorer if you couldn't use it to view sites that work render properly in IE? The improvement you speak of would only be useful if it were mandated by Microsoft, vastly increasing Gecko's userbase.
For a drop-in replacement for IE, you could just install Firesomething so you don't have to deal with all of IE's security problems.
Also, I'd expect that if any program uses embedded IE, it is for the purpose of viewing a small set of web pages that were specifically written for IE and hence could possibly render improperly if gecko was used instead.
The only program that I could think which uses embedded IE for general-purpose browsing is AOL.

In conclusion, use a real web browser whenever possible, and Internet Explorer only for "broken" sites.

Really? I use Firefox myself.

Hey! I know where you can get an advance copy of all of these!

(Posted using Verizon Seapony)

The congregation says Firewhat?

FireSomething of course ;)

Hey maybe we can have a plugin change file names at random, that would surely out-do firebird.

Use the Firesomething extension: "Modifies the product name in the browser titlebar, Help menu, and About dialog titlebar."

You can change the name of Firefox completely with Firesomething - although I use it primarily for the random comedy names.

Go, Mozilla Firebadger!

War Dialing was cool

War Driving was nostalgic

War Flying was cute

War Biking, Skateboarding, Parasailing, Hang-gliding, sky-diving, monster-truck driving, walking, chalking, talking, and even steven hawking were just kind of uninteresting.

Now if a soldier in Iraq wants to mount an iPaq, Solar panel, GPS, and WiFi card on his helmet and call it War-War'ing, that *might* be cool enough to come full circle and be sweet again.

Until then, its off to Defcon and try to get a twentyseventhousandmillion mile 802.11b signal going.

GMail is Mozilla Firefox (also known as Halliburton Superchimp) compatible, and vice versa. (the link mentions macs, but all versions work) I use the 0.9 release in winxp-- and it kicks ass. Just found a mouse gestures extension (plug-in) that ensures I'll never need Opera again. It's a nice browser and all of that, but eats up RAM & CPU exponentially depending on the number of tabs open-- haven't had that issue with Firefox (or Kafkaesqueunicorn, if you prefer) yet.

GMail is Mozilla Firefox (also known as Halliburton Superchimp) compatible, and vice versa. (the link mentions macs, but all versions work) I use the 0.9 release in winxp-- and it kicks ass. Just found a mouse gestures extension (plug-in) that ensures I'll never need Opera again. It's a nice browser and all of that, but eats up RAM & CPU exponentially depending on the number of tabs open-- haven't had that issue with Firefox (or Kafkaesqueunicorn, if you prefer) yet.

That has been fixed already.

Is this the plugin you are referring to?

Oh, you can just install Firesomething and you can have different name every single time you start the browser.

...and then some witty hacker ports Firesomething (screenshot) to the ESA shuttle, resulting in all european citizens calling it different things. Except France and Iceland, of course, who made up their own names from the beginning and never even bothered to ask ESA what they should call it.

(Personal Firesomething favorite: "Mozilla Fireklumpen")

There is a solution: FireSomething. For instance, I am browsing with Mozilla SpaceKoala today.

You are clearly in need of the Firesomething plugin!

I'm certainly pleased with Mozilla Lightningwhale.
new window
Mozilla Moonbadger.
new window
Mozilla Moonstarfish.

I think something like Lightningcow would be much better...

I myself an using Mozilla Waterphoenix. Let's open a new window. Hey, they changed names again. Now it's Spaceant!

You could always install this extension.

I am currently running Mozilla PowerMonkey.

You no longer need to wait for the next release!

Just install the Firesomething extension and your browser will be renamed every time you run it!

Problem solved.

Opera is a fine browser, no question, but a lot of these features have also found their way into other browsers. On *nix, Konqueror has address bar searching (gg: will do a Google search, for instance), and, of course, Firebird has its own search bar. And Firebird, similarly, supports aliases/keywords just as well as Opera.

The reason I tend to prefer Firebird is because of the extensions support. I've grown so fond of things like being able to search for text within a select box, or the very capable Adblock, that it has become quite annoying to switch to browsers without similar support.

Sadly, both browsers have some problems under *nix: Opera tends to be a tad unstable, and Firebird doesn't integrate well with Thunderbird, my mailto handler of choice (though it's improving). Nonetheless, both are very solid pieces of work, and both having many things to recommend them over MSIE....