Firefox, bah humbug

ZDNet ^ | November 4, 2004 | John Carroll

[BigSkyFreeper]

Commentary--Firefox has been getting a lot of press lately. Firefox is free software in the Stallman-sanctioned sense--released under a GPL license and built atop technology developed for the Mozilla project. Everybody LOVES Firefox. Not only is it a great browser, but it will make your teeth whiter and secure you a date with Carmen Electra.

Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but on that note, I haven’t seen ANYONE criticize Firefox. To a certain extent, this is because it is the best alternative in a world dominated by Internet Explorer (cue Opera/Safari/Konqueror fans to go into a frothing rage). On the other hand, as I can personally attest, it is politically incorrect in the extreme to criticize anything stamped with the open source moniker.

In short, though Firefox is a good browser, political considerations have allowed it to escape some deserved criticism. Firefox supporters make some rather costly demands of Web sites, particularly given that it commands such a small, albeit growing, share of the browser marketplace. Recent feverish Firefox support pieces aside, I still think that ignoring IE’s non-standard features will prove a large, and unnecessary, barrier to the success of the best alternative to Internet Explorer.

My Experience providing support for Firefox
As a certain square-jawed actor might have said had he been abducted by aliens and forced to write software, "the experience of one programmer doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Even so, for a browser that touts its support for HTML standards, I was surprised to find that it had difficulty with standard HTML.

[ShadowAce]

Mine doesn't

[Knitebane]

There are several programs that allow you to start them in the background, they don't pop up any quicker when loaded in the background, but they do use up resources.

And how many resources does IE use just sitting there?

[BwanaNdege]

I'm new to website creation, so I've been using MS Publisher to create the content. It is then saved as an *.htm file and uploaded to my webpage. If I then view the webpage in IE, all my graphics are shifted and overlapped. If I view the page in Netscape or Firefox, it is identical to the original content in MS Publisher. Go figure?

[Glenn]

Throw a rock -- hit a critic.

[BigSkyFreeper]

IE is just forgiving when it comes to rendering. The article suggests that Firefox just plain ignores the CSS div tag altogether and just fills the screen to the edges unless with some brute force coding you can get Firefox to behave.

[Musket]

The real reason to use FireFox is to keep spyware off your machine. It's not 100% air-tight, but pretty darned close.

[Knitebane]

IE is just forgiving broken when it comes to rendering.

There, fixed it for ya.

[Terpfen]

I would classify Firefox as forgiving, rather than IE. FF's obviously coded to display W3C standards, but pages that don't quite do that display fine--most other alternative browsers don't. Load up gamespot.com in Opera: the thing is a mess. Now load it in Firefox: it looks just the same as in IE.

[Cult of Personality]

I'm still using Firebird. Some of my favorite extensions wouldn't work in Firefox. Too many holes in Iexplorer for my liking.

[paulsy]

Firefox is all I use at home. Love the tabbing (ctrl T) feature, and no popups. Sometimes pages don't display that well though, but no big deal.

[general_re]

Let's see...ZDnet is owned by Microsoft.

Errr, I think the guy's full of it too, but MS doesn't own ZDNet - C-Net does. They bought Ziff-Davis from Softbank of Japan a few years ago, and Softbank is now the largest shareholder in C-Net.

[MarkL]

I happen to love Firefox. However, due to my job, there are certain web applications which will ONLY work with IE.

But I use Firefox for everything else.

Mark

[BigSkyFreeper]

There, fixed it for ya.

Nope. It is forgiving, believe me.

[gardencatz]

There are plug-ins that make the tabs very flexible. I like Firefox because I can add the bells and whistles I want without the microsoft bloat.

Cindie

[TomGuy]

Try a free webpage creation program called 'blink'.

It is pretty good, has preview function, and WYSIWYG.

http://www.wojanware.com/

[toledocon]

Ive used firefox for a while and never had a problem, and its faster than ie, not to mention that when i turn up my resolution ies fonts are so small I cant read them

[FreeManWhoCan]

Does anyone use NetScape. That browser used to be my favorite many years ago. I learned how to create web pages from it and it was free. Then eventually I had to start using IE due to it being "everywhere".

[Revel]

I have firefox and Mozilla.

I find myself going back to Mozilla a lot. It has more options and better cookie management. I take it Firefox is kind of like the trimmed down version of Mozilla. It seems more for the person who does not like too many dials on the dashboard.
There options control is minimal. I have yet to hear anyone list the advantages of FireFox over Mozilla other than it has a smaller file size, but Mozilla also includes Mail.

If anyone could list the real advanages of Firefox over Mozilla then I would apreciated it. Of course they are both put out by Mozilla.

[sdcraigo]

Has anyone tried an email program called ePrompter? If so, is it any good?

[BigSkyFreeper]

Yep. C-Net bought ZDNet. Did away with hotfiles.com since they already had download.com. This buyout happend eons (in internet age) ago.