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Well. Firefox is about the fastest thing on wheels far as a browser goes! WAAAAAY better than Firebird 0.6. And puts IE back in the category of molasses running uphill in January in the Arctic.... Can't say about Opera - I have YET to get any one of their multitude of download sites to actually start a download!
So I'm converted. Until something better shows up over the horizon, Firefox is my browser.... the whole point in getting it of course was to check against my html/css, and I do note that I have improvements to make in those areas! But that IS the point, is it not?
Support for the latest standards, on the other hand, is way better than IE, and even better than Opera. There's also proper theming support, and a capability for extensions and customization that seems to be better than anything else out there.
Just to pick a few examples that I use:
* The Adblock extension can block even downloading of pretty much anything (including flash), and can kill something as a one-off with the swipe of a mouse. Even a simple CSS ruleset blocks just about everything with no effort.
* There is a choice of mouse-gesture extensions, or none at all for people who hate them
* There's a lot more flexibility than Opera for toolbar customization. I have everything on one toolbar (alongside the menu), and just a few buttons.
Anyway, it's not perfect (the 0.8 release still has some bugs in the new download manager, for example), but there are plenty of reasons why I like it. Maybe somebody else here might too. There's a web page that gives some reasons to switch [mozilla.org].
Oh, and don't forget to check Burning Edge [squarefree.com] for updates. Most nightlies since December are more advanced than the 0.8 release.
I started using Firefox 0.8 about a week ago, and
I'm very happy with it! My previous browser
(Netscape 4.7) would crash my system 2 or 3 times
a nite, especially if I was backing out of pages
too fast. I love the ad blocking extention too.
One quirk. PLEASE advise if anyone found a fix:
My Logitech thumbwheel mouse has a red wheel in
place of the middle click button. On all other
Apps, each click (detente) as I rotate it will
jump maybe 3-4 lines of text in a large document.
In Firefox ONLY, it jumps almost an entire page.
I have clicked all over Hades and found the same
complaint but no real fix.
Any help very much appreciated!
- Larry
Downside is the useability of the browser.
A LOT needs to be done to the user interface, it's not consistant and some popup menu's simply got too much options in it.
It's also not consistent through the app, this is probably caused by multiple people working on it and each one doing what that person wants.
The popup-killer is a bit to aggressive: Opera lets you choose "only popups I requested". Firefox requires to disable the popupkiller for the entire site before it allows any popups.....
changing preferences (like disabling javascript etc) doesn't work as expected; it sometimes ends up being on again for some reason, very strange.
Don't get me wrong, it displays very nice and is very fast and is a nice piece of work!
It just needs work on the user interface.
Not sure about the difference in speed. Opera is also much faster than IE. Anyone done a scientific comparison?
My previous browser (Netscape 4.7) would crash my system 2 or 3 times a nite
LOL - yeah well this must be a revelation to you if you were using using NN4.7 - have you noticed loads of websites that suddenly look much nicer? Why on earth did you stick with 4.7 for so long?
Support for the latest standards, on the other hand, is way better than IE, and even better than Opera.
Really? Opera has always been pretty good on standards. Anyone got a comparison chart, I'd be particularly interested in its CSS support.
I have to confess, I'm baffled by references to speed and browsers. I've got a slew of them, and all of them but Nyetscape open instantly when I click. Nyetscape burps, scratches, then loads. Surfing from site to site and page to page all the other browsers render in a blink unless there's an error in the code somewhere.
So, I'm wondering, how are you measuring this speed difference? Or is all this talk about speed the same load I hear about the difference in processors that are relatively close, you know, in order to test them they have to make the processors perform bignum calculations to find that one processor is milliseconds faster than the other one.
Just wondering if the difference in browser speed is something that can be measured with a stopwatch or a sundial, or do you need some sophisticated measuring device? ;) How do you know if the server is sending the same page at the same speed every time? What if there's a burp somewhere between hops? Juss wondering, because all the browsers I have go "click blam".
On ADSL it is often just a matter of a few of seconds between IE and Opera/Firefox. However Opera and Firefox also win on the 'perception of speed' issue as both will usually put something on the screen as soon as possible.
That's what I'm not seeing I guess, I don't have a browser on my desktop that takes more than a second to open and render a page unless the page is rather large. Seconds you say?
Opera (and Firefox as well I think) uses HTTP1.1 with persistent connections, chunking and pipelining. IE doesn't.
I guess you may not see the difference if you are using a very powerful kick-a$$ desktop machine with a seriously fast connection, but on my 1Ghz laptop with a 512Kbps ADSL connection there is definitely a marked difference. Even more so if I'm forced to use a 56K dial-up.
The popup-killer is a bit to aggressive: Opera lets you choose "only popups I requested". Firefox requires to disable the popupkiller for the entire site before it allows any popups.....
Hmmm. That's interesting; I have no problem opening requested popups (by clicking a link, that is).
I've found FireFox much faster than IE or Netscape, particularly when the user.js file has been tweaked a bit. And I'm on a fairly fast broadband connection. Opera seems to be equally fast, perhaps a little faster on some pages, but not enough that I'm willing to deal with the decreased usability.
