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A Look at the Newly Released Mozilla Firefox 0.9
SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin is one of the first to review the latest Mozilla Firefox release, numbered 0.9. According to the reviewer, there's a lot to be thankful for, as this release is far more stable than its earlier versions and sports some new features along with a new interface. My new all-time-favorite line: 'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'. Nicely put."
'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'
Unfortunately, the most feature-rich products do not always get to be standard-setters. <thinking>countless examples</thinking> It often takes loads of marketing hype and product leverage to leap over the competition, something that Firefox doesn't have in spades.
I love Firefox. The best it can do--at least IMO--is raise the bar for commercial browsers. I do hope I'm wrong on this point, however.
Sigs cause cancer.
'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'. Nicely put.
Nicely put? Whatever. The writer seems so excited about his pun about Microsoft wetting itself that he ignored how awkward it sounds using the root word "shake" twice so quickly. He could have said "precarious position" instead of "shaky foundations," or even "trembling" instead of "shaking."
On topic: Microsoft has nothing to worry about from Firefox. Until Microsoft is forced to package Firefox along with Windows, as well as make it the default browser, the Mozilla crew will never catch up.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
If superior quality software always beat out the competition, Microsoft would not have their current market dominance. Sadly, they do.
Alphanos
Firefox is Mozilla without the email client, right? It can accept the same modules/plugins and everything, right? Or am I way off?
I think it should be noted that the Firefox homepage makes no mention of 0.9 yet. Though, there is a release notes page for it, the links point to 0.8 still. Also, there is nothing in the releases folder on the Mozilla.org ftp for it yet.
or has 0.9 not yet been released? How can you review software that isn't yet available?
0.8, 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, 0.9999... Man, we are so close to 1.0!
anyone have a google cache or cut/paste of the article ? :\
The work that the Mozilla team is doing is great, and we are all aware that Interent Explorer is worthless right now. Unfortunately they may be winning the battle but losing the war so to speak. Microsoft is sitting out this round because they can afford to.
Microsoft is NOT an innovator, so they need to get their ideas somewhere. I'd be willing to bet that they're biding their time, letting open source do free research and development for them. Then hand pick the best ideas for plugins, tabbed interfaces, etc and incorporate them into IE for Longhorn, which will then be shoved down the throats of the masses in 2006.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
First Look at Mozilla Firefox 0.9
. .
Last update: 06-14-2004
Submitted by Adam Doxtater
The last time we looked at Mozilla Firefox , it was still called Mozilla Firebird and then only in version 0.6. Times have changed. Oh how they've changed. Today, The browser with the identity crisis has a sleek new interface, modern features, and is blowing the doors off its competition... and this is putting it mildly.
Mozilla Firefox ( release notes | roadmap ) is a completely modular browser consisting of a basic, streamlined framework upon which users can add ' extensions ', which (just as the name implies) are essentially plugins for the browser. The idea of less is more has been taken to the next level with this browser. With the default browser, you have just enough browser to do pretty much anything you can on the Internet, while more advanced, custom functionality is reserved to the extensions. For instance, you can load extra functionality such as more precise ad blocking, mouse gestures, website registration bypassing, dictionary, user agent switching, complete page and listbox/textbox searching, text zooming, UI tweaks, and the list goes on. There are so many possibilities I can't go into them all here.
When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. The only browsers that come close are Mozilla (of course), Opera , and Konqueror . Safari is also coming along nicely on OS X . The beauty of this browser is not only its functionality... it also lies in its portability. Firefox is currently supported under Linux (GTK+-Xft), Mac OSX, Sun Solaris SPARC/x86, Sun JDS 2003, Microsoft Windows (all versions), and IBM OS/2 , so you can drop it onto almost anything with a modern CPU ( system requirements )
The Mozilla Firefox 0.9 browser
What's new in version 0.9?
This is the last preview release before Firefox comes of age at milestone version 1.0, so what new features have been implemented? Well, at first glance all you will notice is the interface has been redesigned with an updated theme. At first I didn't quite know how to take it, but now that I've used it for a while it's grown on me. The new look is very minimalistic, clinging tightly to the focus of the browser itself. Anyway, here's a more complete listing for those of you who are skimming:
* New default theme - Like I said, it sports a new sleek skin (seen in the screenshots of this review).
* Redesigned theme/extension managers & SmartUpdate - Newly redesigned interfaces make it even easier to manage your browser, as well as keeping it up to date with smart notifications
* Installer updates - Linux now has an installer for GTK2, and the Windows package has gotten smaller - to the tune of 4.6MB.
* Easier migration - Migrating your important information and settings from other browsers has never been easier. Firefox can now import settings from previous versions, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. This includes favorites, settings, cookies, history and saved passwords.
* Help - An updated online help system is now available. This is in addition to the wonderful Firefox Forums and existing help material
* Linux look and feel - Much work has gone into the UI, making it adhere better to GTK2 themes. Menus now look like they belong in the desktop scheme like they were meant to be.
Not only were new features added to this release, work continues to keep bugs squashed, past and present, so the browser feels far more stable than it has in the past. Don't get me wrong, this browser has always been ahead of its time in terms of vision and scope, but it has had its fair share of bugs, but so far as I can tell by running this release constantly for the past week or so it looks pretty solid. It hasn't crashed once, and let me tell you this is a definite improveme
John Kerry is a Joke!
Look out IE, a person named "Mad Penguin" is out to bring you down!
Can anyone confirm this news? There is no corroborating evidence on the Mozilla website. Nice try huckster. You won't fool me again.
It's pretty much decided that our 150+ employee company will be running mozilla firefox. Now, I understand that our little 150 employee company doesn't mean all that much in the big scheme of things, but if we're doing it, there has to be lots more that are also considering and/or doing it.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
There is a link on the page to where you can get the latest .9 release. Here you go
s /0 .9.html
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/release
'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'
What about:
Internet Explorer, your pitiful life is soon to be ended by my completion. My mercy will allow you to die quickly and rot away. Your miserable "browser" functions is a thread against the race of the free, and you deserve the greatest and most horrible deseases known to man.
Anyway, Firefox cannot beat IE off the top rank. It's simply becaues IE comes with Windows, and no smallwited user would know that there's alternatives, at all.
Many people use IE just because it's easy and it works well enough for them. Unfortunately, I doubt Firefox will take care of these people's usage of IE unless it becomes the default browser on new computers. I would guess that many people who are actually attentive enough to features to dislike IE will probably already _not_ be using IE anyway.
What do they still have to do before declaring 1.0?
As a recently converted and quite happy Firefox user, First off, yay!
However, I just don't see IE going anywhere, ever. Not while Windows is on 90+% of mainstream desktops. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but just because a product is better, does not mean it will be successful.
I am all for Mozilla/Firefox, but I just can't see it ever landing on my fathers Dell, or my aunt's HP.
unless, of course, I put it there, but they call me enough already with stupid user questions... I ain't giving them a new piece of software.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
First Look at Mozilla Firefox 0.9 Last update: 06-14-2004 Submitted by Adam Doxtater The last time we looked at Mozilla Firefox , it was still called Mozilla Firebird and then only in version 0.6. Times have changed. Oh how they've changed. Today, The browser with the identity crisis has a sleek new interface, modern features, and is blowing the doors off its competition... and this is putting it mildly. . .
Mozilla Firefox ( release notes | roadmap ) is a completely modular browser consisting of a basic, streamlined framework upon which users can add ' extensions ', which (just as the name implies) are essentially plugins for the browser. The idea of less is more has been taken to the next level with this browser. With the default browser, you have just enough browser to do pretty much anything you can on the Internet, while more advanced, custom functionality is reserved to the extensions. For instance, you can load extra functionality such as more precise ad blocking, mouse gestures, website registration bypassing, dictionary, user agent switching, complete page and listbox/textbox searching, text zooming, UI tweaks, and the list goes on. There are so many possibilities I can't go into them all here.
When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. The only browsers that come close are Mozilla (of course), Opera , and Konqueror . Safari is also coming along nicely on OS X . The beauty of this browser is not only its functionality... it also lies in its portability. Firefox is currently supported under Linux (GTK+-Xft), Mac OSX, Sun Solaris SPARC/x86, Sun JDS 2003, Microsoft Windows (all versions), and IBM OS/2 , so you can drop it onto almost anything with a modern CPU ( system requirements ) The Mozilla Firefox 0.9 browser
What's new in version 0.9? This is the last preview release before Firefox comes of age at milestone version 1.0, so what new features have been implemented? Well, at first glance all you will notice is the interface has been redesigned with an updated theme. At first I didn't quite know how to take it, but now that I've used it for a while it's grown on me. The new look is very minimalistic, clinging tightly to the focus of the browser itself. Anyway, here's a more complete listing for those of you who are skimming:
* New default theme - Like I said, it sports a new sleek skin (seen in the screenshots of this review).
* Redesigned theme/extension managers & SmartUpdate - Newly redesigned interfaces make it even easier to manage your browser, as well as keeping it up to date with smart notifications
* Installer updates - Linux now has an installer for GTK2, and the Windows package has gotten smaller - to the tune of 4.6MB.
* Easier migration - Migrating your important information and settings from other browsers has never been easier. Firefox can now import settings from previous versions, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. This includes favorites, settings, cookies, history and saved passwords.
* Help - An updated online help system is now available. This is in addition to the wonderful Firefox Forums and existing help material
* Linux look and feel - Much work has gone into the UI, making it adhere better to GTK2 themes. Menus now look like they belong in the desktop scheme like they were meant to be.
