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Firefox vs. SP2's IE?
Anonymous Coward asks: "I was at my grandpa's house today, and I came across a somewhat unsettling issue. He is a user of Internet Explorer. I was talking about Firefox with him, and it turns out that he has had no trouble with popups since SP2 came out, he doesn't multitask enough to benefit from tabbed browsing, and he doesn't care about safety/privacy concerns. On top of that, I ran a test and found no difference in load/download speeds between the two browsers on his computer. This brought me to an interesting point. For someone like him, is there any benefit to be gained from using Firefox? On top of that, are there any people who are actually better off sticking with IE?"
For someone like him, is there any benefit to be gained from using Firefox?
Internet Explorer is holding the web back. As long as a lot of people use Internet Explorer, nobody can get the benefits of advanced web development.
CSS 1? Eight years old and still broken in Internet Explorer. PNG 1? Eight years old and still broken in Internet Explorer. HTML 4? Six years old and still broken in Internet Explorer. HTTP 1.1? Five years old and still broken in Internet Explorer. CSS 2? Six years old and still broken in Internet Explorer. Nothing works properly in Internet Explorer.
If he's using Internet Explorer, he's part of the problem. Ask him to stop being part of the problem. Other people might still hold back the web, but at least he won't be.
Try comparing my site iconsurf.com using Firefox and IE. The difference is striking both in download speed and icon rendering.
On the other hand, this grandfather is unlikely to value a good cookie manager any more than the other features in which he had no interest. Look, if the guy values not having to relearn his browser over any and all of Firefox's features, that's his choice. So be it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
For anyone who doesn't already know, from the adblock webpage:
Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers. It is both more robust and more precise than the built-in image blocker.
Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. If this sounds complicated, don't worry: it's not.
Just add a few filters. Every time a webpage loads, Adblock will intercept and disable the elements matching your filters. See?- nothing to it.
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
Depending if he uses dial-up, this could make a huge different in performance as it doesn't take the time to load/render the banner ads/flash/etc.
I just change the IE icon to link to the Mozilla executable :)
Works best for breaking pesky habits..
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
"Grandpa, how would you feel if this were not your computer, but your house?
"You might say, 'I don't need to lock my doors --I know all my neighbours in this small town, and it's such an unnecessary hassle to have to lock the doors. No one else lives with me, I don't have anything worth stealing, and anyway, I only use basically the one bedroom and the kitchen.'
"Once in a while you come home from the grocery store, and the door is open or stuff isn't where you left it. Probably some nosy kids poking around, you think. What's that noise you hear from the basement sometimes? Probably just the furnace getting old.
"Then one day you hear on the radio that the police are looking for some drug dealers. They've been on the lam from the city cops for the past year for synthesizing drugs. The feds figure they're hiding in a small town somewhere around here, but they checked all the vacant and rental homes where they could be hiding, and can't figure out where they could be running their LSD-manufacturing operation.
"Still think locking your house is not an issue?"
I previously lived in a small town where everyone knew almost everyone else (population 10,000 --technically a "city") although there was a significant portion of population turnover due to seasonal/short-term jobs, etc. I would use the above as an explanation for why an unsophisticated Internet user should still install the necessary protective measures. I absolutely agree with the parent poster.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
If you actually provide technical support for this computer, then you should be concerned, even if he isn't. SP2 isn't the end of IE vulnerabilities, MS security holes, trojans, etc. You are just having a temporary reprieve while the virus writers catch up and find the new holes.
If you have to support this box, get IE off it now, before it causes your grandfather grief. He may not care about the web browser now, but when it's changed his homepage to http://goatse.cx/ and loads 37 popups with different porn, spyware and spam sites for every valid page he manages to load, then he will care. But by then it will be too late.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
When I get asked about this, I try to look surprised and say "bah, you mean you thought Internet Explorer could do somehting this cool? No way! What you need for this sort of thing is an optimized browser - you know, optimized for speed and useability and all sorts of other cool things. You want me to show you some? Watch this... suppose I want to go back to the previous page [mouse gesture left]. Cool, eh? Wanna see how I did that?"
The lesson is: install some extensions as well as Firefox. It's mind-numbingly easy, and it gets new users really interested in customizing their Firefox further. Once they start with that, they'll never go back.
I think i was try to give it permission to show a single popup. Obviously i screwed up somewhere because the next thing i knew my system had 3 brand new items in the toolbar and it was at the Suspend/Shutdown/Restart windows prompt (But i definately didn't hit alt-F4 at any time)
I can't say for sure it was IE's fault, but i wasn't happy that the web browser allowed either an activeX or auto-installed a program as a result of wanting a popup.
-- guilty as charged-- error 501: stupid user
Not very much of an option. Because there aren't clear standards on Windows, individual program options are often saved to the program directory, not a user's home directory. This makes it so that, as an unprivelged user, settings won't be saved. Also, some normal apps (like Doom 3) can only be run as adminstrator.
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING