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4 Years Later, The Mozilla Tide Has Turned
dave writes "In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, in light of the excellent Firefox 0.8 release it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view."
Yesterday I rebuilt my sisters windows 2000 machine. I installed gaim for her, and also ad aware then let her install whatever other apps she wanted.. The funny thing is, she called me later last night asking where she could download firebird because she hates internet explorer. I thought to myself, wow, how the tides have changed.
Creative Criticism: The DHTML or whatever is used to give the advanced editing features of Exchange 2000 web mail, msn hotmail, yahoo mail, and the geocities web site editor don't work in Firebird; If they did my sister, my mom and many other web users would never use IE again.
i have dishonored my family AND that DEAD PALESTINIAN GIRL
I agree that Mozilla has come a long way but unfortunately, as long as there is a very large computer company in the Pacific northwest that shall remain nameless continues to more tightly integrate their nameless browser into the OS, Mozilla stands little chance overall. Sure, I love Mozilla on Linux and OS X but there are sooooooo many people that respond " Mo...what?" when I mention it to them.
Kudos to the Mozilla team for Firefox. It is pretty sweet. Let's hope that the nameless company in the Pacific northwest loses it grip on the browser market. Not likely, but we can always hope.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
...when Mozilla was the poster child for how NOT to run a project: hopelessly behind schedule, slow, bloated, leaking memory left and right. And there were people who kept saying that the Mozilla guys would get it working and that it would be a kickass browser.
Guess what? They were right after all. Congratulations to the Mozilla team and thanks for the excellent browser(s)!
Internet Explorer is commonly known and integrated in the great majority of computers. It's a standard anybody in the web business programs to. Mozilla could be a contender, but it's split into a million projects and still chokes on a number of websites. Most people I know have never heard of it, and to my knowledge even AOL is still using Internet Explorer. There is no tide; IE's the ocean.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Happy Trails,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Standards compliance and all that is great, but the thing that made me switch to Firefox is that Microsoft pulled out support of it's JVM. I'm sure it was a half-arsed implementation, and they probably left some things out - but it was FAST. Now that I'm waiting five seconds for applets to load anyway, I made the switch from Avant (IE-based tabbed browser) to Firefox.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
Posted by dave on Feb 11, 2004 2:55 PM
By Dave Whitinger
In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view.
On November 5th, 1999 I wrote an essay to the community titled The Battle That Could Lose Us The War. In that essay I described my mounting frustration over the losing battle we were fighting in the area of web browsers. My conclusion was that if Microsoft was able to dominate the web on the desktop, it would be a short matter of time before they could extend and dominate the web on the server. I knew that Mozilla was our last and only hope for winning this.
In the years since then, despite enormous and sundry pressures against them, the Mozilla project has moved forward at a remarkable pace. They somehow rebounded from each major setback even stronger. Milestones were passed, 1.0 came and went, and the layout engine Gecko started to pick up speed and became used in a variety of applications, including Galeon and Netscape 6 and 7. When AOL finally turned the developers loose, they responded by apparantly doubling their efforts and moving even faster and smarter. Whether you like Mozilla or not, their persistence is an inspiration to the entire Free Software community.
So much progress has been made, in fact, that today, more than four years since my gloomy outlook was keyed, with unspeakable pleasure I am now in a position to report that this tide has finally turned. The Gecko layout engine seems unbreakable and is reportedly more standards compliant than Internet Explorer. The Firefox browser is fast and stable, and supports the plugins out there that the users want and need, and, for the first time in several years, my wife is actually excited about her Linux desktop again. For the first time since Internet Explorer 3.0 was released, I am seeing people switching browsers in droves.
Furthermore, we now have the same browser as the Windows users. By making sure that my web pages look good in Firefox, I can be sure that it will look similarly in Firefox for Windows. Speaking of Windows, many of the Windows folks that I know, including those computer newbies that still think the "internet" is in their "Internet Explorer icon", have already made the switch to Firefox. Joe-User is excited about Firefox, and this means fast adoption of this browser in all computing circles.
Not only is Mozilla/Firefox a superior product, but it is built in the best traditions of quality software: simple, extensible and free (libre). The extensions support in Firefox is simply genius and will continue to create an entire industry of software products to enhance and customize the browser for individuals.
At the risk of fostering an attitude of complacency, I must say that the Mozilla project has breathed new life into the web, and as a side-effect, into the Linux desktop. The war is still far from over, but the tide of this crucial battle has most definitely turned. Things have never looked brighter for Linux (as a server, and a desktop), nor for the computing community as a whole, as a direct result of the tireless and outstanding work of the Mozilla developers. Well met!
"For the first time since Internet Explorer 3.0 was released, I am seeing people switching browsers in droves"
Droves you say?! is that future sight?! firefox comes up less than WEBTV in most of the webtrends reports I am seeing. I look at the statistics for a number of frequently used (100k visitors a day) sites and do not see firefox gaining users. (note - Ill happily eat my words if the statistics show a significant increase.) but still... droves?
Joe User does not give a fuck about standards... in fact - he is HAPPY to view websites that have broken table tags and still display in IE. Joe user wants to continue not thinking and have stuff given to him. for that reason alone, Internet Explorer will continue to be the most used windows browser, and until the tides turn on the desktop operating system situation, IE will stay in its comfy place.
Grudgingly, albeit, I must admit -- Netscape 7.1 is pretty snappy. Technically, it still doesn't offer a great deal of what IE does... but one wonders sometimes if Microsoft's browserworks elves have gotten a bit carried away, anyway -- as extraordinarily few websites ever actually *use* a great many of those bells and whistles. Anyone for an "IE Light"?
I haven't tried out all the browsers available, but I must agree that Netscape 7.1 is a nice product. Definitely much better than Internet Explorer.
I've installed this browser on several family members PC's that I support, and they all say never realized that other browsers were available. After they used it a couple of times, they found they actually like it better than IE too.
That doesn't make sense. It means that people would have to be reading the article _before_ commenting.
For the grant application system I manage, I have to officially recommend using IE 5.0 or above to all users. And my response to Mac users who don't use IE? I have to tell them "we're working on it". But when I'm using/testing the system myself, I use nothing other than Mozilla Firebird.
When will the bigwhigs realize that open-source does not necessarily mean risky, dangerous, or taboo in some way?
Browsing using it is only a consequence.
IMHO it is a pity to break it in different pieces...
M.
--
http://incuso.altervista.org/
Don't you find the new name yiffy?
Don't get too used to the FireBird's new name, it's already taken by Hollywood. Way to avoid copyright infringement... I predict another name change very soon.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
On a related note, a freshly opened Galeon used 120M of RAM, while a freshly opened Firefox used 86M. I don't really know exactly what that means, but a lower RAM usage number is always a good thing to see.
Why on earth does a web browser like Firefox take up 86 MB of memory? That seems like an awful lot of memory for just a web browser. Is it GTK2 that is taking up all that space?
Move on. 7.1 is the final version. Go get Mozilla or Firefox, where the updates keep coming.
I've been introducing people to Firefox and Thunderbird for and almost everyone switches from IE/Outlook. Heck Thunderbird will probably replace Evolution for my wife.
Sig is on vacation
I actually printed out that article, with the Star Wars references and all, and kept it in a nice thick binder :) I was a slashdot newbie then, and every story fascinated me. Whenever I read it, I think, "if only this article were seen in context today, with the success of Mozilla"... and today I see this. Great job :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I still don't know the answer to this one.
I think that after Mozilla 1.4, the main browser was switched to Firebird/Firefox... is this true or is it another one?
Has any work been done to allow the Moz renderer to be embedded into other applications the same way that IE can be? (under Win32, obviously). It seems that without that functionality, Moz will never be able to fully replace IE on the Windows desktop.
--
lds
What happens if 20th Century Fox comes after them over the classic Clint Eastwood movie of the same name? http://imdb.com/title/tt0083943/
Great movie by the way. Loved the Jet. Definatly worth the rental. The Dogfights rock.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
I just got everyone to click on the little red Firebird icon instead of the blue E. Woe is me.
KHTML being the other part. I realise most of the gnome browsers are gecko-based, but we also have a pretty good rendering engine in KHTML: good enough for Apple as well as KDE, it surely helps in this regard, not least just by increasing competition between gecko and KHTML developers. (For what it's worth I find Firebird[0] better than Konqueror, largely because of its extensions model, but also because the rendering seems better here. I also wish Konqueror could work with Macromedia's flash plugin.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Thw browser wars were overrated I think. There's more to the desktop experience than the browser.
Look at the kinds of games that are popular on the internet, for example. Flash, Shockwave, java, etc. These areas are still dominated by Microsoft, and I don't see much progress with Linux. A lot of people are still having trouble getting something like Flash working properly. I keep getting pages that say that I need to upgrade to Flash 6. I have Flash 6 installed on my Linux box, and it works well on most pages. But there are the corner cases that it fails on.
We don't need just the browser to work. We need everything to work. Does the Firefox browser have Java in it out of the box? Java was terribly difficult to get working under Mozilla, and like Flash, didn't work all the time.
Even something as simple as playing two sounds at once would hang the browser. We've got to fix these problems before Linux becomes big on the desktop, or the users will not have a good time.
--Guns don't kill people, abortion clinics kill people.
It's a good browser with stability, speed and some cool features. So is Opera. It's cross platform. So is Opera.
Opera may be a bit behind on OS X but it was independantly tested as being the world's fastest rendering browser. It sticks to interdational standards like superglue and your fingers.
Is the reason it gets nowhere near the press Mozilla does that Opera is not open source? What are your thoughts on this one?
The company released it's IPO intensions a few days ago (Initial Public Offering; it's "going public" or starting to sell shares of stock to make shareholders the owners). I personally am very excited. I think it's a margainally better product than Moz and that makes it best in the world, IMHO.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
And it likely doesn't infringe because they're in such different markets that no one would confuse the two.
OMFG!!!!
The only people I've ever seen use that line *are* girls. You wouldn't by any chance be one, would you?
It is fairly standard compliant, all right. But unfortunately, 90% of the web pages are not. They are targeting the "de facto" standard which is IE 6.x...
Too bad.
We need to use the firefox ad button on our websites. Why doesnt slashdot have a "best viewed with firefox" icon up?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Geez, for a second here I was expecting a short video at the end of this guy chanting "Mozilla! Mozilla! Mozilla!".
This was not news. To pretty much anybody here it isn't anyways. What did it say? "Mozilla has turned a corner". Yeah, it turned that corner a little while ago and is now accelerating out of the turn.
I don't want to take anything away from the mozilla devs. I use firebird (haven't upgraded to firefox yet) as my primary and have for the last year or so. However this was nothing short of a fluff article with no real substance behind it. It might as well have just been a post by some random person here.
[0] Yes, I mean Firebird. I'm still using Firebird 0.7 as the Firefox 0.8 debs haven't made it into unstable yet.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Opera 7.5 is the best browser, Firefox 0.8 second place, IE 6.0 last place.
Does anybody know the status of Mozilla native SVG support? Look like it is stalled for long time. Any news on this ?
--
SVG Graphics Editor
http://www.kiyut.com
Tabbed browsing is addictive, standards support is wonderful, but the feature that makes people go "oh, this is SO much better than Internet Explorer!" is the automatic popup blocking. I don't have to sell any of the other features to the people I recommend FireFox to; they discover them on their own.
My only current quibble is the new way FireFox handles download in 0.8... I liked that "launch" button dammit!
Having a good browser for Linux was the point here. The fact that the SAME browser works on windows is a good thing since it means that no mater which os you run, you are not stuck with MS standards on the web.
I don't use Linux, but I sure as fuck use Firefox. You idiots are turning an excellent browser into a weapon in your imaginary war.
And you're so right! I use Lynx on Windows XP personally, and I'd really like these Windows fanatics to stop referring to Lynx as the poster child for their imaginary war of XP's CLI against Linux's.
Lynx has nothing to do with the command-line Windows movement for chrissake. I mean, it works great on any OS!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
With the 0.8 release of Firefox, the OSS community has achieved, no, surpassed browser expectations that many have had.
The question now remains.. With IE the default on Windows, what compelling reason does Joe User have to go through the trouble switching to Firefox? I can think of a few: tabbed browsing, security, NTLM compatibility, popup blocking.
But what about Joe Users' activeX sites? Will Firefox work with sites that use activeX? Unfortunately not. Will Joe User see this as a failing of Firefox? Probably. So what can we do to address this issue? Any thoughts?
Firefox isn't really any different than the old firebird nightlies, but I must say that one of my favorite changes is the favorites menu - they are now much more like Internet Explorers - easier to manipulate. Of course the popup blocking is incredible as well, I bet only one popup attemp in a hundred actually gets through, and that's only when I am visiting really sketchy sites (purely for research purposes, of course).
