Slashdot Mirror
Don't Click on the Blue E
That said, it is not without flaws. I hate most of the first chapter and see it as a waste of space. 35 pages mainly of history (some of the Net, and some of browsers) is almost self-indulgent. Certainly almost all buyers would not miss the information if it was reduced to two or three pages in the introduction or first chapter. There is some useful reasoning to justify the shift from Internet Explorer to Firefox at the end, but the rest needs a good going over with the red pencil.
I also found that for a book titled Don't Click on the Blue E, there was not enough information of the "in IE you did it this way, and in Firefox you do it this way" type. The book is a good entry-level guide to Firefox but I would have hoped for more guidance for people switching from IE to Firefox.
I'm getting a little ahead of myself. First, it has to be said that O'Reilly have done away with their usual cover and given us a bright orange cover with a graphic of a fox about to bite a familiar icon composed of a blue 'e.' I like it, this is definitely an O'Reilly book targeted outside their usual technically savvy market and deserves a different cover style.
The book feels light, despite the 250 pages, and is split into only five chapters and two appendices. As you can imagine, each chapter is a huge chunk of information, but the light writing style combined with a look that is heavy on illustrations and sidebars make it an easy read. Once again, this is a departure from O'Reilly's usual style but well suited to the likely reader. I also thought that they had used a lower grade paper than usual, probably to keep the retail cost down. As this is not a reference book to be kept for years, I didn't see this as a flaw.
I've already mentioned the first chapter; the second is devoted to installing and configuring Firefox. This is full of useful information and good illustrations to explain how to set up the browser in detail. The third chapter is how to use and manage it, covering topics such as the toolbars, the search box and adding engines, the menus, tabbed browsing and pop up blocking. The fourth deals with the add ons - plugins, themes and extensions. The final chapter is a bit of a grab bag. Titled "Advanced Firefox," it covers such topics as Live Bookmarks and searching in pages. Each chapter has a well-researched and useful "Where to Learn More" section pointing to web sites with tools and information.
This is probably not a book for the average Slashdot reader. You may like to buy a copy so you can lend it to Uncle Bob or Aunt Susan after you spend another wasted afternoon cleaning the viruses and spyware out of their PC, but I doubt you'll want a copy for yourself. Taken as a whole this is a well-written, thorough book for the absolute beginner with one or two minor flaws. Despite the book's flaws I still find myself recommending it. If you would like a better look yourself, O'Reilly have their usual page of contents and two excerpts from the book.
I would recommend this book over Firefox and Thunderbird Garage for more serious readers. Garage has an occasional quirky tone that might annoy some -- for others it might be a benefit to learning. It also has a little more detail in some areas. Of course if you want a book that covers both applications, then Garage is the only book I've found. Don't Click on the Blue e is a good volume for a beginner who doesn't need the coverage of both Firefox and Thunderbird of the "Garage" book and would like a little more detail.
You can purchase Don't Click on the Blue e from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
And what's that silly fox gumming, Lithuania?
Sigs cause cancer.
Well even though (most) slashdot readers are beyond this book, we all have family members and friends that could use a little direction. think of this post like one of those "advice to parents" articles in your local newspaper. ;)
Seriously nice title, I like that along with...Moving from Windows to Linux, Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!
Click on the Blue E.
This is NOT a signature.
I tried as much as the next fool to get away with the same thing...but I failed. Don't get stuck in the blue e loop like I did. You'll waste too many years fighting your own flattiness. Get FireFoxified!
Clicking the Blue E.
one small click for a man, one giant step back in the war on drugs.
You can't handle the truth.
Good thing eBay uses a red "e".
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I am and IT director at an ISP and when we build new laptops or desktops we deploy FireFox with the Blue E icon instead of the Firefox Icon. We even go so far as to make to the default page msn.c0m. They usually never notice.... :)
Seems retarded to waste money buying a book about an alternative web browser.
Wow, not bad. I know quite a few people who could use this (No one ever listens to me when I tell them to use firefox and avoid IE. Now theres a book on it... It might make a good birthday gift ^_^)
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Talk about a misspelling!
Maybe he's hoping not be modded FLAMEBAIT -1.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I dunno, sometimes I wonder about those AC's, what with their oft stupid and/or offensive remarks that they're always making.
Agreed. But what about telling them that they can also use IE, becoz you can protect yourself. I have for years and still are. I also use Firefox (but IE loads faster and renders pagers better IMHO [Might not be by the standards, but still looks more crisp]) and still had virus attacks (forgot to turn off Java one day, but anti-virus caught it before any damage). I feel /. is one huge ad for Firefox no matter what. Mod me to whatever, but do know that some people can handle themselves with IE and other MS products.
They include a link to a website that you can purchase the book from, assuming of course you are using IE to read this review, then the book would be moot.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
i used for some time to change the firefox icon to something more easily seen as "The Internet"
for my customers...
yes a big E icon.
"Don't press the green power button" Would solve a lot more of the problems I have to fix than simply shying away from IE.
I wish I knew what the problem was. I love Firefox and have been using it for a while, but lately it has been taking huge amount of cpu time, many times sitting at 99% till I kill it. The same thing is happening on my parents computer and I have no extensions installed.