Not only were new features added to this release, work continues to keep bugs squashed, past and present, so the browser feels far more stable than it has in the past. Don't get me wrong, this browser has always been ahead of its time in terms of vision and scope, but it has had its fair share of bugs, but so far as I can tell by running this release constantly for the past week or so it looks pretty solid. It hasn't crashed once, and let me tell you this is a definite improvement over the previous versions. For inst
http://nyamenation.org/
...take a look at Jesse's more detailed and informative list
Pretty much everyone I know uses Mozilla Firefox for their browser and loves it.
I have been using the 0.9rc since the day it came out. It's ok, maybe a bit better than 0.8, but hardly this amazing new day for Internet browsing. They squashed some bugs, but some long term bugs and annoyances still remain, and unfortunately it appears they have added one or two. Pesonally, it does not seem any more or less stable, but about the same. Regardless of all that, like 0.8 before it, it is still a hell of a lot better than IE.
I've been using Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix since 0.6 or 0.5. Great for the most part, buy it still doesn't work right on enough sites that I still have to fire up IE. Certain sites like bluelithium's publisher interface have sections that don't work at all. Problem appears to be mostly javascript related.
John Kerry is a Joke!
0.9 has NOT been released. Only the release candidate is available, which I've been using for the last two days, and seems okay.
I've been using 0.8 since it came out (You guys got me hooked on it and I've been recomending it to all my non-tech, Windows using, friends) and I haven't experienced any unstability. Is there certain functionality that I'm not using that's more unstable?
Another note, since using Firefox, I haven't experienced the hang on /. that you get with I.E.
Firefox 0.8 rocks! I love it the way it is! I'm not sure I want to upgrade to 0.9.
After a miss-typed URL sent me to one of those wonderful cyber-squatting "search" sites, which then proceeded to automatically install all sorts of nasty spyware and SMTP zombie malware, I banned IE from my house and removed all shortcuts and Program Menu options from all PCs. I made the decision to go with Firefox, and I can honestly tell you I haven't missed IE one bit, and there's not been one reason that I've had to open up IE again. My wife's been happy with it as well. It's clean, fast, renders pages great, much more informative about page loading status, and best of all it doesn't attempt to install software without my permission. I've encouraged everyone I know to give it a try.
Between 0.6 and 0.9, Mozilla Firefox has implemented the Gnome HIG, making Firefox totally inconsistent with every single Linux GUI except Gnome.
I'm afraid even IE running under WINE is better than Firefox 0.9 in this respect...
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel eases/0.9rc/
You must not know very many people.
As usual, there are no installation tips, so everyone in the world wastes time if their history and bookmarks don't import correctly, as happened to me.
but I seriously doubt that this is a "review" per-se... It sounds more like a marketing hype for 1.0, which the last time I checked, is roughly a point release away (a new point release of Firefox goes gold at about once every 4 months).
I did my own mini review of 0.9, however, in contrast with the linked article, I find that there's not much (if any at all) changes in the preferences settings that warrant a point release.
Hopefully, there will be some tweaks and toys added to 0.9 before it goes gold.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I used to use Netscape all of the time. Not because it was a good browser, it actually felt too big, but because it wasn't IE. When firefox came out, I rejoiced at a small browser that didn't have all the crap that Netscape had built in. Firefox is the answer that I think many of us had been waiting for. Once it becomes more stable, more and more people will be switching over to it.
So... no, Mozilla is not dead.
As with every other Mozilla/Firefox/Firebird/Whatever-They-Call-It-Thi s-Week browser story, my question is... "So?". The review in no way mentions a single thing that makes this browser "better" or makes me want to take time to download and install a new program. Why? Give me a good, solid reason why I should download a new program, complete with potential problems, headaches, etc. to replace a perfectly good, functional program? I can't seem to think that the Mozilla developers are kind of like people developing new and better pencils. Except this special pencil is hard to find, takes time to figure out how to use, and does what, exactly, that a regular pencil doesn't do? "Come one and all! See our amazing new pencil! It'll revolutionize the hot, exciting pencil industry!! It'll change the way you use pencils! The lead is softer and the wood is harder! Can you imagine how much more work you could get done with this new pencil? " It's just silly.
but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'
Firefox is an excellent browser; I've been using it happily since 0.6.
But while IE can claim that it "came with My Computer" Firefox cannot overcome it but very slowly and only among those who appreciate its superiority and have enough patience to download and install it.
AOL was the last distributor of millions of CDs who were in a position to bundle Mozilla and deliver it to the majority audience that will just take what they get.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Do they love it because it blocks the popup and spyware ads? Or is it because you didn't show them how to do the same in IE?
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
Take a look over at bugzilla on the bugs still remaining in .9. Bugs Nominated to block .9
You can see there is a bug there that firefox when uninstalled wipes out non-firefox folders!!
I tried these changes, and Firefox is noticeably faster:
1 73568&highlight=pipelining
There is an interesting post on WebMasterWorld, on how to decrease the loading/rendering time of Firefox. I have tried the settings, and have noticed a mild improvement. Just wanted to share the information.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/8007.htm
Edit: Updated Instructions:
open about_:config (without the underscore).
1.) network.http.pipelining = true
2.) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest = true
3.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = (the poster says 32, but suggest 8 is the limit)
4.) network.http.proxy.pipelining = true
Don't do number #5.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=
John Kerry is a Joke!
i can almost hear a discrete laugh coming from my browser as their webserver gets veeery shaky...
Isn't that the way things are usually done, to try to improve a product?
As long as enterprise level business app suppliers write enterprise level web based business apps that require IE plug-in compatibility, and big-business continues to buy these apps either because they are already heavily invested in the particular app, or they are MS shills, Internet Explorer will continue to be the standard browser of choice on Windows machines at enterprise level businesses. But Firefox is quite nice, a huge step in the right direction. I use it almost exclusively except at work.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The article that this story is linked to has Mircosoft ads. So I started thinking ...
I have a simple way for us to get rid of or at least reduce the impact of thoughs stupid get the facts adds. CLIC ON THEM. This will cost microsoft money and if we feal like the extra effort we might as well ask for the free stuff that they are willing to send.
Hmmm.. 0.9rc is far from stable, and strangely enough, 0.8 was more stable for me. Anyhow, I just can stop loving this browser :)
Free Softwares contain Artworks as DATA without lisences.
Artworks should be under Creative Commons licence or other free licences.
This sort of behaviour pattern is similar to what happened back in the early-mid 90's when MS Office started to errode the dominance of WordPerfect and Lotus (and also Netscape).
Already my aging father has gone forth and converted at least a dozen of his own friends from IE to FireFox... and thus the chain reaction starts
To me, the biggest point in Firefox's favor its its security settings, and complete lack of support for activex (you can disable activex in IE, but it will keep bugging you every time an activex control tries to load - either in the form of confirmation dialogs or "this page may not be displayed properly" warning popups - really fun when some spyware ridden pages put themselves into a redirect loop if they detect that you rejected their crap, hoping that the user will get tired of the flood of confirmation dialogs and accidently click yes.)
;)
I guess the best way to describe the difference between Firefox and IE is this:
- With IE, web pages control the browser. They can open windows, close windows, hide your menu and toolbars, hide your status bar, and do god only knows what else.
- With Firefox, the user in in control, including JavaScript security policies and popup controls that define EXACTLY what web pages can and can't do. And the cookie controls are second only to lynx (which had fine-grained control on cookies from the moment they added persistant cookie support
And don't get me started on IE's security record and how long IE bugs are public before M$ even admits they exist, much less fixes them...
So I now use the Mozilla browser most of the time because it works well with the tab extensions.
I wish I were in a position to toss some money at firefox to support mainstreaming the tab extensions.
The theme debacle is really unfortunate, especially along what amounts to censorship in the mozilla boards.
2 38 5&postdays=0&postorder=asc&postsperpage=15&start=0
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=8
Totally disagree with the reviewer there. The theme is minimalistic indeed, but just a bit too much. Plus, I don't know why it's really called a theme when the icons don't really match styles among themselves.
The previous theme looked a lot better. I'm aware of the lisencing issues, but this one is just plain ugly and minimalistic to the point that when you start the browser you wonder if this is a high school level test application.
- sigs are for wimps.
Your narative logic suites a spammer with many similarities to spam content.
If not a spammer, the you must be a pro-bush republican...
Firefox Makes me have to do twice as much work. Let me explain.
Firefox is by far the best browser ever. It is fast, standards compliant, and runs on every platform i support.
The problem is when i develop in firefox. I do some web development, often on a dealine. If i make a stylesheet that looks awesome in firefox, 90% of the time it does not work in internet explorer, which, unfortunatly, is what 90% of my clients use.
So, after i think i'm done, and i test in ie, i know have to go back and fix it, which takes a while as IE is really borked. Therefore, i have to charge more, and my clients are not as happy.
I tell them to switch to firefox, but for some reason, they dont.It's to the point now that i've installed IE5.5 under wine, and i use that as my main development browser. sad but true. I use phoe^H^H^H^Hfirefox for my daily browsing, for sure, but IE to develop.
Strangely, if i make a site that works in IE, it'll usually work in ff and safari/khtml.
of course, this is all IE's fault.. my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek... but it is something that drives me nuts.
Remember, friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer.
Drew Crampsie - Software Developer
Open Source Business : The Tec
I'm going to guess that anybody named "The Mad Penguin" is probably not going to give us an unbiased review of MS products. Furthermore, the review has a clear fascination with lots of technical gadgetry that an average user could care less about.