In dave's original 1999 article, he had written:
Meanwhile, over on MozillaZine's Firefox discussion board, Firefox developer "bengoodger" responds to criticism that Firefox is insensitive to the needs of its users:
In a subsequent message he explains further (emphasis mine):
So are we all in this together, or is the community just sitting on its collective ass, waiting for bengoodger to vanquish Microsoft all by himself? (I realize it's not so black and white, especially given Mozilla's extensible structure, but still I found the contrast of opinions revelatory.)
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I must say that the Mozilla project has breathed new life into the web, and as a side-effect, into the Linux desktop.
Indeed. I was laughing the other day about how I am excited to go browse a webpage again. I was tinkering with the features of firefox, and was just loving it. I had used Mozilla on my Linux box at home, but to be using firefox at work on my Win2k machine is absolutely refreshing. Keep up the good work guys.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Firefox is an amazing product and personally I love it a lot and use it exclusively. But I dont think it will capture significant market share anytime soon. I think these proprietory plugins are what preventing users from switching to firefox(or mozilla). Joe user cannot download and install those plugins to get his job done. He is too lazy/scared to do that. Untill and unless there is an acceptable remedy for this proprietory craps, things are not going to change IMHO. I would love to be proven wrong though. But still kudos to mozilla project for coming up with such a wonderfull product.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
... shooting for a 1.3% of the browser market share?
IIRC they have suspended further development of MSIE and will only release security patches.
This is a far cry from the days when hundreds of developers worked on making MSIE one of the fastest and smartest browsers out there.
You really have to wonder whether it was worthwhile for Microsoft. What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser? Fewer people using Windows? Hardly. A less powerful browser platform? Not really: the browser never could be the operating system.
Personally I thought the whole browser war was part of the same hype that caused Oracle to invest so much in web terminals, or whatever they called them.
The browser is just one more applet, fundamentally. Comes in all shapes and sizes, and so long as it respects the rules, no-one cares what logo it shows in the top corner. I come here for Slashdot, not for the browser.
So, since development on Mozilla and its cousins continues unabated, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft start to play catch-up. Will they, I wonder? What can they gain?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Way back when, Microsoft poured tons of money into IE to kill of Netscape, Netscape was simply too entrenched. "Bundling" helped but people would have downloaded Netscape if it was indeed a significantly better product.
Fast forward to today. The only looming threats are Opera and Firefox. The problem with all Open Source is that they have absolutely no marketing. It solely relies on word of mouth. 1 person tells another, who tells his friends, etc. and the usage theoretically increases exponentially (subject to gross errors of course). But even exponential growth is tiny if the current user base is small.
Until the Firefox usage rates increases to a threatening rate MS will sit on its shoddy browser and milk it for all its worth.
I'm sure MS knows FireFox is better, but why spend money to update their browser when the competition can't effectively communicate to a target market? A great product is no good if no one knows about it. Eventually the 'diffusion' of FireFox will increase enough to cause MS to grudgingly update. Then you will see a TRUE browser war.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Its not even the same browser as Netscapes.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Firefox takes away the master password from the personal security manager, so it's just as much of a personal liability as IE if your machine's compromised. This makes it a spectacularly bad idea for the office if you deal with sensitive websites, and for casual home user who may not know security well.
Firefox takes dozens of basic features like animated GIF removal away from the configuration panel -- instead you have to know what undocumented value to insert in a hidden configuration screen. Even Internet Explorer offers this option in a mouse-accessible location!
Why are the Firefox folks hiding features? Why not add an "advanced options" chevron for the things you think only 2% of users use? Removing 50 options from the mainstream configurator altogether means that you've disappointed a different 2% of your users with each new annoyance.
Mozilla-Uses around 40 MB of RAM in processes.
IE-Uses around 15MB of RAM in process
Mozilla-Poorly designed history, slow, tedious to use and access, often completely fails to include sites
IE-Easy to use, responsive and intuitive history
I feel that sometimes the Open Source community has a blind spot, in that it's seemingly incapable of admitting a Microsoft product might be better in a certain aspect. Because of this, these features never get fixed. To do so would be to admit Microsoft might have done something right. It's reminiscent of creationism in it's lack of reason
I just fucked a living Jewish girl. But she was shit. The dead Palestinian I had last week was better. Those hook-noses are really a turn-off.
Why don't you ask your mother?
Oh.. and fuck yourself...
I'm relatively new here, but maybe someone could explain why so many people use these metaphors. I like GNU/Linux and OSS as much as the next guy here, but why do I keep hearing about the desktop wars, browser wars, etc?
I use firefox because I like it. It is more secure than Internet Explorer, no popups, and is extendible to what seems like no end.
I use thunderbird because I like it. Nearly all my spam gets filtered and I don't have to worry about any outlook insecurities.
I use MEPIS at home on my desktop. When you install MEPIS, everything just works. Click on a file and it opens in whatever you think it should open in. I love the ease of keeping everything up to date: apt-get is incredible. I love the stability: I haven't rebooted my computer more than a few times (3 max) since I finished the install.
Most here use Linux/OSS because we like it. Isn't that enough? Why do we keep seeing articles about how some Linux/OSS product is going to take over the world in x years? Why does it matter if everyone on the planet using Linux/OSS? If you don't like it when people preach to you about religion, why is it fine to preach about OSS? More than once I have seen people referred to as "Linux Evangelists" ...
...and MSIE is still dominating the market. Firefox (sigh) is an excellent product, but very few are using it all the same. If anything, it's the success of Linux that is their core - if there hadn't been a real need to get a good browser on the Linux platform, I don't think they'd be anywhere near where they are today.
But, as long as the standards are winning, I really don't care what browser is winning. Personally I prefer Opera, but it's yet another of those browsers that are "not MSIE". And as long as there's many enough of us, hopefully Microsoft can't embrace and extend.
Though I fear what will happen once the DRM shit comes. "This page requires Internet Explorer 7.0 with Enhanced Content Security Pack(TM) running on a Trusted Computing System(TM). Please upgrade to take full advantage of our site."
I only hope Linux will push through and become at the very least a minority they can't ignore before that window of opportunity closes. Once shut out of the market, there's no easy way coming back in.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why can't I delete attachments without deleting the entire message in Mozilla/Thunderbird? You can do this in Eudora. Is there a plugin that will add this functionality to Mozilla/Thunderbird?
I've seen explorer.exe take up almost 100 megs of memory as well.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Opera is neither open source, nor free (and no, the ad-laced version is not free). Also, I personally find that Opera feels "funny" and doesn't act/look quite like my other applications. Mozilla/Firefox behave like everyone else which makes me feel more comfortable around them.
I just tell them that it's a special version of Netscape 7, without the AOL logos.
People immediately recognize "Netscape," even to this day.. which is a good thing.
having a good piece of free software is the point.
proving it's possible.
working regardless of where it's being run is one of the biggest points for oss, playing nice with everybody.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
ROFL
You wouldn't know what to make of one if it were, so just STFU.
Firstly, install Firefox and then go to, say, http://www.simsnow.com which has flash on the front page. In IE I would get a dialog saying "do you want to install this now". I click "Yes", I have flash. Instead I was taken off to download something, which I did and I installed it. I restarted Firebird - still not flash. What I ended up doing was copying the plug-ins from my old Firebird installation into Firefox's plug-ins directory and then it was fine.
Secondly, it has crashed twice today on Windows XP. Firebird crashed about once a day - and it wasn't page rendering. I would do this:
* Open the Browser
(blank page loads)
* I click on my "news and daily" folder link to goto Slashdot
* Firebird/fox hangs
Thirdly. The plug-in installer is totally cool - but its too hidden. As a seasoned computer user it still took me 5-10 minutes to figure out how to install the Google toolbar in Firefox - even though I'd done it before in Firebird.
Fouth - and this one is the sh*t one. Although it may be more "standard compliant", it is not as forgiving as IE in terms of bad HTML. I still get many sites that don't work in Mozilla - and because I know how HTML works and know the whole history behind W3C compatability standards I'll launch IE and look at the site with that. my mother would probably think the website was screwed. The sad fact of the matter is that there are a myriad of WYSIWYG HTML authoring tools that produde non-compliant HTML and to use the argument that they should fix their problems and Mozilla is god because it adheres to standards is horribly narrow-minded.
My comment perhpas paints a picture more bleak than the reality. Personally I love using Firebird/fox in general, especially for its rendering spped - but I'm quite sure my mother would find the "immersive internet experience" of IE more pleasurable.
Also this whole Mozilla/Netscape/Firebird thing is really confusing me - and perhaps others. Why doesn't the Mozilla team commit a bit more resource towards polish and user experience and produce a single primary browser with some more bells and whistles and sell/give that away. I believe that Netscape is supposed to be this, I think, but after my experiences with older versions of Netscape I really wouldn't install that.
Some of the memory it uses is hidden by its OS integration.
Mods do your worst
/. of all places, under heavier system load it is the least responsive of any programs running, etc etc. I am only talking about the browser itself. Every new release I download and install Mozilla or Firefox/bird/whatever, try it for a few days, and end up going back to IE6 for my windows machine and Safari for my Mac. Safari is now (as of 1.2) to the point that I like it as much as I like Mozilla on linux! I would love to use the same browser with the same config for all 3 boxes... but the Mac and Windows versions are just not up to snuff IMNSHO.
--
Mozilla is overrated in my opinion. On my linux machine, it works great. On my Mac it is okay. On my Dell at work, it sucks. And it is for the same reasons since my older win98 box (now have 3 month old XP Pro machine); slow to load on start of program, loads pages incorrectly - including
YMMV of course.
I recently built a website i optimized it for both firefox/firebird and IE. There are somethings that IE has that i would like to see integraded into firefox. Or at least some support for.
I've installed this browser on several family members PC's that I support, and they all say never realized that other browsers were available
That comment can be applied to most of the IE users also. They never realize that other browsers are available
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
I've been ignoring Mozilla since the Mozilla project started. IE for Windows was great for me, and I didn't like Navigator. Having moved to OSX last year and having Safari to use, I never even bothered with IE. Then the other day I responded to the /. story for Firefox, and gave it a shot.
I thought "Wow this is just like Safari without the metal." I mean, common it's a web browser. What I dont like is that the scroll bars are screwed up on Firefox if you load anything other than the default theme (Under OSX anyway). So with nothing to add over Safari, I probably won't be switching. But if I was using Windows at home, I'd love to have the tabbed browsing that IE doesn't provide. Then again, in windows I have a task bar...
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
With the tab-based browsing in Mozilla (along with other features), IE is painful to use IMHO. Along with Linux CDs, I also burn some Win-Mozilla CDs to give to people so they can break the M$ habit.
The only thing I wish they'd do is ditch the Firefox name and keep it Mozilla. Or shall we call it "The browser formerly known as Mozilla"?
/*drunk.. fix later*/
First I'd like to hear whose standards you're talking about. I don't believe you know a fuck about the standards of the W3C.
But hey, IE doesn't work with 90% of all web pages so it must be the "de facto" standard.
Maybe you should get modded "Funny" once and then "Troll" like me.. but I'm at least not such a loser with way, WAY too much marketing shit in my brain like you.
... as long as there is a very large computer company in the Pacific northwest that shall remain nameless ...
I'm not familiar with any company like that in Korea.
Perhaps you mean Pacific NorthEast, or NorthWest USA.
Agreed. Linux is ancilliary to the discussion.
With that said, if more and more users get accustomed to Firefox on Windows, it might make it easier to convince them to try out a Linux desktop in the future.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Even if a good number of Windows users come to realize uselessness of IE after all years and begin switching, the story is not over yet. There still are very many sites that are readable only with IE, and for these sites Windows/IE is the standard, regardless of w3c. Not to mention WMP9 and DRM, Microsoft has planted enough propriatery lock-ins to the Internet in the last several years so that it is impossible to get rid of IE (and Win) over night. I hope none of commercial mp3 download sites using IE/WMP will become a success, as they are endorsing this business strategy.
Maybe I'm too pessimistic. At least I can wish that the world is better place than what I think it is.
With Konqueror you get the integration of IE plus the goodies that Firefox has (popup blocking, tabs, etc.)
The tide has turned? Hardly... can Mozilla crash and take down the OS? can Mozilla install MSN Messenger and leave no way to uninstall it? do Mozilla users have to update with a new security patch once a week? can Mozilla only run on one system?
We have a long ways to go.
Deep n Chilled
It only monitors what browser is being used for a subscribing site. As a metric, it's only useful to say that the percentages of browser use is accurate for the types of sites that subscribe to Webtrends as they don't have more than maybe 10% of the web servers out there covered.