Some sites like http://www.overclockers.com/ just locks the browser up. Firefox people, please fix this! Then I won't have to click on the blue e!
Gone!
Maybe if it didn't take FireFox 10 times as long as IE to start up it wouldn't suck so bad. Opera is pretty quick though.
I just rename the 'Blue E', 'Firefox download manager' and set the home page to the firefox download page.
-----
...like "don't take the purple acid!"
I mean I know there seems to be a book about everything but really how hard is it to use a browser. Now there are always tweaks and stuff that can make it better but I don't see how people are writing so many books about Mozilla stuff. I mean I even code various extensions for diffrent Mozilla projects (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) and I didn't even have to buy a book for that. I am also guessing that the books aren't covering developing details.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
People may be switching over to Firefox, but my site still has 55% IE users and 40% Mozilla and Firefox. And my site has primarily technical content, so I expect a higher percentage of IE on sites with content addressing the average web user.
Don't Click on the B&N Affiliate SPAM Link
Why oh why should it take 254 pages to explain what the book title does in 6 words (5 and a letter)? If my mom (or yours for that matter, heh) asks for advice, I tell them where to get a good browser, they install it, and they run it. End of story. No need to spend twenty bucks and read a novel to figure it out.
I'm in London, you insensitive clod...
This is NOT a signature.
this book is almost too much.
I'm a network security engineer and I spend ALOT of time dealing with security from various perspectives. IE does have its definite faults -- BUT -- it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be if one has SP2 installed, firewall on, AND you are not surfing with administrative priveledges. I use IE daily and I NEVER have had an issue. I may be trained to know what's safe and not, but I have never been hijacked, never had spyware, and never had a virus on my home system.
Just my two cents.
Not advocating IE use, just making a point.
The final chapter is a bit of a grab bag. Titled "Advanced Firefox," it covers such topics as Live Bookmarks and searching in pages. Each chapter has a well-researched and useful "Where to Learn More" section pointing to web sites with tools and information.
God knows that searching pages is an advanced topic. And if you can't catch onto the 1-click nature of live bookmarks, perhaps you should just keep using IE.
Better not click on any other browser icon either. If you need a book to show you how to use a browser then you are going to fall victim to spyware, malware, and other wares just as easily as the IE user would because you are now the security hole.
'Same speed C but faster'
on my parents computers. I also pointed blue E's towards firefox for a friend's wife. They have never said anything.
I know this could be wrong, but they way I see it is my parents use me for free computer help. I get less calls this way. As for the friend's wife, well he asked me to do it.
I recently bought a Mac Mini, and I've been using it increasingly more often than my intensely more powerful PC (an Athlon 64 @ 2.4 GHz, 2 GB of PC3200 DDR, and a Radeon X800 XT PE). After being a Firefox user from way before it was even called Firefox, I got fed up with it.
... after about a week of Firefox uptime, the firefox.exe process is eating about 350 MB of physical memory and 400 MB of virtual memory with one tab open. WTF? I have one extension loaded. It's just pathetic.
It's just too f***ing slow. Even on that PC, tweaked to shit, no spyware/other crap, with all useless services shut down, Firefox still spends ages coming out of swap after I've been playing a game for a while. *WHY?* Nothing else grinds my hard disk like Firefox does. With 2 GB of RAM, I can keep a 500 MB Photoshop process minimized, and bring it up with no grinding at all after quitting a 2-hour-long game of Battlefield 2.
And then there's the whole memory usage issue
Firefox is a slow, bloated, memory-leaking pig. I don't believe the Slashdot hype over Firefox. All of you Firefox fanboys are no better than Mac/Windows/Linux fanboys.
Needless to say, I eventually switched to Opera 8 on my Windows box, and I haven't even bothered to look for alternatives to Safari -- it's just a great browser.
...whenever I fix a customers computer. Off the desktop, and out of the menu.
I point out to them that now they use Firefox, so they don't need it.
I can always run it to get updates or whatever other "IE Only" shyte for them, if I absolutely have to.
Do your friends and family a favor - this same thing.
Later, we'll talk about deleting that "XP OS" as the next preventative measure...
click on the M instead.
I'd rather click on the Big O instead.
What's wrong with you? Instead of reading slashdot, if you care so much go do something about it. This is a place for technical discussion, thus, don't be surprised that that's what you will find here.
Fantastic, I just went through all the trouble of skinning Firefox to look exactly like IE, and even changed the desktop icon to look like IE, so that my parents would quit launching IE instead of Firefox like I tell them, and now this book comes out. I just know as soon as my parents see the title while browsing for "helpful" computer books that I might be interested they'll never click on that damn E, and all my effort to stealth-install Firefox for them will have been wasted. I might as well shoot myself now.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
That link is trash, reads like a MS Press release
1. Sell a buggy browser through a monopoly
2. Sell even more!
3. ???????
4. Profit!!!
In Soviet Russia, the internet browses you!
All your browsers are belong to us!!!
Hey, does this product come with free oral copulation?
... all that happened was that I saw a list of about 30 old /. articles about web browsers. It didn't seem like such a big deal. Am I missing something?
IE is the most popular in the world?
I think we all know IE isn't "popular" by choice.
People just mindlessly used what was bundled.
