Posted on 08/07/2006 2:38:01 PM PDT by rock_lobsta
That's why you need to complain loudly, every time you run up against some silly MSIE-only crap. I do it politely, but let them know that alternative browsers are steadily increasing in marketshare.
I'm a big FF user, but I don't want FF or anything else to have an overwhelming dominant position in the market, because that just leads to stagnation. The history of MSIE is a textbook case of the dangers of monopoly power in a marketplace.
>>how good a product Firefox is<<
FF is NOT a "good" product. It may be better than IE and I'm forced to use it due to the incompatability of sites with Opera, but I don't like it. It has serious memory leak and stability issues that the developers absolutely refuse to fix.
Have you complained? It's the only way to get things to change. It's obvious that if simply setting the user agent makes everything work, that there is no valid reason for them to attempt to make you use an insecure and buggy kludge like IE on a banking site.
You can knock it you like but the tabbed browsing implementation is much better than the Firefox original and the integrated RSS is great. I give Firefox a look occasionally and just don't see anything there that is all that special except the tabbed browsing and since IE7 handles that so nicely I think I'm just going to stick with Microsoft.
I like Firefox & I've been using it for a couple of years now, but I have to admint I don't 'get' the tabbed browsing thing. How is it so much better to have a bunch of tabs open in one window than to just have several windows open?
It really does. I think IE7 Beta 3 is already a better product, despite the incompatibilities. I use Safari more often now and I've tried Opera, but I'm not 100% happy with any of them.
We've been doing a lot of stuff with AJAX on our projects, I hope IE7 doesn't mess this up.
There are two ways of incompatibility. One is fake, when they just detect for IE and kick you out or screw you up. As was mentioned, use the User Agent Switcher extension. Your browser will report itself to the Web site as IE, Opera, Firefox, etc. But please, after switching to IE, switch back to Firefox so you aren't over-reporting to sites the usage of IE, which will cut the reported marketshare of Firefox (this happened with Opera).
The other is when the site is actually incompatible with Firefox due to bad html/css or ActiveX. For that, use the IE Tab extension. It'll open a tab, but the insides are rendered with IE. You can configure it to always render certain domains with IE.
For me it's a reduction of screen real estate required to have multiple sites open. I can use the keyboard to quickly move from one tab to another without the context switching you get when you go from one window to another.
Also, there are extensions available to make tabs even more flexible. I know folks who want to be able to select a bookmark, and have it open 5 or 6 tabs automatically. I don't use that at the moment, but have been thinking of ways it could help some tasks.
Firefox has its problems, but the biggest special thing is the community of extension developers out there. Remember, FireFox was designed to be the basic browser, fairly small and fast, with the ability to add functionality easily.
With a few free extensions you can make Firefox far better than any other browser. Here are mine:
I'd suggest loading Firefox and then getting any extension that sounds remotely interesting. Start deleting the ones you don't use after a while.
Basically, the UI space saved.
If you're using Firefox, I'd appreciate you or anyone going to this site (the El Paso Times) and click on the AP Video: Flood clean up begins. Hopefully some one can tell me how to deal with this.
Excellent listing of extensions. I always learn something and usually add one or more when reading these posts.
Yes, by phone & email. They said the site would work with Netscape. My complaints that Netscape and Firefox were essentially the same browser meant absolutely nothing to them. Then they told me they would be glad to help me "upgrade my browser" so I could use their site (at which point I hung up). If it wasn't so much trouble, I probably would have changed banks over that.
That was the event that prompted me to go looking for the agent switcher. I knew that if the site worked with Netscape, there was no reason it wouldn't work with Firefox. I have otherwise been happy with Suntrust Bank, but their online support people are either totally computer illiterate or a bunch of aholes (most likely both).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.