Anybody who thinks Firefox should cause Microsoft to fear doesn't understand why Microsoft won the browser war. It's not because they were better, but rather because they were good enough and it came with the OS.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
that I still have IE installed. You can't patch the stupid vulnerabilities in the OS if you aren't visiting on IE....
Of course, this isn't a problem on my SuSe box...
Because I always see people complaining about how Firefox is crashing all the time??
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
IE might still have 90% of the pie but I use the agent switcher to spoof IE. This keeps the nagging away. Shouldn't this give a distorted view? Anyway to hell with them. I just love it becouse it's lean and smart software.
I'm tired of having to copy links to new drivers or utilities and paste them to IE to open them.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
see the new icons at http://cheeaun.phoenity.com/weblog/
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
All this said Mozilla has become far too slow (yawn!) and MS IE is a big security hole in your machine. Firefox 0.9s XPI site restriction is long overdue; I'm sick of having to click out of spyware xpi files trying to download into my machine. Often from a web page that tells you its trying to helpo you. did the Firefox designers not think of this?
Also, they should to make Firefox so you never have to wait for anything. When I save a web page, I don't want any delay. Thread it. Never make the luser wait!
Since Microsoft successfully drove Netscape from our desktops by shoving IE down our throats they've stopped innovating (unless you consider tighter integration into the OS an innovation). In the long run this will seal their doom.
Windows will lose steam (the movement is underway) Their proprietary options may suit your average PC user but in the ever-changing world of computing cross-platform is the wave of the future. Linux will continue to gain market share as will Apple. This may not be apparent to the media but I can tell you that among power users, at least in my circle, we welcome innovation, interoperability, and most of all options. Anti-Microsoft sentiment has never been higher. Microsoft's focus on marketing (and intellectual theft) over innovation can only carry them so far.
The open source movement is simply not something that M$ can buy themselves out of.
With that said I'm a very happy Mozilla user.
^^vv<><>BA
IE will be more attractive because it will be the target of less viruses...
Also at GrokDoc, some wrote that Mozilla in Linux sucks because pluggins don't work, I personnaly haven't gotten Java to work. Still lots of features to like.
What we really need is some kind of Firefox IE replacer installer...something that will:
Install Firefox
Install User-Agent Switcher with some pretty buttons
(plus tutorial)
Remove IE Icon
Automatically set all email url links to go to firefox.
Import the bookmarks, in the main folder.
i.e. make it mother-in-law proof.
Steven Vallarian>
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Slashdot does not correctly display correctly for me in 0.9. The left hand bar (sections, help, stories) overlaps the main page.
'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'.
This is my favorite line, because it demonstrates how little open source people know about what the average joe wants. The average joe is never going to use FireFox unless some "nerdy" friend comes along and shows it to him/her. First of all you know how many people call the browsers "The Internet", in addition do you know how many people are just happy using what they have, because they may not care or know any better to use another browser.
The days may be numbered for IE in that there is a perceived better browser out there, but the days are not numbered for IE being used as the number one browser. Because most of the people using computers/internet today don't know much more than how to turn on their computer and use some familure applications. Also I love the guys that are using Linux and talking about how the days are numbered for IE.
My question is "How did you get IE installed on Linux?", since you seem to feel the days are numbered and you are running FireBird/Linux. Note I am not talking to the Windows guys that love FireBird, just the *nix guys that claim IE is numbered. It really shows how biased they are.
Is there no way to make ActiveX run through firefox via a windows-only extension?
Surely the calls have to be somewhat documented in MSDN or the like....
Steven Vallarian>
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My sig is fantastic. Look what it just transpr0ned the original quote into:
My new all-time-favorite line: 'Look out Internet "Long Finger" Explorer... your shafts have been raided for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you plowing on your already shaky foundations and muff sniffing in a small warm puddle'. Nicely put."
Keep IE, then. Mozilla/Firefox are browsers, not VMs. They're not intended to run programs, only to download them.
If anyone bothered to take a look in the help section after they installed and clicked on about they would see this was built on the 8th of june. This is still the old build from last week. Hell the installer still says .8!
looks alot like IE!
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
Too many support calls is the MAIN REASON I install on many peoples computers. No pop-up hell, less viruses, no screwy active-x things causing crashes. I have come to hate IE because of the constant support required to run it.
Meh.
I just closed all my IE windows and switched afer installing Firefox and doing these tweaks. Unbelievably fast.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
At my work with 250+ users, we are coming very close to making that decision. Part of the reason is that we have a number of users out in the field for long periods of time using laptops in the middle of nowhere. For the most part, any internet connections are dial-up.
So, part of our reason for seriously considering moving is that we've had a number of trojans on those machines exploiting IE holes. This combined with the pain of downloading MS patches on dial-ups is leading the IT department to lean toward a FireFox standard. One of the things that had been holding us back was problems with the iNotes client in FireFox 0.8. It works in 0.6, not 0.8. Well, it is working again in 0.9.
This is not a review of 0.9 because 0.9 has not been released yet. It is a review of 0.9 RC1.
See those letters "R C 1 " ? They make a difference.
I'd like to see these Editors write code like they write English.
According to the link, the latest release is 0.8...
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but:
Mozilla/Firefox will not have "won" the war until the majority of programmers under MS Windows, upon needing to add an HTML render widget, or HTTP downloader, or FTP downloader to their app, do so by invoking the appropriate DLL from Mozilla rather than the IE/Windows DLL.
Until that day - until the day when one CAN remove IE and all of its component DLLs from Windows and replace them with Mozilla, MS will be the winners of the war.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Yes, but the Mozilla people have been claiming that since 1998. Their products are usually more bug-ridden than even IE.
I can't believe i didn't know about this tweak. And I thought I was already surfing at full speed!
Meh.
I feel that the only reason IE is still even used is because its distributed with Windows. If Windows didnt ship with a browswer, people would be forced to make the browswer desision and FireFox would be much more wide spread than it even is today.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
As I understand it, Firefox is supposed to be faster/lighter than Mozilla.
On windows I notice that its pretty fast, very responsive.
However on my faster Linux machine the same thing can't be said.. It runs fairly slowly there.
Is this a known problem, something they intend to address.. or am I just imagining it?
stuff
In the about box in the install it says 0.8+ Since this is a release canidate for 0.9 maybe isnt isnt safe to say that 0.9 is out yet.
--- Sig test. 1...2...3...
OK, Flash has its purposes. maybe I'll re-install it sometime. But when I don't have it installed, I'd like to stop being pestered by every Flash-containing site about it. Is there a simple way in Mozilla / Firebird / anything to preemptively ignore the [Install Flash Now / Cancel] dialogs?
Oh, and site designers: most sites' use of Flash is silly and wasteful. Just think what hell will be like, and enjoy the animation down there.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Even though I love Internet Explorer (except lack of tabs) if they go through with the decision to only make IE7 available with Longhorn then Firefox should fit the bill nicely.
I agree with you on Opera's tab handling, I want ALL my tabs to stay in one window unless I choose otherwise. Also, if you don't use Opera's mail/newsgroups/chat features you can disable them by going tools->preferences->programs and paths->uncheck enable mail and news. You mention some stability programs so maybe you should try the new 7.51 version.
http://www.opera.com/download/
The RC *is* major feature complete, but (as evident with the new theme and extension work) is still needing a fair bit of work before release. 0.9 final is expected in July, 1.0 final is expected in September (at which point I'm more than happy to shove it on everybody and anybody :) ) See the Roadmap for details.
In a build I downloaded today, I even noticed that the profile importer now finally gives you the option of which profile to import from (eg IE, Netscape 4, Mozilla 1.x, etc) before actually doing the dirty work. That wasn't present in 0.9rc IIRC.
In other words, I'd wait a little bit longer before pushing 0.9RC on your friends and family. This one's for the testing folks. Of course, anything pre-1.0 is really meant for testing, but this one more so :)
1. Tabs. Going shopping online and want to compare items and prices at different vendors? Instead of opening a couple dozen windows, you can have all those pages accessible in one window. Kind of hard to explain, but once you try it you won't want to be without it. IE doesn't do tabbed browsing.
2. Pop ups. Yeah, you can get pop up blockers for IE, but that requires downloading and installing a plugin.
Firefox is not the only browser with these features, but the point is they are good solid reasons to bag IE. There's probably more, but those two struck me right off the bat.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
What, like reviving their superior version of IE for Mac or porting some of the features to Winblows? Fat chance.
Microsoft is putting all of it's efforts into "security". That is DRM, code signing and BIOS efforts that will lock out competition. Their idea of competing it to break the competitor. If they were interested in improvements, they could have fixed some of the longstanding bugs that have been used recently to blow up systems.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I use much of the TBE functionality and would like it to be available to users, but I don't know that it belongs in the base browser. If there is good support for the basic operations though, I suspect (having tried to read through the TBE code a couple of times) tab extensions are likely to be less bloated, more modular and easier to implement/fix/...
I used Netscape from NS 1.0 to 6.0. I tried out 6.0 and it was absolutely terrible. I then tried out IE and it was surprisingly good. I kept using IE till I decided to try out FireFox. I found a speed improvement with FireFox, so I use it now.
It's an infinite series with 1 as its limiting sum. You can add as many nines to the end as you like but it will never equal 1. For most applications rounding it to 1 will do. For example, if I wish to consume 0.999~ litres of beer, four throwdowns will do, will a small safety margin built in. Or I can drink a slab for a large safety margin.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Am I the only one to be exhausted by the footprint of Firefox? I've used FF 0.8 as my primary browser on my Win and Lin platforms and it seems that it even has more memory leaks than IE. And I don't know how it handleds cache, but it is all too fat.