I dono about YOU but I dont go buying books on Slashdot that are linked with an AFFILIATE ID so someone gets a kickback.
Kudos to whoever submitted the story, nothing like free advertising, and shame on the editor that published it with the Source ID in the querystring
Unless of course that is slashdots ID , in that case great part of submarine income on Slashdots part
Every penny counts ? No but the melt real nice with a benzomatic
And it took me here. I don't get it though, what's so bad about that that they have to write a whole book about it? Weird.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Aye, but you missed peice......
Maybe he won't get a piece of that moderation.
254 Pages worht of advice? My god!! If they'd come up with a Firefox cheatsheet perhaps with a small section on the back on how to find more detailed information on the web.
Either you want to know the basics (ie no more than 50 pages worth but ideally 15-25 pages) or you want to know the details (ie 250-1500 pages worth) a 250 page for dummies book is far to much. Dummies should have to read that much, and it ends up being mostly fluf anyway.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Nothing. What's wrong with you?
London has suffered the most horrific terrorist attacks in recent history and you people can only talk about Internet Explorer? Get some priorities!!!
So, fuck off and go read a world news site, and stay off the tech news site.
Sheesh.
ftp -a ftp.mozilla.org /net/ao16/lxmirror/ftp.mozilla.org/firefox/release s/1.0.4
bin
cd
um, okay. let me rephrase that: FTP isn't *that* hard for uhm, your average computer genius.
For starters, while I won't slam this book without reading it, I think that it's come too late. Firefox has gained a good amount of momentum that its popularity will spread more by my next point:
Although this isn't a universal constant, I find that books like this are usually targeted at a group of people who generally don't buy any sort of computer books. It's like making a painting for the blind in a way, when the people who need to know this don't typically browse the computers and technology section at their local bookstore.
But wait! Hope is not lost. The momentum created by Firefox has spread enough in the past year or so that even non-geeks are getting to be pretty savvy with it. What happens then, is that the popularity of non-IE spreads by word of mouth. But while there are great books on the subject out there, a technology book just seems like a poor way to get the message to tech-illiterate.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Loads faster? Yeah, because parts of it are loaded by system, before you can even click on the blue e. Firefox would load faster as well if you would preload all the shared objects e.g. at system start. This "it IE loads faster than FF" is all fake. IE only slows down the system before you have even startet IE. And what when you don't even want to surf the web? I prefer FF which gets loaded when I need it, and not because my system thinks it knows everything and all better than me!
Talk about Spelling Nazi!
Maybe you're affraid of getting modded -1 offtopic
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
You could alwasy use Opera.. while there are exploites for it.. most people can figure them out to use them or don't bother becuse well .. not many use it..
and ActiveX who needs that.. Opera doesn't know what to do with them..
hell it doens't seem to know what to do with half the pages you view
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Can someone convince my IT folks to install something besides the Blue 'E'?
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Book reviews != recommendations. A harsh review can be just as useful as a glowing one, if it helps you make a purchasing decision.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I think it honestly needs more of this. This book should act as an opener for non-techs that dont know the issues about IE, and therefore probably little of the history of how and why microsoft's browser got to where it is today. although this is published by O'Reilly, it seems thay they want a book that is more availiable to the masses (althought probably didnt go far enough) Afterall , anyone who uses firefox knows anything this book says anyways, while joe book-reader will never but a tech book to learn about FF.
This books seems in limbo between an eye-opener techs can give to their grandma's to clearly explain the IE vs FF debacle, and a techinical guide, and in the end, doesnt seem to fit either nieche.
What we really need is a non-fiction book detailing more about the industry, with the overarching themes about the corperate politics behind the browsers. People dont understand 'activeX vunerabilities' nor care to, but look how interested people are in politics of big companies and their ethics. get it into the 'new non-fiction' section of bookstores opposed to the tech section in the back, and you can guarantee the 80% IE users with no knowlage of the situation at least hear about it
"The book feels light, despite the 250 pages..."
Hmmm....methinks this is a bit too long to capture the average net surfer's attention span. It sounds like most people could be provided the same pertinent information in a 5-page pamphlet:
Page 1 - A Condensed History of the Internet & Web Browsers
Page 2 - What is a website and how can it harm you?
Page 3 - How to surf safely and detect redirections and malware/spyware
Page 4 - Features of Firefox Security vs. Internet Explorer Security
Page 5 - Tips, tools and great free resources for surfing safely
Done! Saved hundreds of trees and managed to capture the average lazy human's full attention with a quick and easy read.
www.dontclickonthebluee.com (TBD)
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Is that annoying pre-load Mozilla image icon. I hate that thing so much. Can you disable it?
"just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you."
Not only that, but they aren't really there.
"There is a man that sits in the corner of my room.
No one else sees him.
When I tell them that there is a man that sits in the corner of my room, they beat me."
"We beat him".
"Oh go away.
You're not really there.
Don't come back another day.
Ple-ease." (Old, old song, 1968 or so.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I don't go spending $20 buying 250-page, semi-technical books to toss at friends and family.
I actually did this for a family member who would call me twice a day after I gave them a computer.
I bought them a book on Firefox and a book on Windows XP. Now I don't waste my time on 'problems' like I can't find my music files or how do I a print a photo.
