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Mozilla Foundation Seeking Switch Success Stories
maggeth writes "mozillaZine has a story about how the Mozilla Foundation is looking to know if any organizations have switched to Mozilla products. Is your organization among them?" Can anyone point out an example of a library system switching? Lots of public libraries use PCs set up as kiosks running a web interface to their catalogs, and they all seem to use IE -- so, no tabbed browsing.
I switched to Mozilla 6 months ago and have been enjoying it ever since.
When I got home for the summer and started work back at a Jewelry Store in my hometown, I was able to switch three of the people at work over to Mozilla FireFox. The biggest thing they were impressed with is that 99% of the spyware/ad-ware just doesn't work on it because the coders of those products only code for the dominant browser (IE crap-ola). They also love the Tabbed browsing, the nice clean interface, and the easy access to all your privacy controls (cache, cookies, history etc.). Overall, it's been a great experience with FireFox except for the occasional VBScript-using site with which we have to open up the evil IE to use. I look forward to switching more people over to the dark side of th....never mind.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Having dealt with friends' Windows PCs lately and the sheer volume of destruction spyware, IE, and all the rest have caused, I would think that -- at this point -- tabbed browsing would be the least of anybody's worries in "library IT".
Why does tabbed browsing keep rising to such prominence as a must-have feature more than simple standards-compliance and reasonable security does?
-- Maciek
Sun's Java Desktop System can do this for many apps including Mozilla. It's absolutely beautiful - central administration of gnome, desktop, browser, etc (if you want it that is...)
There were some sites that wouldn't work, although we haven't run across that problem recently. And with the systems set up this way, we can guarantee patrons' privacy from each other (wiped home directory every logout), we can easily synchronize the machines with a central image at night, and we're immune from 99%+ of software exploits on the 'Net. It also means I can spend my time creating new programs and systems for the library, rather than dinking with Windows all day.
Not long ago, every public access computer in the Austin library system was paralyzed for several days by a wandering Windows virus. We were sitting pretty at that point! :-)
Really? In Australia, a lot of public coin-operated terminals run Konqueror or Galleon on Linux for stability. Most Internet cafes give you a choice of Win/IE or Mac/Safari.
Actually we just had a case where we had to switch an entire department of users from Mozilla back to IE. We tried using Mozilla on a win2k terminal server and it was a failure. The footprint for each users mozilla session ranged from 25 to 60(!)mb. Way too much strain on the server. IE only cost us 15-20mb per session. We tried firefox but with w2k's 256 color limitation on terminal sessions, most toolbar icons showed as black squares rendering the software unusable.
We posted several questions/suggestions to the mozilla boards but they went unanswered. We've also had a similar problem with the lack of an msi for mozilla/thunderbird/firebird rollouts. Makes mass migrations near impossible. Mozilla does not seem to want to address large scale use such as terminal services and automated installs.
Set yourself up a different profile or a user just for browsing pr0n. Encrypt your home directory just be safe :).
I have also heard of people running mozilla from a USB key!. I am going to try that one myself, sounds like a perfect way to carry your settings and bookmarks along too.
evil is as evil does
it's easy to do. It's hard to believe just how relentlessly ignorant the average user is until you meet one face to face and tell them to click 'ok' instead of cancel to get to secure web sites.
Many users simply freeze up when prompted with an small changes to the UI. I've witnessed people lost when presented with Windows XP's classic style control panel (or the catagorical one, if they're used to classic). I think it's a combination of laziness and fear, coupled with the firm, marketing encouraged belief that, by God, this darn here compooter oughta be easy ta larn.
It bothers me, because people want so much from their computers, but put so little effort into them. It'd bother me less if people where willing to pay big bucks for the privilege of ignorance, but they also want their computers cheap and their support free.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I believe the typical management type is not the typical public library type.
Load an IE theme and nearly no one will notice the difference. URL bar, bookmarks - you need nothing more in a public library.
When you use mozilla in office you will have to deal with a lot of extra functionality of mozilla.
Yeah, s'mee again!
FIX the bloody calendar. Make it work. At least make it so where emailed invites can easily be added to the recipient's calendar, instead of opening within a new browser window. Pretty simple stuff like that.
We can't switch because the calendar just sucks compared to what users have unfortunately become quite accustomed to in Microsoft Outlook.
They don't care about the mail - Mozilla works better. They care about the *Calendar* and the basic PIM stuff that Outlook has. We don't even use Exchange, but if another Outlook user sends a calendar request, Mozilla can't do squat with it.
So, they try to cling to Outlook.
Thunderbird/Firefox are not suitable/mature enough replacements, and besides, the Calendar will still suck because it's from the same codebase.
bring back the days of Netscape Calendar - or something. I'm telling you folks, cross platform calendaring applications may very well be the killer app for small businesses.
Right now, Mozilla isn't going too far where I work because of the lack of a serious calendaring application.
And that sucks, really. =/
With Windows/IE, you can do almost anything and configure it almost completely (within its limits, of course) through the mouse and the menus.
You mean like in IE how you can configure it to be able to download more then 2 files at once? That's right you can use the mouse and menus to go through the registry to fix that right?
http://www.tweakxp.com/tweak764.aspx
or set the default download directory... oops no registry
http://www.tweakxp.com/tweak128.aspx
changing mailto: to load another mail program.. registry again
http://www.tweakxp.com/tweak734.aspx
You try to make it sound like its a big deal to install firefox, it's not any more complex then installing any other windows application you download off net. In the time it takes you to update IE to a stable state, you could already have downloaded, installed, and be adapted to firefox (that's because there basically is no adaption time).
Your rant seems aimed at Linux and not at Mozilla... because there's no reason for the average user (yes even the average slashdot user) to recompile or muck around with scripting (XPI) in firefox. Furthermore Mozilla and Linux have nothing to do with eachother, why you arbitrarily lumped them together is a little odd. The common denominator being that they both compete with Microsoft I guess. While you address only one side of your grouping it makes the argument sound akin to "I don't like cats and dogs... they leave droppings on the lawn, bark at night and they attack the mailman... and that is why I don't like cats and dogs"