Please, no more feature before a decent memory footprint!... then it will be THE browser
Just wrote this for you to urge FF developers to go that way.
I've read this one enough now to want to pop it. Companies like Dell, HP and others might want to tweak their customer's machines with this or Mozilla itself as a default browser. While this is hard to do, it can be done and vendors looking for a competitive edge in a world of look and work alike machines might make the move. They have already started to sell machines with Linux on them and that proves that the anti-trust bust has had some small liberating effect on big dumb vendors.
When someone tells me that the local Cable company does not "support" anything but Outlook Express on M$, I tell them that people who don't use that program or that platform don't need a tenth of the support.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Aside from startup speed, there is no issue at runtime. But yeah, the memory usage is fucked. 40MB for 6 pages open? Jesus.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
shouldn't they just browse sites and not let you download files? That's what FTP's for isn't it?
I'd really prefer being able to control what I can and can't do with software on my computer rather than being kept "safe for your own good". It's basicly a form of DRM. You're saying I can't execute this file because you assume I'm an idiot and would either unknowingly run malicious code without adequate antivirus protection or that I'm too stupid to find a way to circumvent it, which I'm not. It's just constantly inconvenient and irritating.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
More than 90%? And what about spoofing?
Shouldn't that give some unreliable results?
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/userage
It's just too bad I have to use that extension.
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/
would have been real nice for them to let you know that RC9 would erase your previous bookmarks. >:-@
0.8 has actually run pretty stable for me. The main difference I've seen when upgrading to 0.9 is the ugly new theme.
Firefox is a great browser, I hope they rethink the big gian aqua-looking theme for 1.0
once you go slack, you never go back
Am I the only one who is having rendering problems with /. in mozilla and firefox lately? Every other site seems to work fine.
Have a look at Multiple IE's in Windows for running multiple versions of IE side by side in Windows.
Yes, but things don't always go that way before 1.0. In general odd numbered releases are for new features and are not as stable as even numbered releases. I'm not sure if the Mozilla people follow all of those rules or not, but it's good to let current firebird users know that they won't be punished for moving up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Works great for me. I have seen a few reports of some odd CSS issues that don't actually reflect what the browser would do if it were the sole browser on the system but everything I've compared against VirtualPC or the few times I've been able to compare a site against a native install has been accurate.
Bleh!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love all the hype, but the reviewer hasn't addressed the isse that we are ALL thinking about.
When is the next name update for the project?
I've had problems running both Firefox and Thunderbird lately. They manifest when I try to open a folder in Thunderbird. Thunderbird just dies. I open it, try again, it dies. Repeat ad infinitum. Open it, kill Firefox, try again, folder opens, go on with life.
You'd think this sort of thing (a) wouldn't happen and (b) would have been caught before a release.
Well, many people say that since IE is the default browser, Firefox or any other good product won't ever be victorious, or at least get a decent market share. This is partially true, but maybe there is a way after all. I own a small computer company that either builds custom PCs, or resells branded PCs according to the customer's needs. Since we do check a few thigs before delivering the system, I alwas have a corporate policy of installing some default applications like winamp, acrobat reader etc. I have recently extended this policy and included several opensource applications like firefox, openoffice (only if the user has not bought M$ office though), the gimp etc. Moreover, if I see that the customer can handle it, I give away a free copy of the opencd. Believe it or not, I have received several calls from customers "just to thank me". And furthermore, I notice that some of them -certainly not all- stick to those apps, and they sort of become a jumpstart to the opensource world. I guess if more companies did that, the market share would be a tad different....
But what the hell. Here are some random thoughts on Firefox.
I'm currently running Firefox on all my machines. And I have been for quite some time. I really like the upgrade from 0.8 to 0.9.
I use it on my main computer, Linux (Fedora2) and two Win2k boxes. No problems on either platform.
I honestly do not care for Mozilla at all. I find firefox far more stable than any version of IE.
The best theme you can go with is the Noia 2.0 eXtreme.
I'm surprized no-one has pointed out the IE update in XP SP 2, which should be just enough to get most people to stay - tabs and pop-up blocking.
I still don't like how IE works, so I stick with Mozilla - and Safari at home.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
By the time it's installed and running, I'm still under 45 seconds.
I've done this for (to?) a number of people here. They curse popups, I walk over, get FF onto their machine, spent a second configuring cookies and tabs and popups, show them Control-T and leave.
Usually 2-3 minutes total to have them running, configured and edumucated.
It is as stable as IE or more. Unfo, our very large company isn't a fan of HTML so several of the web pages look like crap or don't work at all without ActiveX.
Me? My internal web page emits a short loop of the smurf song .wav if you're using IE. Otherwise, it's HTML 4.01 compliant.
I push that following standards in HTML is critical because it would be bad practice and damaging to shareholder value to lock ourselves into a single vendor solution. Especially when it's so unnecessary and so possible to write correct HTML that allows choice and allows the IT department to choose the BEST solution for the client rather than be forced into the ONLY solution.
Use HTML, use browsers which support HTML and work for you and don't have massive holes to be patched every week.
MS stopped developing IE in large part once Netscape shipwrecked. Mozilla was close to an Open Source shipwreck but for the commitement of several Netscape employees who knew the code well enough to start getitng something that people could contribute too. In the last 18 months or so, it's been advancing nicely. Hopefully, MS won't notice and will keep doing nothing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I went over to see my friend's new house, and his little brother came in, and in passing, mentioned something about popups ruining his games of UT2K4. I went in, ran spybot and adaware, installed firebird, and put on adblock. He asked me why everyone still uses IE, and I couldn't tell him. But he would still be using it if I didn't help him out.
That is just a matter of perception. Firefox, Camino, and all the other browsers use the exact same rendering engine as Mozilla. They therefore have, within the limits of minor configuration variations, identical performance in all meaningful aspects (ie, rendering web pages). The only difference is the user interface and supporting code, which is a bunch of XML and javascript that is run by the rendering engine under the inefficient Mozilla model. This stuff doesn't make any difference. The only difference is that everyone at Mozilla has been repeating endlessly that it is "light" and "fast" because it has fewer features, and idiots like you believe it.
He wants his punch line back.
Serves the idiot right for claiming to review the final bits for 0.9 when he was really reviewing the Release Candidate. That kind of discredits everything he says now doesn't it.
Well that seems to let it run from the download manager, but then I still have to open the download manager after choosing to save the file. Why can't I just open the file directly from the link so it doesn't waste any disk space other than temp storage which is automaticly freed later?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
There are 2 web developers at my work. Myself and another 'dude'. The other 'dude' only tests on IE. I test on Mozilla & IE. Recently, when I was asked to give my input on a major upgrade to the website the 'dude' manages (our company's e-commerce arm), I voiced several problems his page had when viewed via Mozilla. To be fair, I explained to my boss how IE has 93% of the browser market. My boss was more interested in the 7% who couldn't view the site properly, and the 'dude' was asked to make the appropriate changes to get it working in Mozilla too. My only point is that that no matter how much of the market IE exploits, other browsers matter.
Well for standards compliance, you might use something like HLink for the sort of things XBL and behaviours are currently used for.
But presumably we'll have to hack XBL and behaviours bindings to get HLink to work anyway. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I love firefox, but what makes me doubt a lot any big change in the browser percentages:
- A lot of people have no clue what is a "browser", my daily diet of frustration:
me: "open your browser and typ.."
them: "slow down, what's a browser?"
me: "explorer, mozilla?"
them: "eh?"
me: "what do you use to look at internet stuff?"
them: "ah you mean open the internet?"
or
them: "ah you mean click on the funny 'e'?"
or
them: "ah you mean www?"
So how do you convice a person not to open their www but to open firefox?
- Microsoft still ships a lot of copies of the O/S, each one with that funny 'e' preloaded and ready. It's everywhere, every PC you want to buy, every laptop... feeding the drones wanting to open their internet.
Well almost all bundle computers come poorly configured due to laziness, so presumably the "good configuration" is "not good enough to sell computers" either. :-)
Besides, web browsers don't sell computers. When was the last time you saw someone say "I bought this computer, cos I saw this demo app running on it called Internet Explorer and it looked fully sick"?
(And yes, I'm feeding the troll.)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
After 2 days using Firefox 0.9 RC on Windows, I wanted to say thanks for it by adding links to its page from my sites, but I had mixed feelings about that. My only worry is that some sites still work only with IE.
Seeing your 150 switch to Firefox gave me a warm feeling that some day, things may change.
To have an option is good. To actually have the better option is great. To make the switch is fantastic.
I've been happily using Mozilla flavored web browsers since 1999, and this is the first time that I wanted that everybody make the switch.
Once I installed the latest Firefox 0.9 RC, I kind of wanted the old theme back. But after using it for 5 or 6 hours, I was sold.
In the hope that someone from the Mozilla team will see this post: thank you so much for a wonderful web browser!
Cheers.
Some pages glorifying the CSS capabilities of Mozilla don't render correctly with Firefox.
Why?
(For example: http://mozilla.linuxfaqs.de/css, the last one, selected text.)
I don't see a 0.9 package for PPC Linux?
This version of Linux isn't supported?
(This isn't a flame. I just don't see it.)
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
Ugh, stupid line breaks. Let's try this again...
> way off mang. it is a ground up build with new addon ans
> a completely different interface and code base. i prefer
> its tabbed browsing.. its small and by far my favorite browser.
While there have been some significant changes in Firefox it certainly is not different from the "ground up." It shares much of the same code with Mozilla, the most important of which is (IMO) the Gecko rendering engine.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Since Mad Penguin dumped PostNuke, their server is holding up better to the /.ing.... used to melt in 5 seconds. This article has been up for quite a while now and I can still get to it (albeit is slower than hell, but there's something to keep the admins busy hehe). Nice work guys!
There's a monkey in you closet and he's happy to see you...
I just recently decided to give FireFox a try on my XP box after all the type about it here on SlashDot. I had high hopes after switching to Mozilla Thunderbird recently.
However, I was severely disappointed. It didn't do what I can do with IE. Look, you may remember that MS got in some hot water for "integrating" the browser into the OS. We all said how evil that was. But, you know what? I've taken advantage of it!
Here's a breif list of the things I like about IE over FireFox (and if I'm wrong about being able to do these in FireFox, please correct me):
1. I can re-arrange the toolbars to my satisfaction.
2. I can cleverly size my toolbars such that extra items are hidden behind a pop-out button so I can effectively make quick 1-click menues.
3. The unbeatable *real* Google Toolbar
4. The Favorites are arranged as files & folders so I can manipulate them easily (i.e. but them as pop-outs on my taskbar, make hard-links to subfolders in them in other logical locations)
5. I can embed HTML in my TaskBar to accomplish all sorts of useful things (wallet-size photoalbum, dictuinary, phone number lookup, etc.)
My browser is not just a browser. It bleeds into my operating system and vice-versa. I'm not blindly pro-Microsoft, I just happen to take advantage of the integration Microsoft chose to thrust upon us.
Honestly, I wish the "browser-integration" API were documented so Mozilla couled wholly replace the IE integration in XP. But to not have it at all is a big hole -- at least to someone who has become accustomed to the convenience it offers.
Let's see... once i've been developing small script in JS for adding dynamically an item do dropdown box. Tested with mozzila... works, tested with IE -> crash (i mean literraly crashed). I mean this is truly pain in the butt. If any warning would appear, it would be great, but crashing browser with some JS simple script is kinda annoying :|
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
First, I can't install a new theme (my favourite is Pinball), the .jar files on the themepage do nothing when I click on them.
Second, when clicking the "Browse" link on a web page, the captions are missing from the buttons on the file browser.
Third, the fonts are all messed up. It is not using the proper font as specified on a page.
I will go back to using 0.8 which is working perfectly for me.
Meh.
Hmm .. I use Firefox every single day, and I think it's crashed about twice in six months. How do you make something already that stable "far more stable"?
Is it just me or are the milestones named after suburb names in Auckland, New Zealand? I see Three Kings, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill...?! Milestone Names
Everytime I see the whole "IE vs. [every other browser]" debate I wonder why no one's yet came up with a simple, "IE Compatible" layer for Mozilla yet.
How hard could it be to program a "pluggable" (meaning that it's a simple 'use or don't use' checkable option in the preferences) layer which would read the incoming HTML code, and then quickly re-interprete and optimize it for Mozilla before outputting it in the browser?
Now I'm a web developer, and I realize that this isn't a 100% solution since there's so many variables, and so many styles of coding. It would be a constantly improving thing (duh... software), but it wouldn't be too difficult to determine the optimal way to present HTML code in Mozilla. On a modern PC (1ghz+), the process shouldn't really introduce any kind of a noticable delay.
It'd erase the last reason to use IE. Additionally as could be made to allow the user to simply choose which sites to use the "IE Mode" with. Thus they could view Mozilla's default display/interpretation on all sites other than what they've specified. Then the browser would silently switch into IE mode when needed.
I'm a web developer and code things differently for Mozilla and IE all the time. This would save me and countless other developers having to do double the code just to handle the fact that IE and non-IE browsers don't always see things equally. And don't get into the whole "That's because Mozilla displays HTML as it should be and IE..." crap. I think the only browser that might be 100% W3C compatible is Opera, and I'm not too sure about that. Mozilla, Netscape, IE, and all the rest all have their share of unique issues/nuances.
But aside from saving my lazy ass some extra work, this would also help to ensure that all browser users see things equally with Mozilla.
So... Why hasn't anyone done this? Am I missing something? Something like this is doable in Javascript and is done daily (if browser==Netscrape{Do...}), but why no on/off "IE mode" compatability layer for Mozilla?
Maybe, but I think they have great "word of mouth". Geeks find it here, and take it to end users. I've heard/seen firefox recomended at least twice to end users in the last few months. I think it has a shot, particularly once it hits 1.0 and distributions start to package it.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Writing this in 0.9. Just downloaded.
Installer looks nice. But an attempt to install over an older FF version brings an "overwrite or quit" dialog. NO UPGRADE OPTION????? Ok, overwrite.
Up and runnig. First thing: apply theme. Choice made, installing via web...
crash.
restart FF. Theme shows up but no preview. "Use theme" button available for the new theme. Several clicks on it but FF remains silent.
Quit FF. Restart. Original theme still in place.
Ok, let's reinstall. Selecting new theme, pressing "Uninstall" button...
Silence. No messages.
Quit FF. Restart. Theme stil there.
Deep breath.
Back to texturizer.net. Installing again. 98%, 99%, 100%!
Progress bar goes away. Silence. No messages.
No new theme in the list.
Restart FF
Still no new theme in the list.
Is this really a 0.9 RC? Seems to me that a little more quality assurance (read: careful test scripts) should help a lot.
With all the MSIE versions combined, like this.
Note how MSIE is showing a slight downward trend over the last year, while Mozilla and "Other" are growing. Granted, the difference is still huge, but if Longhorn keeps being delayed, who knows what will happen?
This works as expected in Firefox. It causes IE 6 to crash and burn with a bizarre error message.
Some Googling revealed that IE refuses to allow you to use a JS function in a parent window to populate a select box in its child. If it refused to do something like this for security purposes (and if this idea is, indeed, poor security, I would like to know about it), but it shouldn't just die. I had to rip my code apart to add in an extra step to pass data to the child windows and then use their own functions to populate the interfaces, which annoyed me because I was having to load the same JS all over again.
Being able to set your bookmark with a user-agent string for those few pages that require them.
I know that when I have to deal with BellSouth.com I have to fool the webpage into thinking I'm running IE when I'm really running Opera. It's really the only page that I have to use it with since most of the other pages I visit work just fine with the standard user-agent string.
Still, it would be nice to be able to set it in my bookmark such that I don't have to manually switch it back when I'm done with that page. I like to report what I'm using so that webmasters get an accurate idea of what is out there. And thus hopefully move away from the idea that as long as it works with IE they are ok.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
blah
I swear this is the buggiest release I've ever seen.
IE7. Check it out.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
You just check the box that says 'Remember this password' and from there it's only a matter of clicking the 'OK' button the first time that you open Mozilla/Firefox for the day.
This newest release didn't seem to want to load properly, and it corrupted the previous install. So I'm back to 0.8 for the time being. :/
Easy - first, install Flash.
Then install the Flash Block extension. It replaces the Flash applet with a button you have to click to begin the applet.
I use Firefox almost exclusively but I don't see it making a dent in IE's market share. For the average user, IE does everything they want. The true power of Firefox only shows itself once you've tweaked it, loaded your favorite extensions and installed all the required plugins.
It's hard to imagine someone who is happy with IE going through all that trouble. Motivation is a major problem -- most end users have a phobia aganist switching software. It takes a lot for them to try something new.
Alright, It seems you're all fixated on the sizing issue in IE that as people have pointed out is easily remedied by correctly stating the doctype. I'm not at all talking about these little issues that aren't 100% bugs, because they can be worked around and such. What I'm getting at is more of the real design issues where you have to give up on a design element or spend many hours creating a work around to get it to display in accordance with standards on IE, when it worked just fine on every other browser across the board. Simple example is the fieldset/legend bug. When you create a fieldset and apply a legend (special kind of title... think of the option groups on forms where the title is put across the top of the box) IE colors the background color outside of the lines above the title. That's just one example, there are literrally hundreds of these kinds of issues that you have to deal with when making a commercial website. Yes, that's right, you do have to deal with them when making a commercial website, contrary to the words that have been pushed into my mouth, I never said that you shouldn't deal with these issues on commercial sites, I said simply that I don't bother with it on "MY OWN WEBSITES" anymore.
Second, firefox does not go unpatched of critical flaws for the amount of time that IE does. Furthermore, there are no outstanding critical flaws in mozilla Firefox 0.8 to my knowledge, and I haven't applied one patch since I originally installed it. Let's take a look at IE on the other hand reveals 24 unpatched security issues, many of which were critical, at last update. This is unacceptable, and is a considerably large source of adware/spyware/malware/viruses. Which is a considerably large source for Spam, Lost Company revenue due to computer outages (from badly coded malware/spyware and from viruses), as well as a considerable amount of cost in time for the IT infrastructure to fix.
These are the reasons that while IE is obviously the most used browser right now, it is in no way guaranteed to stay that way. You people do realize that netscape was once king, right? Furthermore, I myself have referred firefox 0.8 to at least 50-75 end users for personal use, in addition to participating in the decision to move the company over to mozilla. I have yet to have a single complaint or person tell me when asked that they chose not to keep it. Every single person has decided to keep it, and most have thoroughly thanked me for the sound recommendation, and have let me know that they are VERY happy with their new browser, and that they will be recommending it to all their friends/family. I'm sorry, but if I get that good of a result, there are most likely others out there that are getting similar if not greater results. That's a lot of people. Regardless, it's firefox seems from my perspective, at least, to be spreading like a virus. It's a great piece of software, that is very well written. I for one will be glad when Internet Explorer is either fixed or loses it's market share, because I assure you that one of the above scenarios is coming very soon.