Unless of course that is slashdots ID
It is. Check out some of the other book reviews and you'll find the same numbers.
The real annoying ones are all of the Amazon-referral whores that post 5-10 messages claiming "Spend only $5 more at Amazon and get free shipping!"
And why exactly do you need firefox open for a week at a time? No matter how much ram/cpu you have, you should still reboot occasionally.
If you use IE to get to the book, the Website should install Spyware on your computer...on principle.
Heh heh heh
OK - mod me troll if you must...
I like speed. Firefox and the entire Mozilla line of browsers are SLOW. Almost painfully so.
As Java is not a normal part of my working or play environment, it doesn't get loaded until needed.
IE just plain starts faster. I don't go to any sites that try to push malware on me, and I purge all accumulated "cooties" from all user directories upon shutdown.
Plus - IE makes me money when I fix other people's PCs.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
Does it tell me ANYTHING I can't find by going to the help menu?
I hate technical books that tell me less information than was initially provided in the "help" section.
in firefox (i just looked) there is even "for IE users" seperate section.
Every slashdot book review has the book linked with an affiliate link, with the same source id. Presumably that's one method slashdot uses to generate income. (that, and ad-supported dupes.)
I run into this all the time. I know exactly what I am downloading, and I have every intention of executing it once it's downloaded. So why can't I tell Firefox to execute when it asks me what I want done with the file? Why make me expend extra labor!
I understand the need to protect the n00bs from themselves, but can't this at least be an option configurable by those of us that think before saying "execute"?
</rant!>
This single statement has just put to waste all my well thought out security measures. You know how you just have to push that big red button? now i can't help myself I just have to click on the big blue E!
I don't reboot my PC simply because I don't have to. I've had uptimes of up to two months with no troubles at all (XP SP2). No other programs leak memory like Firefox does -- and the usual collection of programs I keep open is Trillian, Outlook 2003, mIRC, FlashFXP, iTunes, and Crimson Editor (along with Firefox).
".....With an increasing number of people disenchanted with the flaws, bugs and security holes in the world's most popular web browser (still) switching to the current open source champion......"
I looked at the browser statistics at W3 Schools the other day and noticed that the most recent month both IE5 and 6 usage increased and that Firefox decreased by over a percent (19.6% to 20.7% the preceeding month). Maybe an anomaly, but notable because it is the first reverse of the Firefox trend on that web site since it was released. It makes me wonder about the statement above, and whether a flattening has started or arrived.
Personally I can't wait to see what sort of animal illustration O'Reilly will stick on the front cover this time. Will it be the triple-billed platypuss/rhinoceros this time? Perhaps an Ewok?
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
That article doesn't even mention Opera, which has the fewest security flaws.
I have used Firefox for over a year now. It is a "little" slower at startup than IE. But after that, I see no performance difference between the two, whatsoever.
But, I am running them on a 3.02 GHz CPU with 1 GB RAM system, Win XPee. However, my 2.2 GHz AMD CPU wiht 1.5 GB of RAM, Win2K. No performance difference after initial startup that I can see.
I agree with one of the commenters who noted that the most secure browser wasn't mentioned. (Well, okay this one is mentioned and it has a better history than the competition.)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I checked the W3C statistics on browsers again in the past few days and I believe its changing back in IEs favor. The figures for Firefox shifted down and the numbers for IE went up. Now because growth in Opera and others went up, it tells me that Firefox's popularity at least amongst webmasters (the people who browse W3C) declined slightly while IE went up. Not a good sign for Firefox but still the growth in Opera tells me that still people aren't too fond of IE or Firefox in the webmaster community. I myself dropped Firefox because of performance issues. I'm currently using Safari and Konquerer because I don't own Windows anyways.
DONE
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
How many people actually clicked the blue E icon for this story?
Well, it is cheaper at Amazon:
Amazon link
I know what you mean. After all, affiliate links bias the recommender. They just want you to click through and buy the book so that they can make some money. I'm gonna make sure ALL of the purchase price goes to someone who doesn't CARE if they make any money on it, like .... Barnes and Noble?
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
I was going to mod that fugger Flamebate, but I didn't see the option-- only Flamebait! Why isn't there a Flamebate option!?!?!
That's ok, you just have to go to every book store selling it and steal the cover off of each one.
Trust me, it's not easy to write a non-techie book. You may think there's no market for those kinds of books, but the fact that millions of copies of the "For Dummies" and "Complete Idiot's" series have been sold would indicate otherwise. You can't blame O'Reilly for jumping into the consumer market, it's a much larger pie than the techie market.
I am surprised to see a non-techie book reviewed here, though. Definitely not the intended audience! But then again, every techie I know has a non-techie spouse/friend/parent, so it's good to have books to recommend to them when you get tired of answering questions :-)
EricWhy would anyone need a book to learn how to use a web browser? Web browsers are just about the easiest software to use.