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. Be careful what you accept as facts and what context the facts are from.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
While web browsing is a major part of what people do with their operating system, somehow I think the battle for linux on joe-user's desktop lies in other areas. Major improvements in ease of use have taken place in gnome and kde, as well as in the os installers such as redhat and fedora. The key to getting joe user is first getting the install to be plopping in a cd and putting in some minimal and straight forward information and letting it go wild.
Konqueror has been showing my webpages well for quite some time now, and is my primary browser though I do use Firebird/FireFox on occasion.
Granted, web browsers are significant part of the application base of a functional os: in my honest opinion, mozilla itself hardly matters in the war of linux vs windows.
It has little to do with actual HTML. The vast majority of compatibility problems are javascript related, when people either ignore Mozilla/5 completely, or try to treat it like Netscape 4. Sometimes the "IE code" they're using would even work fine in Mozilla if they gave it the chance.
I personally don't get crashes with Firefox more than once a month, and usually not even that. And, I've never had a problem with the Flash installer finding my installation.
The Convicted Monopolist, having supposedly wiped out opposing browsers, have been utterly negligent with Incompetent Exploder for years now. It has fallen way behind in useful features, and it never made any attempt at standards compliance. As for the security holes..... I know they claimed the other day that it was now the most secure because they had fixed so many problems, but anyone who has ever done any software QA will know the utter incompetence of statements like that, in fact the number of bugs discovered is more likely to correlate with th elack of quality of the underlying code, much of which still remains, so it is almost certainly still very bad indeed. IE was another case of "decommoditising the protocols", as described in the infamous Halloween Memos, delibarately breaking standards compliance and reducing everything to the lowest common denominator of quality and interoperability.
The big problem is that ignorant or indolent web designers have churned out buggy code that works (sort of) in Inept Eradicator, but will fail in any standards-compliant browser, the closest to that ideal of standards compliance being Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror (not in any order, and apologies to any I missed). Some designers have apparently used that other utterly useless M$ product, Frontpage, which AFAIK has never had a good review in any magazine. Standards compliance is absolutely essential, that is why the Web grew so quickly, but now growth is jeapordised by the ill-defined non-standard set by the Monopolist and the fact that incompetents have chosen to work to it.
The way forward is of course to make sites which are fully standards-compliant (relatively easy, there are lots of better tools than Frontpage, some of them free, and a free validation service at w3c.org.) The trash that went before such as IE is best forgotten, otherwise we will forever be infested with bugs, security holes and Billisms. (A Billism is a feature which is illogical, unwanted and ineptly implemented, which forces itself upon you because Sir Bill presumes to know better than you what you want to do. Word is particularly full of Billisms.)
Mozilla and its relatives, not forgetting Netscape is an excellent base from which to move forward once more, without deviating into the closed, unstable and constantly changing world of Illegal Monopolies and their badly deficient producta. (Point to ponder - a monopoly is only necessary when a company can not succeed on the strenghts of its products, therefore th eneed to create one is in fact an admission of abject failure.) I use Mozilla at home, as do all my friends, and we are all quite keen to recommend it to others. It has also been getting favourable reports in the press. Long may it continue.
While Mozilla doesn't. End of story.
sulli
RTFJ.
The base innards are the same. They use the same Gecko engine and XUL framework- you even build Firefox out of the same source tree. Netscape is a commercialized and certified version of Mozilla.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Using Internet Explorer for a brief interval after steady Mozilla use makes IE look pretty tiresome here. It's amazing that IE still has such a large market share, its major security problems notwithstanding.
Not trying to be a zealot, but what doesn't it offer technically? It copes near-perfectly with every website I've thrown it at, certainly it's near-perfect on HTML and CSS 1 and 2; its encryption support is solid the only plugin I can think of that doesn't exist or have a workaround for Mozilla is Macromedia Director, and it's got all the nice user-interface extras of tabs, form content remembering, popup blocking etc.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
The more Microsoft continues to integrate, the more it sets its customers up for even greater degrees of security risk. As vuruses and and other maladies continue to plague the Windows OS, people will begin to see the light - bigger and more bloated is not always better, no matter how tightly "integrated" it is.
This article was about Linux, and how the use of Moz will help it. It was not about Moz specifically, so get over it.
Time makes more converts than reason
You really have to wonder whether it was worthwhile for Microsoft. What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser?
It's another way for MS to make other platforms less attractive and to lock users into Windows. If they control 95% of the browser market and therefore all the crappy web developers write IE only pages, it's that much harder to switch to another platform.
Does the Firefox browser have Java in it out of the box?
...
No, otherwise the package would be like 30 MB, not 8 MB as it is now. People who don't want Java are not interested in downloading 20 extra megs. It includes me.
Now making the Java install less of a pain is another matter, to which I agree.
My question is, does IE have Java out of the box ? The answer is "no" if I recall correctly
theefer
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7 now if it wasn't slow on my RedHat box - thats why Gawd made Opera I suppose...
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
and 2nd... as a matter of fact... Mozilla is..
ahhh.. I won't disturb your little world too much.. Sorry..
It's probably the XP-COM and XUL taking up the resources. It's still worlds better than Mozilla or Netscape right at the moment.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Now that they've selected the name, they'll have to support that Russian-only telepathic interface used in that Clint Eastwood movie back in 82.
BlaBla?
BlaBlaBla. No?
Dave, you are our only hope. Only you can defeat the darkside.
I do not think the author had isolated it, but I am not an overly sensitive Windows zealot. He even stated that he put the browser on a Windows machine. The fact that the Linux community now has a good browser that runs most IE plugins is good for those of use tired of the BSOD, or my XP laptop's 'Plaid Lockup Screen'. MS has had 15+ years to get their OS right and it still blows up - makes it hard to do business.
Wow, that article brings back memories. Anyhow, the fact that the population doesn't use or know about mozilla or firefox right now isn't a big deal. They'll continue to use IE because that's what they know. They even do this on the Mac (which is really sick, given IE's crappy state on the Mac).
When Linux starts to move in to more and more corporate desktops, people won't be able to rely on their IE habit anymore, and will be forced to use a Linux browser. This is when you'll start to see it in greater force.
And even further down the line, when Linux starts to invade the home desktop space also, we'll be glad the Mozilla project (and the KDE/KHTML project) has been around for so long. These things will come, it's only a matter of time.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I'm rather unimpressed by this about face. I thought the original artical back in 1999 was way off base.
The author seems to have taken the Shipping News to heart.
"imminent storm threatens village"
But what if there's no storm?
"village saved from deadly storm"
Only it's worse, because the deadly storm was entirely manufactured by a combination of personal insecurity, unrealistic expections, and a "complain until some one else fixes it" mentality.
It was obvious to me that the Mozilla developers were going to have to pay the price for a few years to get their house in order before their hard work became obvious from the external perspective.
Developers are supposed to know better than to run around complaining "the sky is falling" while the people involved are wrestling with really difficult structural problems. What's amazing is that the people involved stayed involved, while having to read this kind of crap in the first place.
It always saps my strength when management runs around saying "nothing is happening fast enough" when I've just spent a month of long hours excavating down to the bedrock.
Just what is this guy taking credit for?
"falling sky threatens village"
But what if sky doesn't fall?
"village saved from deadly sky"
It doesn't get much worse than that.
The things I use at home also work. The OS may still have a few rough edges where configuration is concerned, but things such as Ximian Evolution, and Mozilla and its relatives, and for that matter Konqueror or Opera, just work, and work, and work.....
Please tell your friends and acquaintances that there is life beyond M$.
What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser? Fewer people using Windows? Hardly. A less powerful browser platform? Not really: the browser never could be the operating system.
.doc format mainly. So browser (along with a few other applications) was and still IS an important thing which keeps microsoft with its huge market share.
Let me disagree with you here. What holds users in to windows platform is not the tecnical superiority or anything like that . Its a few things like browser, office , games etc. Either there is no good counterparts in the open source alternatives for these or they are locked out by specific proprietory formats or add ons. In the case of browsers, its plugins. In the case of office its
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
how many times does it have to be repeated: there is absolutely no reason for anyone to ever pay anything for a web browser.
opera IPO??? if you're thinking of buying opera stock just send the money to me, you'll end up with the same ROI.
I guess I didn't mention this part. When someone asks me for help, I'll gladly point them to whatever I think is best (MEPIS, firefox, thunderbird were the examples I gave). In fact, I have already gotten a few people to switch to using MEPIS and several to switch to using fire/bird/fox. However, if I walk behind someone using a computer and see them using Internet Explorer, I'm not going to go into rant mode, or even stop for that matter.
You idiots are turning an excellent browser into a weapon in your imaginary war. Why would you isolate it from Windows users with your shitty "us vs them" attitude? Firefox has nothing to do with the Linux "movement." It apparently works great regardless of the OS.
I'm afraid you've missed the point, AC. Linux isn't about linux.
No, really, I mean that.
That is, linux isn't about "the linux movement". I can see how the opinions of some super-zealot linux fanbois might have given you that impression, but they're a tiny minority.
But you're right about one thing: the fact that Mozilla works under linux -- or as you note, it "works great regardless of the OS" is the point.
Because linux isn't about linux. Linux's about the freedom to make up your own mind.
Let me explain by contrasting linux with MS-Windows. MS-Windows is about vendor lock-in, embraced standards that are extended to be proprietary and ad hoc, and above all making blanket decisions for all users that don't take into account individual variation among users.
Microsoft gives you XML that only Microsoft Word can read. Microsoft gives your disk formatters that can but won't format partitions lagrer than 32GB -- because Microsoft believes that partitions larger than 332GB should be NTFS. Microsoft's browser can't conceive of a situation where its proxy settings shouldn't apply to all programs -- so rather than have it's own proxy settings, it alters the settings for the overall network connection. And so forth.
Linux says to you, it's your computer, you can do whatever you want with it, if you're willing to take the time to figure out how, or -- if it can't yet be done -- figure out how to code it.
And Firefox is about that philosophy too. That's why Firefox runs regardless of OS: because your choice of OS shouldn't be dictated by your browser.
And that -- the browser dictating the OS, by means of embracing and extending the HTML markup language -- was what dave was complaining about in the first place.
The reason I use Firefox is two-fold: one, it's a better browser in most ways than IE (it's worse in others, especially Mozilla's doctrinaire insistence on not compensating for obviously incorrect mime types on mis-configured servers).
But the other reason I use Firefox is the same reason I use cygwin and Open Office and ScITE: Microsoft has put me in a corner one time to many, a corner where Microsoft couldn't or wouldn't llet me run my computer as I needed to.
And so I turned to linux-style tools. Cygwin, because Windows doesn't support command line tools or development well. mkfs (yes, a version of mkfs compiled for Windows!) in order to make a 60GB partition for my mp3s -- because, as I noted above, Windows could but would not write a partition bigger than 32GB, and I didn't want to and couldn't use NTFS for my mp3 partition.
Open Office and SciTE because it's clear that MS-Windows is going to keep restricting me. While I'm not ready to move to linux yet, I am making sure that my transition will be easy: Open Office and SciTE both run under both MS-Windows and linux, so I won;t have to learn news apps when I transition.
So Firefox's philosophy works hand-in-hand with linux's philosophy, and Firefox supports linux by giving it a browser that doesn't care what OS you're using. And that's the point.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
MS's strategy does not include fixing "features" inconsistent with w3c specifications. That's the whole point. Once you have majority share, you can extend it all you want so that everyone else has to follow your lead.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
4 minutes later...it is time to slashdot this article...
Why be so crude? Firefox has everything to do with the free software movement. It is proof that a group of talented and determined developers can out hack Micro$oft or any other commercial outfit for the benefit of all. It means the future of computing can be dominated by openness and understanding, not coersion and marketing. Let the war continue unabated. I would like to paraphrase a speech George C. Scott gave in the movie "Patton".
"We're going to hold onto them (Microsoft) by the nose and kick them in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of them all the time and go through 'em like crap through a goose..."an ill wind that blows no good
Why are you people still ranting about the "Browser Wars"?
Seriously. It's like hearing people in Alabama screaming about how the "South" will "Rise Again".
The "Browser War" is irrelevant and always has been. It especially doesn't matter if your goal is to make the best browser out there.
Don't worry about the numbers. I use firebird and I love it. It's a great browser and I'm trying to get all of my friends and family using it as well. Keep up the good work.
vk.
is such a lousy name! cant they think of something better? they got a dinosaur logo to boot with!
As I write this I have 2 tabs in my browser and Firefox is taking 21 mb. It's not 86 mb, but before I even saw your post I was wondering why it needed over 20 mb. Seems pretty resource hungry to me, considering Eclipse is using 56 mb and Websphere(!) is using 76 mb. (my emphasis added).
;o)
I believed you up until you said that WebSphere was only using 76M
Firefox is a very nice browser. But, feature-wise it is considerably behind OmniWeb. And, I'm considering all of the plug-ins I've read about.
mbbac
IE is standards complient, it renders W3C validated pages just fine. Are you disagreeing with that?
It's also able to render complete HTML TRASH is a fasion that most people accept as valid and viewable. It's the Websites the work fine on IE and not on anything else that isn't using the "standards of the W3C"
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
I'm having trouble believing all the positive press Firefox 0.8 is getting. It is buggier, less stable, and slower than 0.7. My experince so far: 1.) Used Firebird 0.7 since it's release almost exclusively (work codes things to require IE). 2.) Tried to install Firefox 0.8 on first computer, wouldn't even install. Kept getting erros during the installtion process. 3.) Tried to install on a second PC. It installed (after restarting it twice - the facility to choose which dirtectory to install into is HORRIBLE), but then it would not run. Several reboots and attempts to start the app later I gave up and uninstalled it. 4.) Finally got the app to install AND start on a third PC. But it is so darn slow! IE6 zooms in comparison. Attempting to download anything would cause the app to crash. Finally, I managed to get downloads to work but had to disable the download manager from starting when a download starts; now I can't watch the tatus of a download. If I try to open the download manager manually, the app freezes. 5.) Maybe I'm unique here, but I can't get java applets or javascript to run in this browser. Nothing happens, or the app repeatedly asks for a plugin. Looks like I will be going back to Firebird 0.7 until they can get these issues resolved.
is...
;)
Mozilla is a GREAT example of OSS development. Gecko kicks absolute a**, and it is (and has been for a while now) at a stage where it doesn't really matter whether you view pages in IE or the Moz.
The war is not over by a loooong way. and to call Mozilla "simple" is a bit shy of reality. If it was simple, why is it taking so long...?
I'm not worried about Mozilla losing out to IE, and I believe that parity with IE on Windows systems is a realistic possibility (because M$ appears to be waiting for Longhorn to introduce fundamental changes in any thing [and because IE's internals are very likely so convoluted that they need the time]), but the scariest thing I have ever heard was that Microsoft was seriously considering publishing software for Linux.
I have worked for Microsoft as an Irix software engineer (I worked at SoftImage when M$ owned them) building XSi (known as Sumatra back then) and M$ pushed COM onto Irix with ease, MFC onto Irix with ease and COULD VERY EASILY DO IT FOR LINUX. Now, all of you are shuddering with revulsion as I am right now, but the sad reality is: "If M$ starts pushing tools and software into the Linux arena, a whole new group of engineers, enthusiasts, and ISVs are going to start producing product for the platform." Now, while that sounds great for Linux at first, consideration makes me think that Linux is an incredible OS, and has become so because of one thing most of all: Personal attachment and belief in its purpose. The second most likely reason, imho, is that money is not thrown around in Linux in the same manner as it is in the Windows (or other OS) world. Linux MAKES tons of money, but the majority of it is in implementation and deployment.
I am VERY leery of inviting the sharks, manipulators, kernel bribes (tm 2004 Assmasher), politics, and stupidly dangerous big businesses into our backyard. This is what will happen if M$ enters into Linux in the near future because we're not ready pschologically for that impact.
Starting to ramble now, sorry, I'll have to move these thoughts to my journal later. In a nutshell, I fear the loss of our 'rosebuds' when big business comes to Linux town in a big way.
Loading...
(on topic part) No. For as long as at least 50% of the computer-using population runs IE on Windows, or about 65% of the browsers report as IE on Windows (Opera looks much like a MSIE-using app such as Feedreader in the UA string when ID-ing as IE6, unless it's on a non-Windows OS).
Currently we use MSHTML for the browser part, for the obvious reason that it is there for free on every user's machine. Nonetheless, I'd consider a switch if we could get something that is faster and more customizable. The annoying thing about MSHTML is that the only way to interact with it is through COM interfaces (need I say more?). It would be very sweet to have source code. Also, we are planning to port to Mac and Linux at some point, so we need to look at more portable rendering engines. I don't know if IE can be embedded on the Mac but even if it can... COM interfaces *under MacOS*!? Oh my good lord...
To be more specific, my questions are:
Peer Pressure
It's called Opera. It's more stable than Firefox, it supports more IE crap than Firefox, it blocks pop-ups, has tabbed browsing, etc. It's had all the features of Firefox (and then some) for a long time. It's even free if you don't mind a small little add box up where the icons are (I don't even notice it).
So what's the big deal about Firefox again?
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
it's another way for MS to make other platforms less attractive
This was the original idea, presumably. But how many people do you know who stick to Windows because they need to access some MSIE-only website?
Heck, my Xandros box runs MSIE!
Big wigs are all about guarantees and minimized risks. Part of their fear of open source lies in not seeing a legally defined responsible party that will answer their cries for support and help (sorry, "the community" doesn't count for the most part...yet). The other issue is the concept of long term comittment by OSS community to a specific product. In other words, will a product like OpenOffice and Firefox offer long term (years) of consistency such that the business won't be left hanging by a sudden shift in OSS philosophy or direction on a given project. Even though Firefox and OpenOffice ROCK (I use as primaries), businesses won't migrate enmasse until they get over the perceived issue of legally defined support and long term commitment. The OSS community will have to keep on demonstrating commitment and consistency over the long haul for this shift to occur. GREAT JOB TO ALL WHO HAVE HELPED MAKE OSS WHAT IT IS TODAY! YOU ARE CREATING A NEW AND BRIGHTER FUTURE WITH YOUR EFFORTS - KEEP IT UP!!
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
"...it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view."
Revising history are we?
No more Flash ads.
What I did get was a popup dialog everytime there was Flash content bothering me because there isn't a web designer on the Earth who knows how to check for Flash capability before trying to serve it. And IE has no way to turn off the bloody dialogs that I can find.
Gods, just put the red X up and move on, IE! I don't care!!!
--- Ban humanity.
When I'm using windows, I use IE. I don't see any advantage in using Mozilla firefox on windows over IE.
However when I'm using my FreeBSD box, I use Mozilla FireFox and it's a great browser for a unix desktop. It renders most sites well and performs well as long as you have at least 256M RAM. It does java and flash.
Basically, when you use unix on your desktop you're not screwed anymore
happened because people who had the first two names before they did; they got sued over phoenix.
This post is just a test of something to do with posting to /. and using Firefox.
No one mentionned this ?
Ad-blocking with Mozilla is GREAT. See http://adblock.mozdev.org/
It even works with Slashdot ads....
Animoog.org
I'll stick with Safari.
#1 - Total integration.
#2 - Usability.
#3 - Stylishness/aesthetics.
#4 - Geewiz.
I think the 'geewiz factor' would be what could push Linux over the edge and the first 3 are more fundamentals. Like with Mozilla, where it can do certain things that IE doesn't (at least by default) that can quickly become 'must have' features.
Quack, quack.
I've been using firebird for a few months now and I find it very lacking in features. Users like me need a history feature that we can control. This similar to IE shit isn't good enough.
Say I'm working at home from 8-10 in the evening, then the wife goes to bed, it's porn time baby! Off to the hun I go and have my way with the ladies. I NEED firebird/firefox to help me out here. I don't want to loose the tracks I've made doing my research, but I sure as hell don't want my wife knowing about my addiction to midgets.
If the guys at Mozilla can't fix this feature, they are going to fall flat on their face. Now if they could put in a hidden history for porn time, that would be even better.
I can think of that doesn't exist or have a workaround for Mozilla is Macromedia Director.
Which I think exists for Windows mozilla-esq browsers. But I can live without Shockwave. What really irritates me is the lack of a flash 7 plugin. It exists for my Windows Firefox but not my Linux Mozilla. Sites that are using flash video (moveon.org was the one that came to mind) are crippled in Linux.
Hopefully Macromedia will release a new version.
What I dont like is that the scroll bars are screwed up on Firefox if you load anything other than the default theme (Under OSX anyway).
Several of the bindings for Firefox changed between the 0.7 and 0.8 versions, so older themes that have not yet been updated for Firefox 0.8 will have problems; one of those problems manifests itself by making your scrollbars disappear. Once the themes are fixed, this problem won't exist (it's not specific to OSX).
Also, as for Firefox vs. Safari, I have a Powerbook, but I prefer Firefox on it. While it handles tabs similar to Safari, I can't browse anymore without find-as-you-type, a feature that only Moz/Firefox has (to the best of my knowledge). My only complaint about it is that NSITheme isn't fully implemented on OSX, so you don't get native-looking widgets (unlike on WinXP).
imho (as an end, newbie osx user) I would say we should test/ give our time to Camino nightlies.
After using Mozilla for 18 months I started trying out
Firebird a couple of months ago. Just as I was really
starting to like it and make it my browser of choice they
go and pull another boneheaded stunt.
Firefox - really stupid name. Really really stupid.
Not only stupid, but breaks continuity with the naming of
it's e-mail partner, Thunderbird. The new offical logo
isn't so hot either.
The release of the latest version was delayed almost 2 months
for "reasons unrelated to the code". That's all they would
say. The "reasons unrelated to the code" turned out to be the
name change. Instead of working on making a better browser,
way too much time and effort was put into searching for a new
name, designing a new sucky logo and applying for trademarks,.
And speaking of all the time and effort they supposedly put into
the new name -- this is the second time they've changed the name
because somebody complained. Want to bet how long it will be
before there's another name change? Just go to Google and type
in "Firefox".
Although Firefox is Open Source. the new official logo isn't:
.
".... this new artwork is not licensed under the same licenses
as the source code. You are not granted any rights or licenses
to the trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation, including without
limitation the Firefox name or logo".
What the heck is up with that? You can download the source and
build your own Fire[bird][fox] -- many people do -- but you can't
have the new logo. That's strictly top secret hands off.
All of a sudden, their sucky name and logo is really really really
important and needs to be protected.
According to lead developer Ben Goodger, the official explantion
for keeping the new logo under strict lock and key is: "we're
just trying to prevent people from identify themselves AS us, or
create builds that masquerade as official builds."
Yeah right.
99.9999999% of the people in the world use MSIE and you're worried
that somebody will start turning out bootleg copies of Fire[bird][fox].
Yes, and in windows you also get taskbar clutter. I've been using tabbed browsing all over now for a while, and any time I have to go back to IE(some sites hate anything but IE) or a site even opens a new window on click, I get annoyed at having more windows open. I have one taskbar icon for each task I do on my computer. E-Mail, Calendar, Terminal, Accounting, Browsing and that's generally it.
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
You do what you can. I don't go as far as some people and put those evil "made for xx" browsers on my webpage or anything since I don't think people pay attention to them.
I did however modify my 404 page to say that they should upgrade their web browser to FireFox if they are using IE. Sure, it might not fix the 404, but at least it is a full paragraph dedicated that someone might read if they happen to come across some broken link.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Well, there is nothing wrong with Safari. If I am not mistaken, FireFox (then Phoenix) was around before Safari. At the time though, FireFox wasn't originally intended to become a Mac browser because of Camino, but that eventually changed. Then, soonafter, early versions of Safari were released, based on KHTML as the rendering engine.
I personally don't think that there is anything wrong with Safari. It's something that Apple should have done a LONG time ago, in my opinion. It borrows a lot from Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox in terms of features. My only complain is the inclusion of KHTML. KHTML is a great rendering engine, but I've had lots of problems with it, especially in Konqueror. I personally feel that it just does not render as well as Gecko.
As for the screwed up scrollbars and stuff... FireFox is still in a beta state, and it's even newer on MacOS.
IE has filled its purpose: it killed Netscape, and ended that threat. It's usefulness has expired.
Microsoft should dump it, then embrace and extend Mozilla. That would give them a better browser at less expense. And anytime Windows gets blasted by some new internet-related exploit, Microsoft can say, "It's not our app. It's not our fault." Even if the real problem is in the OS.
They could add ActiveX abilities for a fraction of the development costs they are sinking into IE. They could create whatever plugins they wish. Like a Windows Update plugin.
They could turn OSS into a Microsoft winnning strategy. They don't make any money on IE, anyway. It's just a resource drain for them. They could think seriously about doing the same with Apache and other OSS projects that don't threaten a revenue stream. The more involved they are in these projects, the more they could steer them to the best effect for their own purposes.
One solution is to download and install the User Agent Switcher Extension. You can then have FireBird/Fox/Mozilla send the IE 6.0 User Agent string.