--Jamon
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
I just upgraded from 0.8 to 0.9RC1 on Linux, and now my firefox load script is unable to --remote an existing instance to open a new window without to avoid loading multiple instances, which is bad because multiple instances can't share a profile. The problem seems to happen unpredictably for me. Sometimes it succeeds, but other times it fails, leaving me having to open a new window manually and paste in my url.
Overall it's a great browser, and this is just a minor problem that will no doubt be fixed (unless the problem is my own). But at this moment I'm running Konqueror.
"I have built *tons* of web pages for both IE and Mozilla."
Wow... Awwwwwwsome dude.
Uh.... by the way, just how many 0's and 1's does it take to make up a ton anyway?
like left side bookmarks to tell url on status bar. Two bookmarks with identical names can mislead.
Seriously, how much did you work with Firefox? How did you miss those obvious menu items?
Did you try any extensions? The browser by itself is pretty boring, the real power is the extensions. If you're adventurous enough to try the Google toolbar, maybe try the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox (if you do web development).
You won't go back. IE sucks.
Excellent points about IE being its own standard. What's more, it is highly questionable what incentive Microsoft has to fix these problems - after all, most medium-to-large sized businesses are going to design sites that work with IE as a minimum, and Netscape/Mozilla/W3C as an afterthought if we're lucky.
Therefore I feel some responsibility must move to web designers. If designers do backflips to ensure IE compatibility then they simply allow MS to get away with it. In some cases it would be better to allow minor visual glitches and include a recommendation that the site be viewed with a 'W3C compliant browser such as Mozilla'. The same response could be sent to anyone who complains.
If I were a large, non-MS software/IT company, I would be pushing for the upholding of the standards very hard. If ISO can get huge companies to spend billions getting certified, surely the IT industry can spend some cash to uphold a very basic set of standards for HTML.
Read Pynchon.
You really think Microsoft is going to throw all of their resources into one thing?
OK, there really are two things they spend money on, acquisitions and advertising. Acquisitions includes DRM. Trolling Slashdot is part of their advertising effort. Enron had piles of money too. Too bad M$ has not used it's supposedly vast resources to fix, much less improve it's third rate browser in the last two years. How's that for a clue?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
'nuff said.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Lately, I've noticed more and more sites have some sort of met-tag to tell IE not to save a webpage. As far as I'm concerned, if it's out on the public web, I have a right to save it locally for personal use. Mozilla and presumably FF, don't have any qualms about saving a page...
This seems to be another great release, but I think that the Qute theme was far superiour to this current one. Qute items were very sharp - these new bright green and blue items on the other hand remind me why I often dislike the look of open source programs. I'm wondering if Qute will be avaiable for download separately?
I've been following and upgrading Firefox as new versions come out, and am bemused by the fact that the Mac version STILL doesn't render Slashdot properly. Anytime there's italic text, Firefox manages to overlap text with non-italic text.
Mabey by version 1.0.. mabey.. *sighs*
And that is precisely the reason somebody can hack your windows machine using IE.
evil is as evil does
This might be true if they were not a monopoly. In this world, de facto trumps de jure.
If you set the aqua color to "graphite" in the appearance control panel, you'll replace the blue with a nice grayscale theme. It looks very nice with brushed metal and blends in better with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro's look.
There are also some 3rd party tools to change the entire theme itself.
The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.
I design my site using XHTML and CSS1. My current development cycle goes: I first design valid XHTML and CSS. Then I check it works on Firefox, and of course, it always does. Then I check in on Konqueror; less problems there now Apple's pushed the KHTML renderer up to scratch.
Then I test it in IE. Almost every single time I revise my site design, IE can't render bits of it properly. This is pretty much very irritating, since I don't have IE on my platform, so it's difficult to check. The latest redesign I've done I haven't tested on IE yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if something was broken. I put it up anyway, because my site doesn't receive a lot of traffic in any case, and most of it's from standards-complient browsers.
So in my experience, IE has been a big pain. I'm not using the latest CSS or javascript. It's all CSS1 and XHTML 1.0. And it still breaks for non-trivial page layouts. IE moaning isn't a myth. IE is very irritating to design for. It doesn't properly suppost CSS1. CSS1, for fuck's sake. Sometimes there isn't a way of fiddling it to fit, so I need to go back and do the layout I want a whole different way.
What's the most annoying thing I find about web design? Making it work with IE.
The old installation folders are needed to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file. After searching, I found that the old files were in:
Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\
They must be copied to:
C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile s\default.uh4 >
The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.
Possibly the FireFox team has some old Microsoft employees, because they sometimes promote frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.
On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.
Here's a quick link that may be of some value to you web-heads:
IE7 stylesheet
Include this stylesheet with your code and some of the IE quirks get handled for you. The page contains enough info to get you going. Good luck!
I always get the shakes before a drop.
It struck me suddenly that all the geekish delights of Moz, standards compliance, tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, etc., delivers absolutely nothing that I really need or want, while the DRM'd IE6 fits me like a glove.
I agree that it would be a good feature. Konqueror let's you do this.
0.8 also used to die and leave processes behind that would keep other instances of Firefox from starting up correctly; I don't know yet whether 0.9 fixes at least that problem.
All of that stuff works correctly on Windows. It is regrettable that even champions of free and open source put Windows first and don't fix such elementary problems correctly on Linux.
Never mind about the "multiple instances", that seems to have gotten fixed.
Firefox wasn't even released until 7:22 GMT today. That's only a little over an hour ago! The Linux builds haven't even been updated. All that's available currently is two Windows files and a Mac file. This is perhaps the most ill-timed Slashdot article ever.
If M$ get their way with Longhorn, Avalon and XAML, Moz/Firefox may well be left behind in the dark ages the way Netscape was. And while Brendan Eich, Icaza and the rest of the Mozilla and Gnome groups have been talking about an Avalon/XAML compatible engine working across Gnome/Mozilla, this is still playing follow-the-leader. With a combo of patents and moving-target standards, M$ could easily put IE well ahead of the rest again. Why is it that open source always plays catch up like this? What does it take for open source to innovate and lead? Push the envelope of technology?
-- Manik Surtani
Get your doctypes right and IE will start to 'toe the line' a little better than if you didn't use correct doctypes.
Don't get what I'm talking about? Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE!
Just downloaded 0.9 and fired it up.
The about box describes it as 0.9 and makes no mention of it being a release candidate.
Also the build date is given as 14th June, which is after the final RC was announced IIRC.
Here's the build line from the about box:
Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9
So, to me it looks like the official 0.9 is up now, just not linked on the main project page yet.
And yes, it is noticeably faster than 0.8
I like firefox it does pretty much all I want it to
I may be wrong here but didn't Microsoft lose it's court case forcing it to allow users to uninstall Internet explorer?
The reason I am asking is because
1) Any straightforward uninstall doesn't remove IE it just takes the icon of the task bar.
2) Windows update will not work without Internet explorer
ThunderBird has a problem too it will not work with webbased email accounts such as hotmail.
I know hotmail isnt great but it is isp independant and this matters to me.
I really want to throw out IE and Outlook but it looks like M$ has got me locked into having them on my windows PC's
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Does anyone know if there is a spell checker?
Seem to remember reading abot one, but could not find it. I have been using Firefox for a while and
if I have to use I.E. I miss tabbed browsing for one.
Spell checker would sew things up for me.
Thankyou.
That's an awesome misfeature. Every time I see an image animate, I activate the Firefox ad-blocker. I even have graphics7.nytimes.com disabled, so I can't read the first letter of any NY Times story.
For me, the purpose of reading an article is to read the article. Every blipping thing on the screen that flickers and flashes merely serves to slow down my assimilation and comprehension of the content.
If I were going to contribute my own feature to Firefox, it would be an automatic image manipulation where for any image where it detects animation, it freezes the image to a single frame, and then reduces the colour palette to a washed out colour scheme least likely to attrack visual attention that isn't focussed there deliberately.
The image can spring to life and animate normally only when I hover my mouse over it.
It only takes one trip to Reno to realize that flashing lights aren't designed to help people think.
And that is precisely the reason somebody can hack your windows machine using IE.
How? Seriously. It's not been done yet. I don't have a firewall, so it should be easy. PUt your white hat on, hack my machine, and show me the proof when it's all done. Maybe that will be my wakeup call to finally secure my system with FireFox.
Agreed! This is the one thing where Microsoft didn't crap stuff into the registry, a proprietary XML format, or anything else. Just simple, individual files.
Probably not as space-efficient as keeping them in one HTML file, but I doubt anyone is complaining that their bookmarks are their primary consumer of diskspace.
Seeing as how simple and straight forward this is, hwo hard would it be to build an extension for Mozilla/FireFox to support MS's *.url files and folders, or fi not, some new, open URL format (I prefer the first because it would make it easier for people to migrate from IE to Mozilla/FireFox).
Did anyone read the whole article? Firefox is so locked down that when the reviewer used his normal account, he states 'Firefox informed me that my profile was already in use, and to either choose another or create a new one. This was odd .... but my user account had no rights to change the attributes, so I had to sudo over to change the permissions.' Talk about being locked down. Users will love that. I hope it happens when I clear my cache out too. Can you imagine the possibilities of avoiding IE lock down will get ya?
