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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."

11 of 799 comments (clear)

  1. Great browser, but... by SIGALRM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    '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.
    1. Re:Great browser, but... by hackstraw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It often takes loads of marketing hype and product leverage to leap over the competition, something that Firefox doesn't have in spades.

      Or including the browser with the OS. Hell, even I know better than most users, and I use Safari on my mac because a) it came with it b) has the best OS integration and c) it pretty much works.

      Camino is a close second, it might be better with future releases. I'm not sure if I have the newest Firefox on my mac, but the one I have doesn't even create a window. Mozilla isn't that pretty on osx either.

    2. Re:Great browser, but... by jamonterrell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Are you fucking kidding me? Pick any web developer and ask them whether they have more problems making websites work with IE or making them work with Mozilla. They'll ALL tell you that IE is a pain in the ass and doesn't comply to standards. I, personally have given up on making my own webpages work with IE, it's not worth the effort...

      --
      I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
    3. Re:Great browser, but... by Corbets · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No offense, but if you want people to take you seriously, you need to present your argument clearly, and preferably with relatively few cusswords.

      That aside, SIGALARM was right. IE is, in essence, its own standard. What matter if 6.0 supports different features (or the same features differently) than 5.5? Guess you'd better upgrade your browser by purchasing a new computer and getting the latest MS OS.

      I'm sorry, but MS really does dictate the market standards at this point. Trust me, I work for a fortune 100 company, and I can tell you that our websites are designed around IE. Our internal sites contain code to prevent viewing in any other browser in an attempt to minimize incompatibility. Nobody (at least, I think nobody) is arguing that IE is pretty horrible browser implementation; however, it's also the standard to which one must comply. Such is life.

      (Yes, I run FireFox .8)

  2. Mozilla Blues by CommanderData · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Mozilla Blues by Urkki · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't agree that MS can afford to sit this out. If non-IE browsers gain too much market share, more and more web sites will make pages that are standards-compliant (as opposed to IE-compliant). And that' quite a "battle" to lose, even for MS.

  3. Re:Well... by chuonthis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    Firefox might actually be a solution to your problems. Think of all the adware/spyware/popup issues that could be resolved by getting them to switch from IE.

  4. Visceral Emotion Plug by 4of12 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
  5. Security... by dinodrac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  6. Favorite Line by nberardi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    '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.

  7. memory footprint by knukkle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.