Firefox emerges as credible threat in browser battle

San Jose Mercury News ^ | Mon, Nov. 29, 2004 | Mike Langberg

[nickcarraway]

Firefox is one very hot browser, pardon the pun, and your computer will be safer if you switch to this free software that's heating up the charts.

There's been a seismic shift during November, with Firefox emerging as the first credible competitive threat in a decade to Microsoft's aging Internet Explorer browser for Windows.

[Terabitten]

No, I haven't crossed completely over to the dark side with Linux yet. I'm not too computer savvy with stuff like that, and I'd have a lot of questions. I know it's free and all, but my personal jury is still out.

[politicket]

As a comparison, pages open noticably much faster than do those when I use IE.

The Firefox page will do an initial load faster than IE, but it loses the race when going to get the graphics and multimedia for the page. It takes longer for Firefox to generate the 100% complete page. I'm guessing that Firefox is written in Java, which would account for the slight decrease in speed.

[kingu]

Extensions are 'additions' to the firefox program that are written by other users. It could be a tool to use a particular search engine, a calendar popup, or one of my favorites, called 'Adblock'. Adblock allows you to ignore images from particular websites (or locations on particular websites) including flash animations. Which means you can lock out the majority of ads on the websites you visit.

Another one I use is 'gmail notifier' which allows me to log onto my gmail account, know when new e-mail arrives, and to go to that e-mail account from whatever webpage I'm on. Since I also use LiveJournal, the extension 'deepest sender' allows me to add to my blog there while browsing (as a sidebar) or in it's own window. Very handy.

So the short answer is extensions are user written tools to add to firefox.

[goldstategop]

Internet Explorer is so full of holes I've used Quik-Fix Pro from Pivx to lock it down. It uses a different means of walling off hostile sites. I don't think it will ever completely replace IE-SpyAd but it offers continuing proactive protection. All of the lists are gone from I.E but if you have imported them in Norton Internet Security, there are still there. On my desktop computer I'm running Netscape Navigator 7.2, which is an AOL rebrand of the Mozilla browser suite. On my laptops, I'm running Firefox browser cause I think a small and more flexible browser's great on portable computers. Until Microsoft fixes its I.E holes, people will be at risk from nasties. Until then, install anti-intrusion software alongside a good anti-virus scanner, trojan scanner, firewall and anti-spyware software. And of course, run a more secure browser like Netscape/Mozilla or Firefox.

[dbwz]

I switched after all the security issues I was reading about with IE, and like anything else it takes some getting used to. Once you do though, wow! I especially love the "Bug Me Not" thingie for websites that want you to have a password and username. What a brain-saver that's been.

[tfecw]

eh don't let them fool you ;) windows is the way to go.

and as for being computer savvy, I'm not sure if thats a requirnment any more. I remember nearlying throwing my laptop out the window when i set up redhat. Those were the good ol days where you still had to mount devices! fun fun fun. I'm pretty sure they did away with all that in an effort to make it more windows like. and you know what that means ;)

[ThinkDifferent]

I'm guessing that Firefox is written in Java

Nope, it's C++.

[Publius6961]

We need some real knowledgeable computer geeks here.
I am ready to switch but need to know how to set things up so IE can still be used on those rare instances where a web pages misbehaves.

Any step by step instructions out there?

[yarddog]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately when I clicked on it and then hit clear history, it did not clear the Google history. In fact it didn't seem to clear anything.

[politicket]

Nope, it's C++.

Well, in that case I would give them a "D" for programming ability. The application should be much more responsive if running from compiled C++. Maybe their adopting Microsoft's "bloatware" concept? ;-)

[tfecw]

sure.

Go to downloads.com search for mozilla fire fox

download it.

install it, and thats pretty much it

(sorry if i came off as an ass, its really that easy! :)

[Publius6961]

Who wrote it?
What makes it "better"?

[RichardW]

I'm a convert. Very few downsides and many upsides. And all of that scumware seems to be gone. Imagine that.

[politicket]

Any step by step instructions out there?

Just install Firefox and tell it that you want to import all of your IE settings. Then you need to decide if you want IE or Firefox as your default browser. That's all there is to it. They will live happily side by side.

[Ex-Dem]

how to set things up so IE can still be used on those rare instances where a web pages misbehaves.

Just don't uninstall IE after installing Firefox. You shouldn't need to do any extra setting up.

[rockrr]

I find this interesting.

It has been my experience that Firefox is almost twice as fast to deliver pages as IE. I have read other posts that mirror both of our experiences. This leads me to believe that there might be some sort of compatibility/configuration or competing software issue that favors one at the expense of the other.

I'm still trying to get used to the way Firefox does bookmarks...

[RichardW]

"Thank you, I've been reading about Firefox, need to look into it, and bump!:)"

You can download it very easily and quickly and get right to work. Piece of cake.

[Terabitten]

I guess this is my biggest question: will all my Windows-based programs still run under Linux? I don't want a free OS if I have to buy new apps. I mostly use OpenOffice, but I use Outlook as my email app (since it syncs with my pda), and I use a home recording app called AcidPro. If those all work in Linux, I wouldn't have much of a problem with switching over.

[ThinkDifferent]

Many of the speed issues are likely due to its use of XUL, which is a language that defines user interface items (sort of like HTML). It makes the user interface more flexible, but at the cost of some speed.

[tfecw]

when you test firefox vs IE unfortunatly you have to skew the tests.

IE will respond better when a page is riddled with javascript, and other client side, mainly Microsoft technoligies. Ya, thats kind of a Duh question/answer but the majority of websites use those technolgies.

I'm sure there is a benchmarking site out there somewhere. (i wouldn't read what IE says about firefox or visa versa, but thats benchmarking for ya)