Firefox can't do anything to win market share from Microsoft. It is Microsoft's game to lose. M$ hardly has to update their product and it would be better then any Mozzila release to date. Sorry to say but 'A day late and a dollar short' should be 'A few years late and no money to be made'. What a waste of hours, I wonder what the suicide rate is for their developers? IMHO Open source web suite development resources would have been much better spent in R&D looking for that killer app the makes Linux a must. I'm ready.
How can you be so sure? It's quite easy for a malicious hacker to cover their tracks. If you don't have a firewall and you're on Windows, you might as well put a bullseye on your anus.
Can do. View - Toolbars - Customize
I can cleverly pick necessary stuff so that there's no need for anything to be hidden behind pop-out anything...
...which may sound neat, but can't get me tempted away from bookmark keywords, which is so far the most flexible searching thing I've ever seen, and all I need is the location bar - "g whatever" searches google, "imdb whatever" searches IMDB, "dict word" searches dictionary.com, "wayback url" gets the archived versions of the page... There's more to world than just Google, you know =)
That was pure pain on the FAT16 days, please don't remind me. Millions of files eating away the precious diskspace.
And even on these modern days, there are problems - what do you think is easier to process by script, copy around, backup, or sync over network?
Gimmicks. All gimmicks. Isn't that what Perl is for? =) I prefer to do silly tricks like this on tools that are more up to the task, thank you very much.
And I use browser as a building block of the whole. The browser does just what it's expected to do, in perfect harmony with everything else in the system. What the browser doesn't do is handled by other programs that bloody well do. What Microsoft doesn't get that in order to make things flexible and powerful, you don't need to melt everything into an unholy combination.
How do you mean won't install?
What is the error message?
Where are you trying to write the file?
What are you using to unzip it?
Have you tried putting it in your user directory?
I have yet to try it and don't know how well it works
I've used it a bit. As a basic HTML widget it works Ok. However for advanced use, many of the functions are just stubs, and don't do anything except return a failure. It's not a complete replacement yet.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
As rusty as IE is, it still has 90 something percent of the market share.
As we all know many people will not bother to download another browser.
If a sizable chunk of people do try fireforx M$ will get off its ass and imitate the best features in a new version of IE so most people will again not bother to use anything other then what comes with their windows installation.
If you delete the libnull plugin from your plugins directory it won't bug you again. That's all the plugin does, so it's safe to remove it.
I'm using Opera 7.51 for Windows and enjoying every second of it.
Anyone want to tell me how Firefox is better than Opera?
---
Workers of the world, unite! http://www.labourstart.org
Is it just me, or has Firefox 0.9 changed it's radio buttons so that they are now really ugly? I don't remember them displaying that badly before - they look as bad as they do on old linux browsers.
Please oh please code Firefox to allow the links bar to be on the same line as the button bar. I just want one or two quick links on there and don't need that bar taking up that vertical space and a whole line across. The url box doesn't need to be that big - most initial urls aren't that long.
Thanks to the "wonders" of XPI, now we're getting stupid executable spyware crap again like WeatherBug.
I stick with Opera and have been quite happy. No goofy custom executable formats, no goofy pointless reimplementations of entire widget systems--just a small, blazingly fast browser that even changes skins in less than a second without a restart and takes half the memory of my newly downloaded Mozilla Firefox 0.9.
I will never understand why so many people keep trying to make their browsers into something more than browsers. Mozilla is complete overkill. Opera just stays what it is, and I like that a lot.
Really, your arguments are little more than transparent MS shilling. I hope they're paying you well.
It's posted at mozilla.org but Firefox's site hasn't been updated yet.
Press Release
Release Notes
Download:
Windows
Linux
Max OSX
What in the fucking holy hell did you just say???
Seriously. Who modded this crap up? Jesus.
At least try to be believable, Asshat.
You're a fucking coward. Enjoy life under Microsoft's boot.
Some sick bastard is trying to fix this using Stylesheets:
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/intro/
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/04/03/12 /0454228.shtml
He even included the png hack. Sick sick sick.
I switched to Firefox too, because Safari's pop-up blocking isn't good enough.
The problem is, I regularly use several sites which require pop-ups for their actual functionality. It was too much of a pain remembering when to switch pop-ups on and when to turn them off again, and if I slipped up I'd get blasted with crap. Now in Firefox, I just configure the approved sites as exceptions and no more fuss.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I work at a Notes shop, and I periodically use the iNotes client. Is it just me/the way we have it configured here, or is it seriously flaky? Half the time, it 404s because it can't find a database object. Sometimes, it works fine. What's the deal?
I wonder why nobody found this interesting.
You could do a / and search to search text anywhere in firefox. Also you can just start typing and it would search just the links. No more Ctrl+F (open a search window ) business.
Also you can do Ctrl+G and find subsequent matches.
The matches themselves are intelligent and find the closest matching text.
Gecko - based browsers seem to be on rise, though. Google should be pretty "neutral" website, and the graph on their Zeitgeist page shows steadily rising line for Mozilla, Firebird and friends.
While Mozilla, Firebird and friends are not perhaps exactly pushing IE out of use, they seem to be eating little bits of IE usage. Time will tell how much or little.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
I hear constantly how much faster and "leaner and meaner" Firefox is supposed to be, but is there any actual evidence of this other than personal anecdotal experiences?
Firefox takes up almost the same amount of memory as the standard Mozilla browser, and I see absolutely no difference in speed. In fact, I still like Mozilla better because when a URL doesn't load in a background tab, I get the error message, but the URL doesn't disappear from the address bar like it does in Firefox, so I can remember what the hell it was I was trying to connect to.
As far as I can tell, Firefox doesn't offer actual performance changes from Mozilla, and the real difference involves core architectural changes, like plug-ins. If you want a "leaner and meaner" Mozilla clone, you have to code a native Win32/GTK/whatever app that simply uses the Gecko engine. Otherwise, every time you load the app you'll still be loading all that bloated widget code, XUL, etc.
Not only according to the mailing lists and the About dialog box of the installer, but even The Burning Edge Firefox build blog states such.
As an aside, The Burning Edge is the place to go for almost nightly updates of prerelease versions of Firefox. I've been using 0.9RCs up until today.
It may be out *now*, but it sure as hell wasn't out when the OP wrote that. Why don't you pull your head out of your ass for a minute and breathe before bashing people about their posts that were true *when they wrote them*?
Appears to be another example of a moderator using modpoints to make a view heard/not heard rather than based on legitimate facts. Parent is in no way Redundant, no similar posts exist with a post date prior to parent. Let your Meta-Moderation reflect your own findings, but I urge you to look into it yourself.
A friend of mine, who is computer savvy, tried to import bookmarks from their old version of Firefox .8, and .9 OVERWROTE their bookmarks instead.
This should not happen by accident, and there should be MEGA warnings if the possibility of overwriting files like that exists when you try to upgrade.
Aslo, I wish memory usage would drop considerably in FireFox. The temptation to open many tabs is there, so I had to add another 256MB of RAM to cope with FireFox's tabs.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Now I can grab the latest nightly build in only, oh, about an hour.. (damn dial-up)
Hats off to the Firefox team!
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
If you haven't firewalled your PC you are probably already hacked or are running at least a dozen spyware programs.
The hackers are grateful that you are unaware of this.
evil is as evil does
You're seriously naive if you think that IE is in any way secure by default, or secure when patched up. It might be secure if you set your local zone to high security settings, but then it's almost useless to all but your trusted sites.
Read these links, and you'll see:
http://www.safecenter.net/UMBRELLAWEBV4/ie_unpatc
There has been at least one reported incident where spyware authors have discovered and exploited a hole in IE (i.e. it was not published on any security mailing list, and no patch currently exists). This is an undisclosed vulnerability which was genuinely found
in the wild. (the register covered this too).
I've never had a problem with TD Canada Trust, using Galeon on Linux.
However, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada wouldn't allow me to fill out an EI claim online until I changed the user agent to fake IE 6. It seems the site does a simple user-agent check for compatibility. I'm sure there are better ways of testing for encryption support, but hell, it's a government site--lowest bidder (or, if the site was designed by a friend of Chretien, highest bid x 2).
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
So if I enable, say, Microsoft's XP firewall, am I ok? It is, after all, another XP firewall. Or how about some of the NetGear hardware firewalls. Hasn't NetGear also had security problems as of late (I only have a dum NetGear hub, so it's not applicable there).
I opccasioanlly scan my ports. I check my processes. I run cirus scans, spyware scans, etc. I've never found anything. My wife's machine is another story, but those spyware's didn't come in through security holes -- just unsecure humans (kids) clicking 'yes' to anything that got themto the cool website their friends told them to check out. And even then, a firewall wouldn't have helped. Yeah, I could run FireFox on it to stop ActiveX crap from getting in, but we were talking purely about firewalls here.
#1. I did try re-arranging them. I couldn't re-arrange them as I wanted. Two on same horiztonal row? Shrinking one so the overflow is turned into a popout button? I have the same complaint for ThunderBird, btu it's not as big of a problemf or me personally there as it is in my web browser.
#2. See #1.
#3. I know. I read them. They didn't have everything I use in teh real Google Toolbar.
#4. Bookmarks can't be used as files. Thus, everywhere I've taken advantage of my favorites being files and folders I wouldn't be able to use bookmarks. Hard-linking subfolders to other locations. Using pop-out style quick menus out of folder son taskbar. And so on.
#5. My taskbar is here:
http://www.trinition.org/taskbar.PNG
Can do. View - Toolbars - Customize
As I replied in another thread, I couldn't do what I wanted.