What I love most about FireFox is how customizable it is. Extensions, user files, themes, on and on it goes. Want a browser custom-made for you? Just grab FireFox! :)
So anyway, on IE6+ a graphics-heavy page will take many many seconds to load - up to 15 or so - even with "optimized" graphics. Same page on Firefox FINISHES in about 3 seconds. I call that WAY faster, and that makes me a really happy person.
I haven't tried the extensions etc. yet. Was trying just to change the theme, and it doesn't want to - anyone have any idea why? Said it installed, but isn't offered in the Themes section of the Options menu....
Edit: changed from install to just download then manual install - works fine that way!
[edited by: vkaryl at 2:08 am (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
Maybe just a Logitech problem? Have you checked their website for know issues, etc?
I checked all over the Firefox pages. Others have also
noted the problem, but nobody had a solution that I
could find. I was hoping somebody here might, though
this may well be the wrong place to ask.
I don't want to change any Logitech/mouse settings,
that will only screw up all my OTHER applications.
It is Firefox ONLY that magnifies the scrolling for
each click of the wheel as it turns.
Thanks for the input.
- Larry
-Install a bunch of different search engines in your search box
-setup keywords for your bookmarks. For example, you can make your bookmark for webmasterworld.com have a keyword of "w" (or whatever you want it to be). To access the site, simply type w into the location bar!
-learn the keyboard shortcuts - this is where the real power comes in. I use Ctl+L, Ctl+K most often
-Check out the extensions - there are some great tools for web programmers and designers
Have you tried the "Find as you Type" feature? It's great for anyone who likes to work with the keyboard rather than the mouse, and I'm not sure I've seen it on any browser except those in the Mozilla series.
Only issues so far:
php BBSes can be a bit glitchy, for some unkown reason (it'll mark all posts as read after reading one post, randomly log me out... I think its a cookie issue but its only happening on php based boards). Anyone else experienced this?
NG: ok, newgrounds is mostly juvenile crap, but sometimes juvenile crap is exactly what I need. That site works for a while, but eventually, after 2 or three movie views, FF will go into a deathspin.
The ENTER cheat: This is something that's only ever worked in IE (not Moz or Op). If you hold down the enter key, then mouse-click on a button, you can do a rapid-repeat click effect on that button. Its kinda a hack for spoofing certain aspects of certain sites, I'm not really interested in explaining where and why I use it, but its very, VERY useful on occassion. Can't do it in FF.
Overall, FF is up 99% of the time for me. Moz for the odd php based BBS or heavy flash site like newGrounds, and IE so I can cheat at certain things.
30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover [tntluoma.com] is well worth a read and his discussion on Mozilla vs Opera [tntluoma.com] is also good.
I like them both, they are excellent browsers and I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for certain companies illegally integrating their browser into the OS, Opera and Firefox would be ruling the roost right now.
As people get more savvy, they'll realize they could become 99.9% immune to all the virus and trojan outbreaks by downloading a free browser and mail client that works better than IE and OutLook anyway.
And the only reason I don't mention Opera is because I've never used it, though I've heard great things about it.
Anyway, it doesn't suit me as well as Firefox does. It's also not as fast - while this machine is 2.6 gig or something, my dial up is just that, and speed becomes a real issue.
Firefox it is....
For me, for Firefox to approach the usefulness of Opera I have to add several extensions, but those extensions are pretty powerful. One of the reasons that I've delayed upgrading to 0.8 is that I'm waiting for all of my favorite extensions to work with the new version.
In Firefox ONLY, it jumps almost an entire page.
Scrolling and password manager stink in Firefox. It's not just the mouse wheel that causes problems. If I scroll using the arrows, it jumps all over erratically. No support whatsoever for scrolling with the touchpad on my laptop. There was some other bug I was having and it turns out it's been on the Bugzilla buglist since early early versions of Mozilla despite lots of noise. That said, I almost cry when I have to use IE now. Used Opera for a while, but never really grokked it.
this is practically the only place in the lower 48 we CANNOT get tv
We must be neighbors. No TV, no cell phone, a couple of scratchy radio stations, no cable, no DSL. We do have 256K dual ISDN (actually technically quad I guess, since ISDN lines are always paired) but it's pricey.
We must be neighbors. No TV, no cell phone, a couple of scratchy radio stations, no cable, no DSL. We do have 256K dual ISDN (actually technically quad I guess, since ISDN lines are always paired) but it's pricey.
I'm in far southwestern Utah, closer to Las Vegas than to SLC. We live under the highest part of a 10,000 + foot mountain which just happens to be the largest laccolith in the world (unfinished granite upthrust during a mega-volcanic disturbance millions of years ago - solidified ash actually) so there's some magnetic-interference problems as well as the mountain itself.... and our phone lines are at least 20 years old so dial-up isn't particularly good because of both complications. Cell phone works down by the church - where I have a direct line-of-sight to the cell array on another mountain. Only hope is sat-band, and I just can't afford it yet.
Just noticed this over the past coupla days. For some reason, FireFox and ZoneAlarm get into a fistfight from time to time, and the only way I can fix it is to close them both down, start ZA first then FF. Anyone else have this problem?
I don't have problems with ZA and anything on my machines. It's probably the single most well-behaved program I own!