Over a year ago, I was able to switch my parents and siblings to the Mozilla suite. They were using Windows 95 and IE 5.5, and were having some problems with spyware. After trying spyware removal programs (to no avail), I finally introduced them to Mozilla. I took a while for my parents to switch (they used IE's feature of remembering passwords to credit cards and other stuff, so they had to reset them), but after that, they have switched to Mozilla permanently and seem to like it. They love the popup blocking and the AdBlock extension, even though they don't use tabbed browsing (they visit one site at a time and they don't really use the Internet as much as I do.) After a few months of Mozilla use, I removed the IE icon from the desktop, and I haven't received a single complaint. Haven't seen malware, viruses, or worms on that computer since.
Switching people to different browsers is just the matter of telling them the dangers of IE and show them the virtues of alternative browsers. As long as they have no sites that are holding them back to IE, the switch to be relatively easy. Now, switching people to different operating systems is an entirely different story....
One of my bosses insisted that he had to have the Administrator password for his desktop... incase I'm not around when he wants to install some new (mal)ware. So I set up administrator on that machine with a red flashing desktop (and IE and firefox start pages) saying to only use that account for administration tasks. Now whenever I go into his office I see that red desktop with ie and outlook open.
it was brown.
You were there at Woodstock?
Gee, you're old.
By "recent history" you must mean "since last week in Iraq"...
I do not want to go all flamebait here, but if it does not cost more to you, why not buy trough this link? :-)
After all, that's just a free contribution to Slashdot, a web that 1) does not require subscription, 2) where the ads are not intrusive and 3) you enjoy reading / posting.
Maybe they have costs to cover
main(char O){O++&&(((O-291)*O+27788)*O-868020?1:putchar(O++
This is all you need to know.c ks5da.jpg
http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/4594/firefoxsu
I don't use windows, I use linux, and microsoft is not about to port that ugly blue e to linux anytime soon.
Now if I can just figure out how to get my computer infected with a worm or virus, I'll have a reason to reinstall the OS after 3 years. I feel like I'm missing out on so much fun.
Why firefox keeps locking up on me, and why I can't start it up without getting 2 or 3 msgbox errors? Because the best the firefox faq has to offer is "uninstall all your extensions, uninstall firefox and install again from scratch". Ok, did that, it didn't fix it. Now what? I'm stuck using IE again.
New book! Don't poop in your own shoe!
Because the average Slashdot reader hears so much about "clicking the blue E", and might wonder whether a book about not doing so is any good. Or at least enough of us might wonder to warrant a frontpage feature - I don't think the criterion is "average" (though many stories make me wonder if there are any criteria at all). Now lots of Slashdotters can read the review to know the book is skippable. If only more frontpage stories were such timesavers.
--
make install -not war
Publishing busness wise it's a great idea. Kick out as many thick books with the promise of teaching you how to do something you don't understand while basicly confuseing or intimdating them more is great for busness.
It's the consumer that suffers in this. Mainly in thier own ignorance.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Opera 8 is an extremely nice browser. For those of you who may have dabbled in it before version 8, I urge you to try it again.
Safari is really nice too but that Mac DNS cache thing is really slow.
Firefox is consistent across all OS's (Opera too) but the main reason I use FF is the extensions.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
There's a very good reason IE loads faster than anything else. Part of its code is in memory all the time. It's the part used by Windows Explorer, your desktop shell. All that needs to load when you click on the Blue E is the part that isn't in use already. With Firefox, or any other browser, the entire program has to load, and that's going to take a little time.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
"Uh, to get back to the, uh, the warning that I've received you may take it with how many however many grains of salt you wish, that the 'Blue E' that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. Uh, it's suggested that you do stay away from that, course it's your own trip, so be my guest, but, uh, please be advised that there is a warning on that one ok?
My only beef with firefox is the inability to go to the download location after a download.
I have a peeve of not being able to launch or run the application from the folder it's installed to.
I don't download to my desktop but to folders on secondary partitions. It's annoying that after a download I must manually go to those location using the default firefox install.
If I have to buy a book to use a web browser, in this case Firefox, then something must be really wrong in the computing industry.
English Grammar for Dummies
I can think of a 250 page book of issues I've had with Safari:
I'd like to know how Safari makes choices as to which applications are used to open what vs. which plugins?
I'd like to know how to modify what Safari considers "safe content". Can I make the rules more complex than just extensions?
I'd like to change the look and feel of the bookmark bar so that RSS extensions have their own menu. I'd like things to automatically alphabatize (like they do in IE). I'd like to add "add folder" to the bookmarks bar.
I use acid search for the search box. I'd like to be able to have the thing switch and then automatically switch back. Or switch for only one window. Is that possible?
etc...
"don't wizz on the electric fence"
I don't mean load times, people. Firefox (once cached) loads up very quickly.
It's the whole memory usage and coming-out-of-swap-and-raping-my-hard-drive issues that I'm talking about.
Wow, I thought I spell checked that too. Sorry Spelling/grammar nazis I'll try to do better.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
MajorDick wrote: Unless of course that is slashdots ID , in that case great part of submarine income on Slashdots part"
Clearly, it's all a conspiracy.
It's so secret that it's right there hiding in the open, in the book review guidelines linked from every Slashdot review.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There is no difference except for security reason and some nice tweaks from firefox.
Other than that you have the Anti-Microsoft gang, and the fact that you cant use automatic updates with firefox, your stuck with IE.
Bad move from Microsoft to limit automatic updates to his browser.