Another extension that was a requisite for me to move from IE to FireBird/Fox was the GoogleBar, which emulates the Google Toolbar for IE. (They also have ones to mimic MSN and Yahoo! toolbar, IIRC.)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
i just tried firefox 0.8 for OS X - it's not bad at all, but it just doesn't look as integrated as camino. i know camino development has slowed to a crawl, but is it totally done? are there any plans to use the firefox guts in the super-slick Cocoa front-end maybe?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
reply to parent sig: Inability to edit posts is a feature and a implementation by design. I know that /. post scoring system isnt always the greatest thing in the world, but it would not work at all if users were able to edit posts.
I'm using Firefox right now as a matter of fact, but I don't know where they're going with their icon designs...
the new logo appears to be a gigantic fox humping the earth
I wonder if that's the old IE 2 earth icon he's humping?
Hey, it's been like fifty years already, give the guy a break. He's past all that, now.
It most definitely WAS worthwhile for MS for reasons I will explain below.
I hasten to disagree and hope to enlighten you my friend. In 1995 when Netscape released 3.0 Gold, it included both javascript and full support for Java. This made the browser into a full-blown (although I must admit it was also crude and slow given the hardware available in that day) OS-agnostic application platform. This was Andreesen's stated intention at the time for taking a move that predated the current marketing uproar over "Web Services" by some eight+ years. Needless to say, this was an idea about which Microsoft was somewhat less than ambivalent.
True, but the browser could have
If you truly buy into the logic you espouse about the browser being, "
Best wishes,
'wands
utter rubbish
Then again, in windows I have a task bar...
Argghhh. Nearly every desktop has a taskbar, or the equivalent. The taskbar in XP is an improvement over the one in 2k, but not by much. In 2K, the taskbar is possibly the worst way to organize browser windows. By default, it is at the bottom, and that's where most people leave it, which is the least efficient place the organizer could possibly be. If you have multiple monitors, like I do, having to move the mouse across the quivalent area of one monitor to switch windows is a nightmare. I'd rather have everything nice and tidy within the same window.
Another thing is that you are able to have multiple Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox items in the task bar, but you'll have multiple instances of the same program open. That doesn't make too much sense.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
How do I reproduce the problems I get when Firefox bogs down? hmm... With 3 tabs open, I was at 33MB used. Opened Fark.com, went to 36MB. Clicked a link to open it in another tab, went to 37MB. Apparently not stressing the browser enough, let's try fusker.com. \Opened a link from there, what do you know, that worked! Firefox is now taking up 141MB of memory. Ouch. Let's see how bad we can get it. Open another tab of images, they start loading and the memory usage suddenly dropped to 23MB! ?!?!?! Opened another taa of images and it stay the same but now I can't see the words I'm typing in this text box, they're white on white... lovely... I guess I'll stop the experiment now. mem usage at 23,440 K at the moment, btw. and the words appear in this text box only when I scroll.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
First off, I love Mozilla/Firefox/Firebird, whatever it's being called right now. I'm using it right now. The browser features are great.
The rendering engine, however, is still pretty flaky when it comes to rich, interactive content. CSS 2 is implemented damn near fully, so I can float DIVs. DOM support is great. BUT: If I try to use the DOM to change the classname of an element inside a floated DIV, the browser starts doing the goddamm macarena (the floated divs collapse and then expand again, everything basically goes wonky). This happens a lot when trying to do DOM scripting to change presentation. I submitted this to bugzilla with the release of netscape 6.1, and it still hasn't been addressed.
Also, the web standards committee has it's head up it's ass. Yes, floating block-level elements has it's uses, but the *far more common* use case is to want to have a block level element that lives alongside run-in content, like an IMG. display:inline-block, is as far as i know, not even a standard. This is just plain stupid. Have the people on the w3c ever actually coded a complex web app?
Also, would it really kill anyone to implement the ondrop/ondrag ie scripting controls as standards? It's simple and elegant, and I don't have to write reams of onmousedown code just to drop a div over another div and trigger a function. This is probably IE's killer feature right now, businesses all want web-apps to behave like the traditional GUIs, and IE delivers on that, broken standards or not.
So as people are told never to download random little tool apps or IE plugins for stability and security reasons they're supposed to download one of 100 pop-up blockers? When people see lots of pop-up blockers many tend to worry how many will just bring up their own ads or catch them a virus. Since so many cost a few dollars people don't trust the free ones. Plus they know anything they download normally slows down their computer, so how many more are they going to try and never uninstall?
The average user sees IE as the internet, and pop-up blockers aren't trusted because they're plugins not from the one company giving them their internet. It's much easier to show them a complete alternative as it seems to instill more trust in the end.
Developers: We can use your help.
this diagram shows what happened to Firefox.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
When you upgrade Mozilla do you install over the top of the older version? I did this at first and it caused ALL SORTS OF PROBLEMS. Including many of the problem you mention.
Aside from that I (probably like most of the other Slashdot users) am using it now. I haven't had any trouble with it in ages and really do swear by it and am also seeing more and more 'regular' pc users pricking up their ears at the mention of pop-up blocking or lack of spyware or any number of other useful features.
Quack, quack.
The browser battles may have fought to a stand still but there are some other issues that still bug me. The biggest is the Intellectual Property battle.
Web pages are copyrightable code and content. There have been features around for years to take this bundle and automatically put it into something else (a PDF file, a archive folder, etc.). What hasn't been addressed are the legal implications of doing that.
If I go to a sight that says it's pages are protected (for example) what happens if I send the page in an HTML email to my boss. It may even make a differnence if the pages claimed to be copyrighted, gpl'ed, or click-through-licensed.
Where Microsoft can win this game is by making everything on Windows locked down tight in Longhorn. They then make sure that every author can set their price per page on the Microsoft web: "Downloading a page out of Internet Explorer isn't allowed unless you pay $0.001 cents per byte." (or some such nonsense).
Why would anyone use a non-free browser in this manner? They wouldn't unless they were forced to. Microsoft can do this by convincing every blogger and Parent Teacher Association that they're losing money by not exclusively using Microsoft technologies. For the insurgents who write out of some (un-American!) sense other than profit, they can probably stir up enough noise and uncertainty in the court rooms (whether they do the suing or a puppet) that makes people just feel like the "web" was the equivalent of some sort of sixties commune. Groovy and completely unsustainable.
The fact that free software has a pair of good tools (apache and firefox) is still barely into this game.
What else can be done? Legally I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.
But for the coders and writers and web users of today, get them using standards and free software and realize they're using it is a very good thing.
Second, maybe get something like source forge set up for people to GPL web sites. I'm not talking people's blogs here, but major site redesigns that have become standard compliant and how they did it. Heck, get volunteers to do site redesigns if the code becomes GPL and open to all. People need to realize that not only is it important to redesign their sites to be standards compliant, but it's also cheap to do so. The site probably won't convince the CitiBanks of the world to do anything special, but it will hopefully show and convince the community colleges and small businesses and non-profit organizations that this is really a do-able thing.
Greed is still a strong factor. If Microsoft ever does release a secure OS, then there will be a lot of people who succumb to greed. But if their whole stream of server, database, & browser is already Microsoft proprietary they'll certainly not see any advantage to going open and standards compliant at that point.
But that shouldn't take away from the great progress that Mozilla has made. It's been a fantastic thing to watch.
There are still plenty of sites that are built to work only with IE for Windows, but now that the alternatives are so good and the advantages increasingly obvious, this is changing.
"Does this path have a heart is the only question." --Carlos Castaneda
Nearly every desktop has a taskbar
But the OSX dock does not really work like a task bar, which was my original comparison. You can't just click an icon in the dock and have your intended window pop to the front, instead it brings at application and all of it's windows to the front in the order that they were already layered. I was speaking of tabbed browsing in OSX vs. Taskbar(with sorting and grouping) and multiple windows in XP. Also the default "ALT+TAB" in Windows and OSX is totally different. In OSX you almost need tabbed browsing, in Windows it's a bonus.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
And once again the Mac Zealots mod up their brethren.
I try OSX Fire* and click on RealNetworks file, it says "no file association"
Here, why Mozilla loses and lost all the time...
Yes, people likes to stream with Real instead of ogg, see?
that opening a tab used 4-5MB, and closing it didn't free the memory?
I remember seening mozillas with 200MB+ swapped out memory after prolonged use.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
For the war against IE. I like the war-like name. Moz developers take note! ;-)
Quack, quack.
I can't browse anymore without find-as-you-type, a feature that only Moz/Firefox has (to the best of my knowledge).
:-)
I was surprised to find out that Opera has it as well. It's called "In-line find" and is a check-box in the Edit menu.
And yes - it's a great feature
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
... and the slashdotting remains.
Some things never change
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Franckly, I don't care if Mozilla implements W3C standards anymore, the tool would be a lot more useful to me if it just rendered correctly the web sites that were designed with IE in mind. web site developers can't produce several versions of their DHTML just to please the minority who use Mozilla, so they pick the current market leader (IE) as a target platform, and I can't blame them for doing that.
Just restrict web publishing to experts or canned 'blog' sites, there you go.
Any browser should make a best-attempt and rendering any site.
There is no taskbar in OSX let alone taskbar clutter. Could be "window clutter"? Its solved too, that "Expose" thang.
Testing it for hours, no, this browser is not for me. It couldn't even identify a realnetworks file and let listen to it via realone/osx.
Yes, we stupid foreigner Apple users even subscribe to Radiopass of Real to listen our fav USA radios in broadband...
That would be the reply of a reply if I sent a bug report to mozilla.org.
They generally like to reply "So where is the patch?"
is all the emphasis the IE users are putting on the Google tool bar as IE's way to block popups. I am a fairly new user, having decided to try a different browser after the last IE security problem, but from what I have seen FireFox offers much more. The following short list are some of the features I find important:
1. Customizable. Firefox offers some basic functionality. If you want more functionality, you can add-on an extension. You are not stuck with having a bloated executable containiing functionality you will never use.
2. Tabbed browsing. Having web pages appear in different tabs within the same window ROCKS. I just hated IE forcing you to open a new window if you did not want to leave a site. I just have to learn to quit closing the damn window when I am done with a site.
3. Fast. I have not timed anything, but Firefox seems much faster than IE.
4. Secure. The open nature of the source code permits far more eyes to search for, and hopefully find security weaknesses. Having >1000 people review code is far better than the dozen or so MS had review IE source. Also, the script kiddies is not targeting their mischeivious efforts toward Firefox since Firefox is NOT the browser with the largest installed base.
Taken together, the value Firefox offers is far exceeds pop-up blocking. But if you examine at how Microsofties view the world, there is a tendancy to claim they inovated what is obvious, and disregard the rest.
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
For all the handwringing and then the grousing about the name change, if /. is any indication, it seems to be going over pretty well.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You wouldn't be sweating the difference between dropDownList.selectedValue vs. dropDownList.options[dropDownList.selectedIndex].v alue
Your tools should be handling all that OO structure. You mean it doesn't predicate as you type within the context of the DOM of the page you're editing for? Or you don't even have code generation scripts that parse the XHTML and insert the hooks for you?
Archaic!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I still prefer Camino to Safari because the brushed metal look is crap, IMO.
That and I don't like Safari's implementation of Tabs. Closing a tab loses me browser window real estate in Safari, but not in Camino.
Haven't bothered to try Firefox on OS X yet. Will probably try it out on my debian box.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Aside from google toolbar... what is there?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I could no longer live with the serious and unpatched security flaws in IE. I thought the URL spoofing flaw was terrible. Then it was followed up with a file extension spoofing flaw. This basically meant that I couldn't trust IE to correctly show me what site I was visiting or what kind of file I was opening!
Yes, a patch was finally issued for the URL flaw, but the fix was criticized by people like Russ Cooper for not going far enough.
I am finding Firefox on Windows XP to be excellent so far. It was a minor pain to reinstall support for Macromedia Flash, Shockwave, etc. but my QuickTime and Acrobat plugins just continued to work. What pleases me most is that web pages are loading noticeably faster in Firefox. I have heard this claim made my many new browsers over the years but this is the first time I have ever actually perceived a difference.
I also like that downloads seem to start immediately in the background as soon as a link is clicked on. With IE, when I click on a download nothing starts transferring until I browse to a location to save the file, choose a filename (perhaps) and then click OK. In Firefox, I am sometimes surprised to find that my download is completed by the time I have finished choosing a location for the file!
It is not advisable to completely abandon IE on Windows, however. Firefox won't work for grabbing updates from windowsupdate.com.
Ever debug interaction with a website and your companies' proxy server?
:-)
Live-http-headers to the rescue.
Ever wonder how XYZ website's gallery tries to prevent you from using a download tool to slurp a whole image set down?
Live-http-headers to the rescue.