I can cleverly pick necessary stuff so that there's no need for anything to be hidden behind pop-out anything...
Like many others, I've found that every click counts. I have several top-level things one-click away, and collapse some secondary items under pop-outs so they're effectively two clicks away. And I can easilyr e-size or re-arrange toolbars to my liking if my needs change. It's one of those things I would've laughed at as too trivial to care abotu until I realized how much easier it made things.
That was pure pain on the FAT16 days, please don't remind me. Millions of files eating away the precious diskspace.
First, if you're using FAT16, you've got other problems. Second, do your eally have millions of bookmarks? Even thousands? And how much disk space is that wasting? More or less than your pr0n collection? Seriously, are you suggesting that the disk-space efficiency of tiny little bookmarks is a concern for anyone? Not that disk space is something trivial, because it is the scale that matters -- but even this will never scale to a worrisome level.
Gimmicks. All gimmicks
AHh, now you sound like a talk radio host who waves his hand at something he doesn't understand or would rather not touch. If you actually sat down and tried this without bias (which is probably an impossibility for you from here on out), you might like it. BUt you've already written it off as a gimmick. Know what else were gimmicks? Mouse gestures. Toolbars. WIndow managers. GUIs in general. High-level languages. The abacus. How far back are you?
You don't need to melt everything into an unholy combination
You are exactly right. You don't have to. Even I reserve the right not to use any unholy union I don't want to. I could switch to FireFox if I wanted to. But, you see, then I would have two browsers on my system because IE would still be integrated into the OS for the things I use it for. Now, if MS would allow me to plug in any old browser for the OS-integrated part (which I still think would be a grand idea), I might do it in a heartbeat. BUt the question is, would the Mozilla/FireFox zealots ever write an adapter to such an API... or would that still be another unholy combination?
What's your IP?
Show me your white hat first! When I run portscans, I do so with the perceived trust that the one scanning my ports is trustworthy. Iknow nothing about you. Besides, if you were good, you coudl already find my IP.
You're seriously naive if you think that IE is in any way secure by default, or secure when patched up
Why is it naive? Is IE listening on some ports for people to hijack? Did someone hijack slashdot such that click ing on a link in it will do something malicious? Am I going to naively install some ActiveX control?
You have to do both. You have to do everything you can all the time. Otherwise you will be owned. Don't even pretend that you are going to somehow outsmart some hacker cos you won't.
evil is as evil does
Then why are you using mouse at all? All of the cool kids are using hotkeys! Firebird has plenty of 'em!
I just mentioned it was a problem in FAT16 days. It is far less of a problem in FAT32 or NTFS. =)
But still, to me, convenience of syncing a single file across the network is alone worth the trouble.
As for file management to manage the bookmarks - managing the bookmark metadata still needs shell extensions to manage the bookmark details like comments and such, so aside of using already provided file manager to move the files around, there's really no other benefit from having stuff in files.
And I still think syncing a single file is far easier than syncing lots of them.
Yeah, frankly, I don't get it. You got that far things right. However, you are wrong if you think I'm dismissing this because of that!
To me, all of the things you mentioned seemed like excuses. Microsoft suddenly gave people ability to embed HTML stuff everywhere. People suddenly noted they could do cool stuff with it, as long as you ignore the creaking sound on the background. It works, but to me, it never sounded any better than other bubblegum fix solutions.
Thus, everything people do with the HTML sound like tricks and gimmicks. No matter how cool and clever they may be, I always look at them and the first thought that surfaces would be "yeah, but a stand-alone app for that would be far cooler."
In other words, why people do things like this with web browser when there are better tools available?
I hope that's a better explanation. Apologies for not coming up with a better one before.
Now who's worried about disk space? =) Personally, on Windows platforms, I use Firefox for web browsing and IE for things that only IE is supposed to do, like WindowsUpdate and stuff. Since one can't supposedly get rid of it, it can be there. To me, it's just another useless piece of Windows bloat. If you can think of something cool to use that for, that's fine.
But to me, Firefox is good for browsing the Web. IE is, as you said, good for messing around with the Windows interface. Similarly, on GNOME, I have a GNOME Help Browser, which is pretty good for browsing help files (yes, with its own tiny little HTML renderer). I have GNOME Dictionary which is good for dictd lookups. There are good tools for every task. I could do all three from a web browser, but I don't necessarily need to.
Yeah, there's multiple apps that can do the same thing. These are just slight overlaps of functionality, though - just because an application has expanded enough that it can read e-mail doesn't mean it would immediately be the perfect mail reader. Doing dictionary lookups from web browser would need CGI request handling or client-side hackery, and HTML conversions. GNOME Dictionary merely formats lookup results, being more efficient at actual dictionary lookups than a web browser would be, but it would also suck at HTML rendering.
It's not that I'm outsmarting a hacker, it's that I'm not inconveniencing myself. Look, let's say I enable a firewall. Now, I open port 80 so my Apache HTTPD server can be reached by the outside world. Then, someone hacker finds a hole in Apache HTTPD, hits my box on port 80 right through my firewall,a nd takes over my machine. Now, what did that firewall do for me? The very services that might be "hacked" on my machine -- HTTP, Telnet, etc. -- could be hacked through a firewall because I'd have them open! The other services Microsoft turns on my default I turn off for precisely security reasons.
Then why are you using mouse at all? All of the cool kids are using hotkeys
Actually, I use both. And you know Microsoft is decent with hot keys. Not every third party app for Windows is, but Microsoft makes sure they are. I would say that 80% of the daily functions I do I kow both keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks for and I use whichever my hands are already doing at the time. BUt, when my hand is on the mouse, I use aas few clicks as possible. That's why the "Start Menu" is evil in Windows. But I use that as a sort of master listing. All of my frequently used programs are assigned hotkeys or kept in taskbar pop-outs/quicklaunch menus for access with far fewer clicks.
But still, to me, convenience of syncing a single file across the network is alone worth the trouble.
:)). Now when I copy that folder, everything underneath it comes.
I still don't see it. Even when I "backup" my favorites across the network, I right-click the Favorites folder, go to a network share, right-click, paste (note, in honor of our previous comments, I could just as easily use CTRL+C and CTRL+V hotkeys
Now, I will give you this. When you copy a file, it replaces the destination. When you copy a folder, it typically "merges" the destination -- otherwise, you'd have to delete the destination first.
As for file management to manage the bookmarks...
Yes, you're right, it does require shell integrationt o be able to fully edit bookmarks. And that is where the OS integration cam ein handy for MS, I suppose. But I also have shell integrationf or editing MP3 ID3 tags. And as far as more common editing tasks -- renaming, reorganizing, etc. -- I can do that in the naked shellwithout any integrations. As someone else pointed out, in Unix, everything is a file... except bookmarks!
Incidentally, are there any "contact management" systems in *nix that store individual contacts in idividual files (probably not vCards since they're designed for portability, not speed)?
But to me, Firefox is good for browsing the Web
Honestly, I think IE too is fine for browsing around the web. It ain't slow (people kept saying FireFox is fast, but I didn't notice when I tried it). It renders everys ite I visit just fine.
There are good tools for every task. I could do all three from a web browser
I think this is your best point. Honestly, though, in the Microsoft Widows world, most "good solutions" end up getting commercialized. Since I hate programming in Visual Dot Crap ++ # anything (I don't have the flipping IDE, how can I do it?), I like the fact that using Windows Scripting Host (a brilliant idea), or HTML pages with JavaScript, I can extend my shell. YEs, it would be nice to have a dedicated dictionary text field tool on myh taskbar, but I ain't registering $9.95 for it wehen I can code it myself to hot dictionary.com from HTML embedded in my taskbar. Perhaps it's my only bit of freedom in MS-land.
From that register link I posted earlier:
The payload is delivered without the the user doing anything besides clicking a link or loading a page in an iframe (e.g. an ad).
I'm not going to take the time to find or craft an exploit against you when there is perfectly good published research that can back up my claims. If you choose to ignore that research and the clamoring masses of security experts, you are naive.
And FireFox is guaranteed free of unknown exploits? The very nature of unknown exploits is that they're unknown. And just because its opens ource doesn't mean they won't happen. They may be less likely, but even Apache HTTPD has had exploits in it.
No. That's not what I'm saying at all. Firefox has way less. Firefox has a high-quality security model.
IE's security model has been demonstrated to be broken. The fusion of ActiveX, scripting, and embedding mshtml.dll in everything has proven to be a security risk because of cross-zone scripting attacks. These vulnerabilities are frequent and easy to find. If you think otherwise, you're being naive.
You must mitigate the risk you take for everyday browsing. Lower your exposure. To do that, you must implement safeguards such as raising your security settings to "high" for all zones, except a few trusted sites. Or, better yet, RUN A PROGRAM THAT ISN'T A GIGANTIC VULNERABILITY AND COMMON VECTOR FOR ATTACK.
And FireFox is guaranteed free of unknown exploits?
Of course not. Nothing is.
But at least it's free from known expoits that have been in IE for a long time and STILL go unpatched.
1. Two on the same row is definitely possible on ff.
2. "pop-outs" are not, though.
3. Mind pointing out something in the original Googlebar doesn't do?
4 & 5. Taskbar is a function of Explorer the file/desktop manager, not just IE, it's going to be enabled and usable no matter what _browser_ you use. If you mainly use bookmarks from taskbar, you can even use the ie ones, Windows opens them in default browser whatever that might be, and you can file new ones by dragging the favicon/handle from urlbar to whatever toolbar(s) you have in taskbar.