Insert stupid and/or offensive remark here.
Absolutely. No author I know likes bad reviews, but a reviewer that explains why they didn't like a book -- because they thought it was about X or it didn't talk enough about Y or it spent too much time on Z -- is providing useful information. Even a bad review can lead to a sale. It's the non-constructive reviews that blather on but really say nothing more than "this book sucks" that are (in my mind) unhelpful.
Look at the reviews on Amazon for Head First Java, which is definitely not your standard book. Generally great reviews, but occasionally someone doesn't like it. That's fine if they provide some details. I love this one:
At least we know the book writers had the right audience in mind. On the other hand, this review is a bit odd:
OK... (backing away slowly...)
EricSo how do you get Firefox without opening IE at least once? Tell the newbie to ftp it?
Loads faster? Yeah, because parts of it are loaded by system, before you can even click on the blue e. Firefox would load faster as well if you would preload all the shared objects e.g. at system start. This "it IE loads faster than FF" is all fake. IE only slows down the system before you have even startet IE. And what when you don't even want to surf the web? I prefer FF which gets loaded when I need it, and not because my system thinks it knows everything and all better than me!
How can IE slows the system down if it is already preloaded for the system? I have a fast gig and it doesn't slow down my system at all. But still it takes 10-15 seconds before FF shows up. Why should it take that long? A web render shouldn't take that many resources. And processes like "shockwave", etc. can be loaded when needed, not when I start the browser. FF used to be fast to load. But the latest versions just takes their sweet time.
And if I don't want to surf the web. Well, then I do not start up either the IE application or Firefox and my OS is till running fine. Just becoz it is part of the OS doesn't mean anything. Remember that even X has to have things running in the background to be able to do what it does. Why not complain about them too?
Because most people in the know DO have family members and friends that are not in the know. I don't pay attention to such books, but now, based on this review, I can recommend it to those who might need it.
All in all, a very helpful review, even though I won't read the book myself.
Download my free songs!
As far as I'm concerned Firefox stalls and crashes more often then my IE. I don't see any reason why I should switch.
As far as I'm concerned, they BOTH don't meet my needs.
But then again, every techie I know has a non-techie spouse/friend/parent Seriously? Most geeks I know don't have many friends at all, let alone NON-techie friends ;)
Wow, I thought I spell checked that too. Sorry Spelling/grammar nazis I'll try to do better.
I darn you to heck!
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
This is only one example, but the stats for hits to my company's website during June were:
IE 61.07%
Mozilla 15.88%
Safari 7.97%
Other Netscape Compatible 7.24% (no idea what this is)
ETC.............
Who else read the title then reflexively clicked the big Blue 'E' next to the article summary?
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
Why does O'Reilly have a picture of a fox on the front of the book? Don't they know that Firefox is not a fox?
insert something directed to the mods to mod the parent up/down
"And so the Trekkies were executed in the mannor most befitting virgins - thrown into volcanoes" - Futurama
You're a bit cynical, aren't you? Every author I know, including me, goes to great pains to write books that explain, not confuse. Sure, the publishers like to see books that can have "sequels" and "spin-offs" and other related books, but how is that different from (say) TV or film?
Also, not everything about the book is under the author's control unless they self-publish it. The title often isn't (I certainly didn't come up with "Make Easy Money with Google", my working title was quite uninspiring) and neither is the "trade dress" of the book (layout, colors, etc.).
EricI just went through a week of extremely irritating hell because of IE. I have dual boot system that I occasionally switch from linux to windoze 2000 to play a game or 3. Never a problem mainly because I didn't have a broadband connection, only a pathetic dialup modem, so I would RARELY connect up to the net in windoze.
Well, I recently acquired DSL in my rural area and I got connected. Within a couple days of being connected (and switching to doze to update the software and play a few RTCW online games) I got infected with that goddamned Elitebar.
I downloaded half a dozen different anti-hijack, anti-spyware apps and not a one of them could get rid of the damn elitebar. I'd be playing a game and BOOM, up pops a spam popup for internet gambling, porn, other crap. Long story short, I finally downloaded a set of anti-spyware/anti-virus tools and, after a long afternoon of offline toiling, FINALLY got that damn elitebar killed off.
Just to be safe, I'll download the windoze version of Firefox from linux and transfer it to my doze partition so I can install it without having to get to it with IE. Anything that causes IE to start up anymore makes me cringe, waiting to see the damn popup attack.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Not to mention a spouse.
Yeah, why should some other nerd be making a buck when I'm not? Let some faceless corporation make the money. Nerds should be above such things. God knows I am.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Remember that even X has to have things running in the background to be able to do what it does. Why not complain about them
You are obviously new here. Slashdotters only complain. They complain about X, KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, blackbox, openbox, windowmaker, gentoo, rehat, slackware, *BSD, slashdot, microsoft, linus torvalds, linux...I think you get the idea. Slashdotters do nothing but complain. That's the only constant here, man.
And wtf does "becoz" mean?
Tell you what. Why don't you even the score. Have FF start on startup (put it in the start folder) and then, after he system is running (all the programs loaded). Check to see how fast it starts up... oh yeah, it's already running... just like IE.