What's wrong with the goddamn cache?
Live-http-headers to the rescue.
I want to find a URL to save this trailer instead of streaming it.
Live-http-headers to the rescue.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I guess you don't use your PC for anything other than internet browsing....
======
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Scalable pages. Yes, I know you can't increase the font size by holding down control, but the frames and images stay put, so you end up with 2 big words on each line.
Opera scales the whole page, just by hitting the + key. It's great for sitting back and reading a nice long article.
As soon as they fix this, I'll switch!
----- I hate sigs.
One of my greatest complaints about mozilla/firebird/whichever was that Mouse Gestures never worked properly on linux with the right mouse button, a function I had gotten extremely used to in Opera. Galeon allowed me to use this functionality, so I primarily used Galeon on my GNOME desktops (both Linux and FreeBSD.) Much to my delight, Firefox 0.8 supports right-mouse-button based Mouse Gestures flawlessly. I am in the process of switching over to it in entirety now. Thank you, for making the one little feature I really care about work properly.
Ah, but having cut off Netscape's air, what did MS go ahead and do? Build exactly the browser that Andreesen wanted to make.
Basically i'd agree that the "browser as platform" was overhyped and even today, there are no real Java browser-based apps out there.
Corel Office in Java, remember?
The browser wars were a waste of money.
From the Firefox 0.8 realease notes:
The great advantage of having a reputation for being stupid: People are less suspicious of you.
Lately projects have been getting finished, work completed left and right. Boy that's gonna come to an end soon. I'll be back to slacking in no time!
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
Ironicly, Mozilla seems to have more problems with slashdot than IE, at least for me. Mozilla runs text together on some pages, and quite often I get partially rendered pages when I do a message preview. I don't have these problems in IE on /. (I run Mozilla on a Windows machine. Perhaps this is the problem, eh? Still, IE does it better.)
Table-ized A.I.
And yet
I simply cannot live without tabbed browsing. So I use it anyway.
I have had a problem with the fox, I can't cut and paste the URL from the location bar... Anyone have any ideas?
At first i wasnt that impressed by mozilla but lately it is getting near perfection. Granted the mozilla suite is a bit bloaty but FireFox makes most other browsers look really stupid. If i use other browsers who lack tabbed browsing i feel disabled. I have become used to it and its features.
I can honestly think of one single thing i lack or despice in Mozilla. Maybe on windows where it runs slow but on linux its a blast even on my 200mhz old IBM. On windows i think part of the problem is that you already have a browser idling in the background refusing to be uninstalled.
Mozilla is now Good Enough (tm) for me.
HTTP/1.1 400
Anyone else experiencing this problem?
When downloading files, firebird has been not downloading the whole file. It just stops, with out a message about it or any indication that the file is not compleat. I think it even displayed the popup window despite the file not being done.
Binary files (e.g. .wma and .rar files) served by servers incorrectly sending text/plain should no longer be displayed as garbage in the browser, rather they should be appropriately handled.
.htm[l]. .txt, or .jpeg/.gif/.png is displayed in the browser, and anything else, like .tar, .gz, .ipk, (or did they really mean e.g., and not i.e.?) that's unknown is saved to disk.
Yeah, I saw that.
But they also need to fix it so that anything that ends in
And is Firefox still overriding file names with mime types, so that foo.tar is saved as foo.tar.gz (or even foo.tar.gz.tar)? That's almost Microsoftian in its unheeding "I know better than you, Mr. user" arrogance.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
What I want to know is, when will IE get into the 1990s and support transparent PNGs? If such an "unprofessional" rendering engine as Gecko could do it back in the 90s, why couldn't IE? I'm tired of my web graphics having black backgrounds in IE.
Please direct all bug reports to /dev/null
Mr. Rubbie,
I would like to offer you the position of Director of Tech Support for my new product. If you would be interested please send an email to sellmysoul@microsoft.com.
Bill Gates
Chairman and Chief Software Architect
Microsoft Corporation
Regarding Firebird and Flash: The reason for this is the flash installer looks for browser entries in the registry, since Firebird =.7 were simply packaged as a zip file you didn't get that. It was still possible - you had to direct the Flash installer manually to Firebird\plugins, admittedly counterintuitive, but not really Firebird's fault.
.8, there's now an actual installer, so those registry entries are there. All that's needed to properly install Flash is clicking "next" a few times. Hope that helps.
With Firebird/Fox
Just the added performance on Windows (especially in startup time) is worth it.
I know they're not community-driven, but I would like them to spend some time on getting the toolbar set back up to where other browsers are. I'm not a big toolbar user bit I like have the font size controls on the toolbar.
Also, I am going to file a suggestion that Flash be considered an image for the sake of image blocking.
Why didn't you just say Microsoft? It certainly wasn't funny. They're not going to get the SS after you. I just don't get it.
Linux says to you, it's your computer, you can do whatever you want with it, if you're willing to take the time to figure out how, or -- if it can't yet be done -- figure out how to code it.
Oh, come on, that's ridiculous, and I say this in a straightforward, non-trolling way. First, it's a total cop out to say that if you don't like something, you always have the power to learn to program, learn the architecture of the Linux kernel or another massive application, figure out how to make the change you want, convince the maintainers that your change should be rolled into the master tree so you don't have to keep redoing it each you grab a new version, etc. Really, how can you even argue that?
Also note that exactly the same thing is possible under Windows, if you use open source applications. You can run Firefox under Windows and Open Office and The Gimp and gcc, and almost any UNIX application. Remember, portability is a major tenet of the UNIX philosophy. Yes, it is true that you can't change OS-level services, but does this really even remotely matter except for the handful of people who get off on kernel hacking? It's not like someone can say "Hey! I need support for filesystem X" and then whip it up. There have been 9 *Linux* people in the history of the OS that have even remotely cared about this,
Finally, Linux as an OS really only gives you the freedom to work with a UNIX-like operating system. If you don't want UNIX--perhaps because think it's living in the past--then you don't have that option. So this is not some kind of all-encompassing freedom.
Make that "best viewed with any STANDARDS COMPLIANT browser".
No hay banda
How about it, Slashdot? It may be time to revisit the templates...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Lack of a decent browser USED to be a reason for users not moving to Linux, but it is becoming increasingly irrelevant as browsers are becoming very close in performance and compatibility. Sure some sites don't work with Mozilla but i think generally compatibilty is getting very good. Personally i find there's very little difference in the user experience with IE, Safari, Mozilla, Opera, Firefox etc.
What users expect for desktop functionality these days has changed a lot since 1999 and i think it's these other areas that should be more of a concern:
People now expect to be able to:
1) Download music off Kazaa
2) Listen to online radio stations
3) Put a dvd in the drive and for it to automatically start playing
4) Click on a movie on a web page and have it play automatically no matter what format (eg. never underestimate the popularity of porn)
5) Import pics and from their digital camera and be able to easily view them and email them to their friends
6) Be able to view mail from their friends with greeting cards, movies and other attachments included
7) Print out pics on their inkjet printer
8) Scan photos on their scanner
9) Import video from their video recorder, edit the movies and burn them onto DVD
10) Easily rip cds and burn new ones
11) Easily sync calendars/contacts to their palm, phone, ipod etc
12) Purchase music online and burn it to cds
13) Play all the popular games of the moment like the Sims online, Warcraft 3 etc
14) Keep schedules of appointments
15) Do their taxes
16) Chat to friends on Aim, MSN messenger etc.
17) Be able to do everything through the desktop (never having to use the command line)
They also expect to be able to download a program from the net, click on an installer icon and have the program install and run.
I think the Mozilla project has done a fine job in producing a browser that is so close to IE in performance that most people wouldn't notice the difference. It's the other areas, esp multi-media and the digital-hub functionality where Linux lags behind.
XFT and GTK2: Anti-aliased fonts are beautiful, and Firefox now has a version that is built against these libraries. The difference is astounding, as you can see from the screenshots below:
Amazing difference. The screenshot on the left is annoyingly fuzzy, much less readable than the screenshot on the right which happens to pack even more text in the same space!
If your browser looks like the one on the right, it's time for you to upgrade.
What? He means "left", right? Upgrading to the fuzzy big letters? Is this guy drunk or what?
"I can't browse anymore without find-as-you-type, a feature that only Moz/Firefox has (to the best of my knowledge)."
OmniWeb has it as well.
That was my first thought too. The Firefox guys ripped the whole interface off Safari and still managed to get everything wrong, sometimes subtly wrong, sometimes blatantly wrong, but always wrong. Case in point: The rounded toolbar buttons that look great in Safari but look like utter shit in Firefox, especially when you start dragging them around and realize even that small degree of beauty is only skin deep. Or how about the ugly-ass preferences window that lacks even a cache control option? Hint to the developers: making a browser easy to use doesn't have to involve crippling its functionality.
That's what's so frustrating--the Mozilla project shows so much promise, but there's just so much shameless copying going on and not enough innovation in terms of UI features or anything else, and there's no sign that the developers will ever be made aware of how to deliver a polished, aesthetically pleasing product.
Yeah, I realize how I sound saying all this, but God help me if it's not how I really feel. Fucking hell.
yours
(a) Use IE
(b) Use FireFox but ban the Web site (perhaps not plausible, especially if it's work related)
I would choose (c) Use FireFox with the User Agent Switcher. Yes, a short term solution, as you put it, but, dammit, the user just wants to have the site work with the browser they'd like to use. Yes, your idea is best for the long run, but my grandpa doesn't care about the long run - he just wants the "Internet to work."
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I appreciate the contents of your comments but I do get slightly annoyed by people who expect Open Source software to always be released as finished, feature-rich products that do everything every user could desire the moment they install them. This is not the way the Open Source community works.
If the Open Source community wants general public acceptance, then it must change the way it works to suit the general public. Period.
For all of its bitching and grousing, it is plainly evident that the overwhelming majority of the general public is either happy with Microsoft's way of doing things, or at least not sufficiently unhappy with it to switch to F/OSS products. Folks like you and I, who are happy (or at least willing) to tinker with sloppily packaged applications and able to dig into makefiles and source code are and will always be a tiny minority.
People want ease of use. And they want it ahead of technical superiority. They don't care about standards compliance, and most of them aren't even aware that there are standards. Moreover, that isn't going to change soon or in two thousand years.
F/OSS isn't a business as such, but we are selling product. We may not be after money as an end product in most cases, but we are after widespread user acceptance. To get that, we must give people what they want. It's just that simple. It boggles my mind that marketroids with room-temperature IQs can grasp this concept as the inalterable law of economics that it is, but screamingly brilliant programmers often have trouble understanding it or its paramount importance.
However, you do now have a voice in getting the software you want if you care enough about it and speak up enough - that's the mindset change.
That's not mindset change; that's just a recipe for being one of those annoying technology advocacy twerps who turn people off to otherwise worthwhile products. Outside of their dwindling fan bases, the only thing people remember about heavily-advocated products like OS/2 and the Amiga is how annoying their advocates were.
The idea that we can just give it to them and make them like it is a Microsoft concept we would do well not to adopt. Microsoft can get away with it because their product is, for the most part, blitheringly easy for an idiot to use. That's the lesson we need to learn here. Make it blitheringly easy, and then and only then, the technical superiority we enjoy in so many areas will begin to be a compelling advantage, but not until then.
All that being said, the Mozilla team seems to have made excellent progress so far, and I have high hopes that they will achieve full parity and then blow clean past it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And not only because of bugs, but also because people have different needs. With FF, you have to download and install extensions, which isn't exactly easy for newbies. Opera, when installed, has everything right there, including a full email client. Firebird requires additional downloads.
Claiming that FF is perfect is a disservice to the FF developers and the community. Actually, it is disrespectful towards the people who contribute to make it better!
That is completely wrong. Opera has had MDI since version 1.0. Opera 4.0 came with tabs - before Mozilla, and the guy who implemented it still works for Opera.Opera has true MDI. You can tile and cascade pages, and it keeps everything within one window by default. FireFox is far more limited, especially before downloading extensions.
Is that so? How come FF doesn't open the previous page instantly when going back, like Opera? How come it is a bigger download, but still has fewer features? How come you have to download extensions to get functionality that is considered to be essential in other browsers?Clever signature text goes here.
On the other hand, Camino .7 + is imo a great browser, I've had no problems with the Nov. 4, 2003 build.
Dave.. what a waste of internet space this was. Do you want to write an editorial? How about writing on all the contributions you have made to the mozilla project? I would really like to hear what you did besides say that "I am making a personal committment to get involved with the Mozilla project." My guess is you haven't done $hit except say that you were.
Thanks alot a$$hole.
What has firefox got that's not coming in the next service pack for IE?
To quote Brian Countryman, IE program manager:
Microsoft has abandoned the present incarnation of IE. There will be no more service packs. The next version of Windows (2005 or later) will have an integrated browser based on IE but if you don't want to buy a new OS from Microsoft you are stuck with IE6 SP1 foreverIt's not like copying isn't common; most of OSX is lifted directly from some of the better Win2K themes. Safari is a direct knock-off of IE with the Apple "candy button" stuff bolted on.
However, I feel like Safari is what's been keeping websites standards-compliant for the past year or so -- the KHTML engine is stricter than Gecko in that it doesn't support the badly formed pages IE likes.
When IE was considered adequate for Mac & PC, insisting on a standards-compliant website was a hard sell one's PHB. Not supporting the lowly Linux geek is one thing, but Mac users are perceived as important consumers.
And with a de facto IE web standard, M$ would continue to extend & proprietize (word?), and Moz/Thunder/Fire/Netscape/fox/bird would forever be playing ketchup.
Incidentally, last week I called support for my credit card's online payment site, which wasn't supporting Firebird. The tech I ended up talking to said Safari & Mozilla were giving them problems. The Safari factor was pretty reassuring to me as I felt they would fix the site for Mac users.
Just replace firebird with fireFox. I sware if they change the name again I will just refer to it as "the browser formerly known as phenix/firebird/firefox/what ever they were calling it last week ver x.y."
But the solution is stop using it.
Quack, quack.
Explain how this is a troll? I downloaded the software, I loaded up sites that I go to frequently (slashdot, geocaching.com, and my online banking page).
The pages didn't render correctly on slashdot or geocaching.com and I couldn't move the toolbars around...
I am just stating the facts as I saw them.
(e)links can do the same, or at least for hyperlinks.
I've been using the browser that worked the best for quite a while.
Initially, when I first used MacOS X, IE was the only one that worked with the sites I needed...but that was long ago. Now, Safari works far better, is much nicer, and on my other machines (running FreeBSD) Firebird/Firefox or Konqueror are the only alternatives I'd even seriously consider.
So considering that these are two entirely non-MS lineages (KHTML -> Safari/Konqueror and Gecko -> Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox) and I prefer either over IE, I'd say that MS has lost the browser wars except for the fact that they still have control over the default browser of Windows installations.
Opera is better and it works on Linux, FreeBSD, and your damn cell phone too.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
I don't think you mean tool here. A tool usually implies needing skill to operate and use correctly. In this case I think it would be betetr to say the computer is an applicance.
It doesn't necessarily want general public acceptance, you're missing the point entirely! It just wants to create good free software that people use and get enthusiastic about. Ask yourself the motivations behind an Open Source programmer doing the job he/she does. Money? Obviously not? Fame? Possibly. A "job well done"? Definitely.
For all of its bitching and grousing, it is plainly evident that the overwhelming majority of the general public is either happy with Microsoft's way of doing things, or at least not sufficiently unhappy with it to switch to F/OSS products.
I agree entirely - use the software that does the job best for what you want to do, whether it's made by Microsoft or A.N. Other. I don't believe I implied anything otherwise in my original post. That's why I always mention the wealth of free software on Windows too.
Folks like you and I, who are happy (or at least willing) to tinker with sloppily packaged applications and able to dig into makefiles and source code are and will always be a tiny minority.
I agree that is something Joe Public isn't want to go and do but I think you're painting an extreme picture. Package management isn't perfect but it works most of the time - no different to MS or any other commercial software.
People want ease of use. And they want it ahead of technical superiority. They don't care about standards compliance, and most of them aren't even aware that there are standards. Moreover, that isn't going to change soon or in two thousand years.
"Technical superiority" is a personal viewpoint - I believe Linux is "technically superior" to Windows, an ace VB programmer will consider MS Office technically superior to Open Office, neither's right or wrong.
Standards compliance is a completely separate issue particularly when closed standards start costing "Joe Public" in his wallet over free open standards - e.g. DRM.
That's why the message needs to be spread now that although you consider closed source software to fit your requirements, just be aware that you run the risk of being locked into proprietary standards and a "rental" model that will expect you to pay regularly for the loss of your freedoms in the future.
F/OSS isn't a business as such, but we are selling product. We may not be after money as an end product in most cases, but we are after widespread user acceptance. To get that, we must give people what they want. It's just that simple. It boggles my mind that marketroids with room-temperature IQs can grasp this concept as the inalterable law of economics that it is, but screamingly brilliant programmers often have trouble understanding it or its paramount importance.
Yes, you are after acceptance and want to give people what they want. For that, you are reliant on user feedback because you don't have the money to spend on market research & pretty coloured packaging.
That's not mindset change; that's just a recipe for being one of those annoying technology advocacy twerps who turn people off to otherwise worthwhile products. Outside of their dwindling fan bases, the only thing people remember about heavily-advocated products like OS/2 and the Amiga is how annoying their advocates were.
Hang on... you're saying that you consider public acceptance as a motivation for being an Open Source programmer yet, on the other hand, you object to someone trying to publicise your work and make its existence known? I don't follow the logic.
I wish you'd distinguish what I'm trying to say in my post from what might be said by a complete zealot. I'm asking people to be aware that they have a choice - if they stay with proprietary software at that point, that's up to them. But what I am doing is surely no different to my handing a friend a music CD I like and saying "Here, give this a try, you might
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Get out there and tell people about the good features that Mozilla has. Use words like built-in like it's pop-up blocker, adaptive(like it's spam filter in the mail client), it a hell of a lot more secure than IE ever will be, and it renders web pages way faster than IE. It's time to take an active role, if you work for some company in it's it section, recommend Mozilla or some other alternative, even if you think it won't work, it's good to get the name out there. Let your higher ups know that ActiveX is insecure, and that it is a major cause of virues being able to spread(as well as Outlook). It will save money if they switch, it costs nothing(but if they go on your idea you might want to try to get them to donate a few bucks to the Mozilla Foundation).
there is find as you type, apparently.
I was on versiontracker trying to get something today and saw an update for something called 'saft'
Do a search for it there, it proposes to add exactly that (among other things)
I find it humorous that I have to download mozilla to a new NT4 install in order to browse M$'s web-page to get the new IE for NT4, so that I can get the needed service packs and such. Great opportunity to show client the power of Mozilla, usefullness of OSS, and the lack of backward compatability of M$ software.
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
Guess what? Microsoft *does* dominate the web on the desktop. They have since Netscape went down (I know, I know, but everyone knows what I mean) and that really shows no fundamental sign of changing. IE is overwhelmingly the #1 browser according to all of the usage statistics out there; Mozilla is making huge gains, unquestionably, but the last I saw it was still under 10% of the market and, more to the point, its gains have come from cannibalizing older browsers (Netscape 3/4) more than IE (which seems to be maintaining a steady market share in the low 80s even despite Mozilla's gains).
But amazingly, and more to the point, that's had virtually no bearing on the web server world. Unless one takes 'a short matter of time' to be 8 to 10 years (twice as long as Netscape's dominance held out!) then there's no indication whatsoever that Microsoft will win the 'web war' server-side. IIS is eternally mired in the 20-30% market share range, while Apache has been a majority leader for more than a half-decade now (at least, according to NetCraft). I have no problems with the FireFox browser itself, but the original premise the author is touting, that MS browser dominance would lead inexorably to server dominance, seems even more absurd now than it did at the time.
You nailed it. And it's our jobs, as techies, to make sure that the majority of users are using what's best for everyone. They turn to us for that.
It's time for people to stop with the condescending attitudes and recognize that the majority of people don't WANT to learn about the "open source browser Mozilla." They just want a browser that works. Why can't it be okay for most people to have lives and not spend their hobbies installing browsers and operating systems? And for us to the ones who care about all that? Why does all of society have to care about what we care about? That seems to be the attitude I see coming up repeatedly among Slashdotters.
People here keep saying they want everyone to keep track and know about all this stuff. Sorry--they don't have time nor inclination. Why can't that role lay upon us, the computer people who actually give a shit about this crap? I don't get this incessant need for everyone to think the same way tech nerds do.
If you're going to try and use facts and reason to point out problems with Microsoft's strategies and Internet Explorer, at least have the decency to avoid childish namecalling.
The cursor thing is particularly annoying. And the fact that certain extensions work when they feel like it (even though it says the are compatible with firefox) just wont do. /.`s pet project.
Back to Opera for me. Still the best tabbed browsing around. (BTW how am I supposed to move the tabs toolbar to the bottom of the screen where it should go?)
Of course I expect to be modded as a troll as I am criticizing
..am I trolling too? Or is criticism only allowed here for Microsoft products?
I`ll stick to Opera.
But you have heard of me.
Is that bad?
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Seems like a troll, but I'll bite.
While the original HTTP RFC did not include user:pass@domain syntax, the URL RFC 1738 does.
Uhh.. I think you have that backwards. For windows to switch between browser windows, you press ALT+TAB - but included in the selection is a bunch of other (non-browser) windows.
In OS X. You can press CMD-~ and switch between the browser windows easily. You can press CMD-TAB to switch between applications. And finally, you can use Expose to do either of those tasks as well.
I'd say you almost need tabbed browsing in Windows, and in OS X, it's a bonus. However - in any OS, I cannot live without tabbed browsing.
How about that memory footprint at 27MB?
Takes forever to redisplay the firefox window after switching back and forth between applications (win2k). Other large apps don't seem to have this problem. Probably not firefox's problem, more gecko, but I'm not using a browser that takes 10s to restore the window.
Once it's in memory it's fast, but that doesn't cut it on a PC with 256 MB of ram.
This version only takes 20 seconds to start on a loaded 1.4Ghz Centrino with a ton of memory and a 5400 rpm disk.
Hmmm... Let's see... The Avant wrapper for IE takes what, 1 second to start up?
First impressions count.
A lot.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I'm getting real sick and tired of having to edit esoteric scripts in every damned OSS application I want to run, which are in half a dozen different locations on a hard drive. If the application has an option it should be at the very least under a tab labeled ADVANCED.
If you'd bothered to read the comment you're replying to, instead of launching into your canned and ignorant rant, you'd know that Firefox does it exactly the way you recommend. Except the tab isn't labelled "ADVANCED", it's labelled "about:config".
Gotta post anonymously, but I work at one of the largest media companies in the US/World. We do well over 100 million page views a month, and from our logs IE is roughly 97% of our users.
This has been pretty consistent over the last few years and shows no signs up changing. In fact two years ago IE was around 96%, so they've actually increased market share.
How do you explain to a user that they should switch web browsers? It's like telling them they need to use another word processor besides Word.
When you guys figure out how to dethrone MS Office, maybe then you'll figure out how to dethrone IE.
I think you are underestimating the effect that bundling had on the first browser war. Way back when, one had to buy Netscape. Computer manufacturers would license Netscape so they could bundle it with new computers. That is the number one reason why Netscape became so popular. People that bought computers without Netscape would actually buy it from a store because they were used to it from experience with other computers.
Then Microsoft bought Internet Explorer and began to insist that any manufacturer that wanted to sell computers with the Windows OS had to include Internet Explorer instead of Netscape. When the manufacturers agreed to that, as they had no real choice, Netscape responded by offering their browser for free. That had a positive effect of slowing the rate at which they were losing market share, but it couldn't stop it.
This forced bundling of IE was the crux of the monopoly suit, and Microsoft was found guilty of anti-competitive practices. Oddly, they were not required to cease their behavior. By this time though, Netscape was ailing and no longer in any position to fight, so it lost the first browser war. I should probably mention that, at the time, Apache was gaining significant market share from Netscape's own very expensive web server. No doubt that had a significant effect on Netscape's ability to compete with Internet Explorer in the browser arena.
Personally, I don't think we'll ever see IE dethroned as the most used browser until manufacturers supply a Gecko based browser by defualt.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Which version are you using?
I am on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031216 Firebird/0.7+.
If you have the page bookmarked, right click on the bookmark select properties, select the schedule tab. How often do you want the page checked? The next tab in the properties is to notify you when it does change. Is this a good solution for you?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Now they have renamed FireBird to FireFox (I hope they won't rename it again to FireMouse or FireWorm).
What's next? Easy - they are gonna rename ThunderBird to ThunderFox soon too. Well, after its stability will be fixed as well.
By the way, I wonder why Mozilla Calendar is neither a fox or a bird? Its even not a Caledarzilla, like Chatzilla. Personally, I loved all thoze Zillas, and at some point I even expected they would break the suite to Browzilla and Mailzilla, but they have decided to fly with birds. Not for long though.
Less is more !
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And they get this from pay-as-you-go vendors? Really? I must have been deluding myself all these years...
I agree the bundling helped, but it was certainly not the end-all-do-all. If Netscape really was a better product, wouldn't people just ignore the bundled Internet Explorer and use Netscape? If people didn't know that Netscape was better, why didn't Netscape's marketing department advertise better?
Why are people switching to alternative browsers now? Unlike Netscape, the current browsers are astronomical better, both in speed, features and security. Netscape wasn't significantly better.
That said I've never though bundling is anyway monopolistic. The Windows empire is built off desktop users. Can you imagine Joe-User trying to figure out how to download a browser without a browser? What's he going to use, an ftp program? The argument was that MS should have been forced to put 2 browsers on their O/S. Firstly, if this was demanded from any other company it would have been denounced as lunacy. Secondly, this would only add to the confusion.
I am more optimistic about FireFox's future. You often here about people switching from IE to FireFox, but the reverse? NEVER. Current FireFox users will never use IE again unless FireFox becomes so atrociously bad they have no choice. But given FireFox's track record I doubt it will degrade to the level IE so glorious achieves.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I'm disappointed with the Download Manager. I don't have problems with lockups or pausing downloads. I don't like that you cannot get back to a single windows for each download. I liked having each download in its own window, so I'll stay with .7 until the feature comes back.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
I stop watched it. 14 seconds.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I have 100% switched to Mozilla now. FireFox (what was FireBird in the 0.7 release) is THE best browser I have ever used. BAR NONE! Support for the "google bar" and native popup blocker protection. Intergrated download manager. Even Themes that don't suck! There are no more IE exploits too! Its even open source to boot! Now if it only had a navtive spyware detector (i.e. can tell you if a cookie that is spyware related maybe install). Now that would just make me cry with joy.
-Kids in the back seat causes accidents.- -Accidents in the back seat causes kids.-
I'm getting real sick and tired of having to edit esoteric scripts in every damned OSS application I want to run, which are in half a dozen different locations on a hard drive.
This is no Open SOurce Phenomenon, there are lot's of neat things in Windows XP you can only achieve by editing the registry by hand.
In theory I'd like to have transparent options, too, but maybe there are just too many of them to squeeze them all into a menu. So it's just bad luck the option you want is missing.
OTOH, maybe there is a positive side to it, users are made to understand what is going on to some extent.
> Now if I could just figure out what the firebird setting for "Check for a new version of the page everytime" like there is in IE,
> so I'd stop getting cached versions of static pages from our proxy at work.
Just add a bookmark for the page, right click to get to the Properties of it. There you have a tab called "Schedule" where you can set an interval to check for "Location updates". Firebird can even play a sound for you, let the icon blink or change and some more things.
The rfc you just linked to says:
Or are you the troll?
--
css/edge
This site showcases some amazing stuff, all done with standard HTML and CSS. No Javascript, no (specific browser)-only code. That doesn't mean it works in all browsers, as the different versions of IE have varying bugs and/or missing implementations. This site is flat-out proof that the internet doesn't need the majority of proprietary code that sites use. The fact of the matter is that in most cases, the author used the easy way (auto-generated proprietary code) as opposed to the right way.
Demo and Demo-IE are a good example. IE does get it mostly right, but not quite. On the complexspiral pages, you can see again that IE doesn't do the background image the way it's supposed to.
This is a great site. It's 100% standards-compliant (i.e. it follows the rules set up to ensure proper operation of the web), does some neat visual stuff, and points out IE's flaws all at once.
firefox is "more standards compliant" than ie? phew! will wonders never cease?
of course, that's damning with faint praise because ie ain't terribly standards compliant.
REPORT ALL OBSCENE MESSAGES TO YOUR POTSMASTER
I finally broke down and decided to buy a commercial copy of ZoneAlarm at the local Best Buy, after years (?) of using the shareware version. Also currently ZoneAlarm makes it hard as heck to download the latest shareware version, in that their FTP server seems to (purposefully?) time out after about 10 minutes.
Anyhow, they have pop up protection. Works pretty well too.
And if you want an explanation of what all the about:config stuff means, you could just download Preferential and that'd take care of that just fine.
Isn't one problem with this approach that the "average person" label is really a moving target?
I'm trying to decide if I can blame people for putting their cat in a microwave oven, if nobody has yet seen a microwave oven. I mean, if I turn the electric stove on real low, everything's fine...
I'm not saying that you can sue people who sell toothpicks, I'm just saying that defining that "average person" is a really difficult thing.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Evidently then you're not enough of a geek to edit your browser ID string. I've managed to get sites that only allow IE to think that Safari is IE by editing the ID string. /.
Shame on you, pretending to be a geek on
I remember how slow Phoenix and Mozilla started up several months ago when I first entered the foray that lead me to have this fanatical hobby of doing Mozilla-related things. It now loads up considerably faster on my computer.
Innovation in Mozilla/Firefox is evident, although I experience it less and less now, now that I use nightlies and new features are downloaded on a frequent basis and quietly absorbed. That's why I'm shocked to see all the lists of new features Firefox has over it's previous official release. It's a nice bubbly feeling, really.
Pelé!
my(ie)2 has these features already, whats the big deal?
After all, it's just a wrapper format.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
The Brand Name FAQ specifically says that the name "Firefox" has been researched carefully and is currently in the process of getting a trademark. I don't think the devs would want to change the names anytime soon, now.e fox-na me-faq.html
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/fir
Pelé!
Google only targets IE because most users use IE. Hence, it would be a waste for Google to spend manhours, labor, money, development time, etc. to build one out of XUL. Shame, but good thing the brilliant community made their own Google counterpart:
http://googlebar.mozdev.org/
I only need a bookmark keyword search, anyhoo. You know, the one where you type "g search" and it searches Google for "search".
Pelé!
It's the XUL. If you use Linux, GTK2 shouldn't take up that much. It's also poor memory management. There's several bugs in Bugzilla currently focusing on this issue. Some of the bugs have been indeed fixed, so you should see less of a memory hog from 0.7 to 0.8 and especially from 0.6 to 0.8. My RAM usage has always hovered around 60 MB. Still a lot, but I don't mind.
Pelé!
Well, the "browser" wasn't the platform, the "web" was the platform. (even though java/activex is more common on intranets than you might think)
Turns out all the real money in extendible frameworks was not on the client-level, but instead on the application server -- another area where Netscape once lead the market, but now is dominated by IBM, Sun, and MS.
I'm curious: is this a deliberate omission, or just an oversight?
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Instructions (requires Developer Tools to be installed)
If you mean what you say, it sounds like you found a bug in the applet security model. Have you reported it?
Mozilla is the 'mangy dog' of the browser world. Not only does Opera annihilate Mozilla for features, speed and reliability but so do all the crappy IE based browsers out there.
The wishful thinking of a herd of delusional geeks doesn't make Mozilla a good product.
defrag your hard drive.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Musicians dont use Firefox
People looking to move into NYC dont use firefox
People already living in NYC and are interested in selling thier homes dont use firefox.
Does anyone else really count?!?!
truth is - sorta. A tech / geek centric site will obviously attract larger fringe groups...
News for you: David Hyatt, one of the developers of Safari, worked for Netscape/Mozilla long before he moved over to Apple. Firefox (nee Phoenix) was around long before Safari was released to the public, and both browsers have "borrowed" features from each other, as well as from the other major browsers. This is, of course, a Good Thing.
Checked that. Doesn't need it. It isn't swapping either. On a totally quiescent system (OK, as quiescent as I can reasonably make it), it's still 5 seconds.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
With enough swap (which most people can have if they want), the only thing that matters is the working set size, which seems to be impossible to measure directly on Linux without kernel modifications.
Frankly, *I* attribute text overlapping to the people who ever decided that it would be a good idea to try and make HTML a halfassed layout language instead of a markup language. I've been seeing more and more overlapping text and images since CSS was introduced, because browsers *let webpages do so* now.
May we never see th
The worst thing about having to use IE occasionally for me is the long-term bug that when the thing is rendering, it completely screws up window dragging. If you're waiting for a page to finish downloading, and are dragging a window while data is coming down (which I frequently do), your drag will be "cancelled". The window will simply appear in its original location, and the little gray rectangle that you've been dragging will be gone.
My boss complained bitterly about this when he was first moved to a version of IE that ran like this.
May we never see th
Flash has been the cause of numerous security issues over the years. If security is a concern for you, enough to switch browsers, you should seriously consider not leaving Flash enabled.
May we never see th
More people should know about this. I've seen it myself also.
Yes, I am aware of that, but it doesn't change my argument. Have you used Safari and Firefox on Mac OS X? It's pretty obvious that Firefox is suffering from a severe case of "I want to look and behave just like Safari," and doing a bad job of it. I agree that ripping off features is all well and good, but there's a point beyond which you have to ask why you wouldn't just use the browser that Firefox is trying so hard to emulate.
yours
Possibly too late in the thread to be read, but things I would like to see to make it an IE killer:
* SVG support
* Privoxy available as a plug-in
For Thunderbird:
* spam-assasin and dspam available as plug-in options
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
AFAIK The bad thing is (at least as known in KDE) there is no Ctrl-Alt-(cyrillic letter) combination to get back to Latin set. So as far as the Grandma does not have mouse controlled keyboard layout switcher, she would have to learn some Russian.
BTW in Soviet Russia keyboard tells you what to type!
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
Sigh. Mozilla this. Mozilla that. IE this. IE that. What ever happend to Lynx?!
The mozilla browsers are great. I think they are the best browsers out there. I only use MicroBorg Explorer now for a couple of MSN sites that have been set up to only work well with their propietary junk browser.
That little thing? What is that. A pube or a cock?
I haven't tried Firefox yet (I used Mozilla a few times a year or so ago), since I am a Opera user, but I don't like the overall attitude to browsers here. If you consider Mozilla and its offspring to be just a browsing solution for Linux, I have no problems with this. But when people start touting Firewhatever as the solution to all ills, a broswer for every PC and stop short of claiming it will cure cancer as well, I have no choice but to respectfully disagree. From the screenshots (and from my experience) it looks just like another IE, with many useful improvements and custom features, but overall it's not really different. Yes, it has better quality and usability, but it's still just a browser.
We need more innovation in how content is represented, browsed, managed, saved, converted, processed, updated, etc. For that we need to dump the dominating "copy_the_Mosaic" paradigm and start implementing really new features. I am pretty happy with features Opera provides, but even it is far from the ultimate limits of Internet browsing.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
This has been updated. See RFC 2396, sec. 3.2.2
Note that the password portion is not recommended. From the same section:
Sage advice, I'd say.
BTW, The RFC Index Search Engine at rfc-editor.org returns links to obsoleted and updated RFCs. It's probably a good idea to check for updates prior to providing advice.
Ron
Personally, I cannot think of a better use of a microwave. Just use a bag to make cleanup easier.
Keyboard surfers naturally lover firefox but there are still times when we have to reach for the mouse. =( Similar to the '/' text search, there could be a '[key]' search that will perform Image Character Recognition (ICR) on all images (say less then a reasonable predetermined size) and allow searching and click-entering on those objects.
Oh, Ive edited the ID string, but some sites use very IE specific Java code to run, Esp some of my supplier sites, no names thou...
I've asked them to fix it, and the response is "it works for us"...
Not a huge problem, I'd drop them if we could and it was my call, but we can't and I can't make the call so I use IE once or twice a day...
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
Java is NOT client specific. HTML can be client specific (the blink tag for example) but java is something that is both platform and application independent in it's best state... what they're probably using is code directed to the highly bastardized version of Java that MS calls their JVM, rather than the SUN JRE... which means it wouldn't run on a Mac using IE either, as Macs do not use the JVM, or the MRJ any longer either, and have since gone on to use the Sun JRE.
Yes. For the time being, your information is 100% accurate for the sample set in question- which is all well and good. The problem with it is that you don't know how many people using Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Savannah, or Opera are using your site as they all can change the user agent string. Not to mention that using IE specific quirks tends to be bad HTML/Javascript in the first place.
HTML is about not caring about the browser application or the OS it runs on. Javascript/ECMAScript is supposed to be the same for the most part. Ditto Java and plugins.
If you're doing anything other than the above, you're not doing what's supposed to be done- and you're playing right into Microsoft's game. And, in all honesty, you're entitled to do that- just don't expect me to do anything less than take you to task over it when it's broken.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
My girlfriend drives a Volvo (her second, so far), so no worries there...
My dad works at GM (I think my grandfather also did)--I still drive GM cars.
Program Intellivision!
I like Firefox but it is slower to load than IE and Opera. Will it be faster in the future releases?
Software:
Windows 2000 Pro
IE 6
Opera 5 and 7
Mozilla Firefox 0.8
Netscape 4.7
Hardware:
AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz
512MB DDR RAM