Posted on 12/18/2004 6:19:26 AM PST by mathprof
FIREFOX is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.
Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.
Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.
Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.
With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Q; Did you download the Adobe plugin from mozdev.org? Plugin FAQs
I had the latest Adobe version 6.0 prior to installing Firefox but subsequently downloaded the plugin anyway. I've had zero problems - as long as I don't get impatient waiting for the docs to close (going to doc page #1 first seems to speed it up).
Not that I'm aware of, but please tell me more.
True, all of the embedded microproccesors in missiles and satellited and stuff have been PowerPC for years now, but they are made by IBM and Motorola, not Apple.
I know of one agency that has standardised on Netscape as the browser for their internal network, and they are also trying to convince DOD to switch to a secure version of Linux. That agency has gone so far as to release the secure Linux to the public.
You can speed up Adobe Reader loading by using this little free program: Adobe Reader SpeedUp 1.31
It increased loading speed tremendously.
http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/
I'd strongly recommend you just delete the shortcuts and/or ignore it. MS's response to Netscapes antitrust lawsuit was to embed IE so deep into the OS that they could claim in court that it couldn't be removed. While it's probably possible to remove it, I think it will break more than you think/want not to mention you won't be able to do Windows Updates anymore.
See #97.
Didn't they buy Windows for like $80,000 from the developer?
Same Here.
Firefox is a quite good browser, especially with the inclusion of tabular browsing, which allows me to read multiple web pages simultaneously. However, many of the features in Firefox does take getting used to, though.
Yes, there is an extension called Image Zoomer that does this. Simply right-click the image and select Zoom In or Zoom Out.
See:
#27
Digital Research had developed a graphic interface called GEM Desktop in the mid-1980's. It was fairly neat but never really got much attention. Then, most desktop computers were still running DOS/MS-DOS, so they were limited in both memory and hard drive capability. A 10-meg hard drive was a luxury.
Windows didn't really catch on until version 3.0 around 1991. By then, more offices were converting to desktop computers.
The big problem in the late 80's and early 90's was format compatibility among software programs. For example, the common use wordprocesssors were Multimate, Wordstar, and WordPerfect. MS-Word was a late starter. Offices demanded the ability to convert from one format to another. Even so, during the next few years, the shakeout occurred. Wordstar couldn't seem to gravitate to a GUI interface. It died. Multimate was too complex to operate. It died. WordPerfect was the grand master, but it sold to Novell and a couple of other entities who let it die. MS-Word became the predominate wordprocesser by default.
A better analogy would be like say a construction company that does $1 million a year in business bidding and GETING a contract to build the Sear Tower.
That is just not true.
Check out the facts about the development of Firefox.
Firefox is better than IE, but it does have its problems. For instance, it forces you to hit enter after you've pasted in a URL, which can be a pain. It also is not especially "mouse sensitive" in some situations. There was something else about it that was bugging me, but I can't come up with it at the moment. In any case, Firefox is not perfect. It has some evidence of clunky code about it.
Before IBM created a standardized PC using MSDOS, there was a lot of possibilities. IBM stopped that. Those that have only known a swindows environment missed out. I still have an editing program that came from the DEC VAX environment that enables me to open ANY file no matter the record length, file extension, etc.
Most folks anymore only know word processing.
Never say never. Remember, someone has to get infected before the software guys can write a virus definition.
BTW there's several freeware AV's that work well, AVG for example. Throw in a good firewall like sygate and you're not doing bad.
As a geek that spends a lot of the day dealing with customers that won't run any kind of protection I can say that there's no reason logically of financially to go unprotected and you hurt others as badly as yourself. We've begun disabling customers that are infected till the clean themselves up.
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