There is a Universal Life Value Check it
While not completely innocent I don't blame the authors they are usually just trying to make a decent living, publishers are caught in that corporate greed, and no it isn't any different than TV or film. You werent trying to use that to improve your argument were you?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I dono about YOU but I dont go buying books on Slashdot that are linked with an AFFILIATE ID so someone gets a kickback.
Why?
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
...but many times I have no choice but to use the "Blue E" - online job applications, real estate sites, the list is endless of web sites that do not work properly on Safari on my Mac or Firefox on my PC. Heck, even the state unemployment online filing doesnt work properly. Neither does updating my profile on monster.com - gotta break out IE every time.
Heh. I had a box recently where I had to update a configuration file, and when I did a PS to get the PID to send a HUP, I noticed it was sitting at simething like 10,000 minutes of CPU time. Which woried me at first, until I noticed that the process had been running since Aug03. OK, that's more reasonable.
:)
I haven't managed to have a box stay up as long as some of the ones at the top of the Netcraft runtime ratings. Even with UPSes, you get occasional long power outages. But really, "I'll finally have a reason to reboot the OS after 3 years" is a better taunt.
For the lazies who won't look (Direct from the above linked Slashdot review guidelines):
Speaking of links, please do not include links in your reviews to online bookstores. Slashdot has an linking arrangement with Barnes & Noble; that's why when bn.com carries a particular book, you'll see a link to it at the bottom of the review.
An exception: if a book is not available from bn.com, make sure your review addresses availability: is it available used? Only direct from the author or publisher, or only from non-U.S. foreign retailer? In this case, a link to an online bookstore that actually carries it is welcome. Lots of good books are not in wide circulation -- help out your readers by telling them where to look. (And if you had to hunt to find a book that everyone should know about, that's probably worth mentioning in your review.)
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
No, I was just arguing against the assertion that authors and publishers are explicitly out to publish crap. I don't know of anyone in the business who wants to do anything but create a quality product. But not everyone agrees on what is crappy, do they? Someone's crap is someone else's manure.
Well, sometimes "free" help is less valuable than something you have to pay money for.
I've been having similar problems with the RAM usage in Firefox (and yeah, people, it's a known bug). I got so sick of it I actually switched back to plain old Mozilla, which seems much more stable than Firefox. Last time I checked it even has slightly better performance since it uses a newer version of Gecko.
So I recommend you switch too and see if that works better for you. Your problem does sound more plugin related, but it's entirely possible that it's just yet another Firefox bug.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Quite apparently you do not get it.
Le français vous intéresse?
Oh, you misspelled business ("busness"), basically ("basicly"), confusing ("confuseing"), intimidating ("intimdating") and their ("thier"), but your grammar was fine. Directing you to a dictionary might have been more appropriate.
That is the problem with government sponsored corporatism. Corporate groupthink is much different than the group that makes it up. I'm sure everyone at Microsoft just wants to make good software. Everyone at Phillip Morris just wants people to relax and have a cigarette. Once there is a faceless corporate persona to take blame peoples honest just and honorable actions eventually get morphed into the lowest possible greed.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Nevermind.
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber" -- Plato
Speaking of "trade dress" the cover of the book looks like in about 5 seconds you won't be able to "click the blue E" due to it being inside the fox and in about 12 million tiny pieces! http://a1204.g.akamai.net/7/1204/1401/05040811011/ images.barnesandnoble.com/images/9350000/9354791.j pg
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I have several friends that work at Microsoft and of course they don't use Firefox at work but most don't use it at home either. It surprises me how some people can be so blind to not even try an alternative product that has been getting rave reviews. I'm a huge MS guy but my broswer has been Firefox for sometime now. http://www.adminprep.com/ Your Source for IT Articles
As well, sometimes it's just easier to have a hard copy of everything, so there's someplace to make notes, and highlight important details, and stick a bookmark.
Finally, most of us still have a finite supply of screen space. Having a nicely bound paper copy means that I'm not giving up space on the screen--none of this mucking about trying to fit all the windows I want on one desktop. (Don't try to tell me that new users should be comfortable with tabbing back and forth between a help window and something else, either....)
~Idarubicin
Now Slashdot is doing reviews of furry porn. This place has really gone downhill lately.
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
Why is this a troll? While IE certainly has lots of problems with drive by installers, a lot of malware gets into a system because of the user doing something stupid. Firefox really doesn't do anything about this (to be fair, there really isn't much Firefox could do to protect a system from stupid users).
i like the " in the know" part. that's like asking what is the definition of " computer literate", or, ok...when can i press on the gas pedal? like, do i hate to wait for the light to change or something? ie rock's for those of us that are literate.
pathetic OReilly would stoop to that level, just goes to show you turn a good publisher bad with a few simple words
Why would we be discussing the London incident in a discussion thread about an internet browser book?
And you're complaining about priorities while you yourself are reading this thread!
I saw this book in BN a few weeks ago and I thought, "Hey this might make a good gift for non-techies". And then I saw the price. $20 is too much for what it is, A book like this should be in supermarket end of aisle displays in a pocket sized format and should cost $4.95
But I am one of those people who thinks all tech books are overpriced. Non-techies need good inexpensive books that they can buy at every discount store, drugstore and whatnot and there aren't any.
FF under Linux is still not able to do my on-line banking. The same problem with Opera and Mozilla. I've talked to the SunTrust Bank people and their reply was (officially, I presume) "We do not support nor do we plan to support non Microsoft compliant internet browsers due to security issues."
Of course, they are full of crap, and simply taking the path of least resistence by "assuming" that customers are either using MS or Apple's Safari.
Moving to another bank is not an option. I have accounts for my business with five different banks (Bank of America, SunTrust, Citizen's Bank and Trust, AmSouth, and a local credit union). NONE of them support non-MS browers; NONE of them will allow Firefox, Opera or Mozilla to carry out all functions. Interestingly, I tried Nutscrape on an old Powermac that I've had in storage since 1999 and everything worked perfectly.
Anyone have any clever comments about how wrong I am? I detest Microsoft and everything the company stands for, but I don't let my personal feelings get in the way of running my business.
nar
I either misunderstand your peeve or you need to right clicky the file's entry in the download list and choose 'Open folder containing'.
I figured its more likley that I misunderstand, than you ranting about something before exploring the dialog for more than 3 minutes.
Reminds me of the Tech Support skit by 3 Dead Trolls in a Baggie.
Click Here for the Internet Help Desk
insert something about it being slashvertising, the follow up with a series about how it's not
1) Software code. Sometimes.
2) There is no #2.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
That is the method I use to decide on whether not to see a movie. I am so cynical now, that I will only read the negative reviews, and try to understand why people didn't like them. If they didn't like a movie becuase it had an unhappy ending, or left unresolved questions, that wouldn't necessarily make it a bad movie for me. If they didn't like the movie because it had hardly any story, and was full of plot holes, then I will not enjoy it. Here is to more negative reviews.
No, the grammar wasn't above reproach either.
"Kick out as many" perhaps needed "as _____"?
Who're the "them" that are confused and intimidated?
There was no verb in the final phrase.
There were at least two more but I'd find it hard to dredge up the guidelines governing the transgressions.
Dude! His grammar is not fine. o_O
In the first sentence, "publishing business wise" should be "publishing business-wise" - if you want to turn a noun into an adjective by adding "-wise", "-like", "-esque" or other such suffixes, you use a hyphenated word, not two words. Personally, I think it's clumsy to use this construction at all when your noun phrase consists of more than one word; it just looks weird.
The second sentence is a jumbled mess with two concord errors. First, "Kick out as many thick books (...) is great for business" should be "Kicking out (...) is great for business". Second, "...teaching you..." clashes with "...confusing or intimidating them..." further down; either "them" should be changed to "you" or the first "you" should be changed to "readers" (or another third-person plural noun describing the people who are being taught and also confused and intimidated) and the second "you" should be changed to "they".
*Cough* And when I say "adjective", I of course mean "adjective or adverb", as is the case with "publishing business-wise" in the original sentence, and some other usages of hyphenated words which end in "-wise".
*slinks off*
but IE loads faster
Not for me it doesn't. I have a PC where IE takes an abnormally long time to start, but this doesn't afflict Firefox. My guess is that some part of Windows itself is fucked, and because IE is so integrated into the OS it is affected by it but not Firefox.
where there's fish, there's cats
> I don't go spending $20 buying 250-page, semi-technical books to toss at friends and family.
You must have a very small penis.
[1] British spelling of "loser".
Ok, tear this apart. I am honestly trying here:
"Business-wise, in publishing, a great idea is to Kick out as many thick books as one can with the promise of teaching someone how to do something they don't understand, while basically confusing or intimidating them more is great for business.
It's the consumer that suffers in this. Mainly in their own ignorance."
I think I'm missing some comas in there, but I don't remember the rule for independant and dependant clauses.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Well, "is great for business" is redundant, since you've already said that it's a great idea business-wise at the start of the sentence. It also makes the sentence not make sense anymore, since you're saying "A great idea is to do something is something else". Also, why is "Kick" capitalised?
It's much better, though. :) Using third person plural pronouns as gender-insensitive third person singular pronouns isn't really correct, but I do it all the time when I speak, so I can't be too much of a grammar nazi about it.
Ok, one more time:
"Business-wise, in publishing, to Kick out as many thick books as one can with the promise of teaching people how to do something they don't understand, while basically confusing or intimidating them more is great for business."
I did actually get an A in my College English class. I just don't usually type this way during quick slashdot posts. I suppose if I did try more eventually I'd be in the habit of doing so and it wouldn't take so much thought.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The redundancy is still there. It would probably be best if you removed "business-wise" from the beginning of the sentence. Also, "Kick" is still capitalised. And "to kick", while technically correct, sounds somewhat odd in its current position in the sentence; changing it to "kicking" may make it scan better. And there should be a comma after "more". And I shouldn't start sentences with "and"; bad me.
So I suggest:
"In publishing, kicking out as many thick books as one can with the promise of teaching people how to do something they don't understand, while basically confusing or intimidating them more, is great for business."
FYI there are probably many solutions to this, but I've found one to my liking. It's in the form of a Firefox Extention called 'Download Manager Tweak'. It can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&category=Download%20Tools&num pg=10&id=256
People are not wearing enough hats.