Posted on 09/26/2004 3:08:53 PM PDT by NewMediaFan
LONDON (Reuters) - Since Microsoft won the browser wars in the late 1990s, its Internet Explorer software has been the way most people surf the Web. But with some slick new challengers on the scene, that may be about to change.
While Internet Explorer has remained largely unchanged for years, alternative Web browsers like Opera, Apple Computer's Safari and especially Firefox are wowing users with innovative features and the promise of increased protection from hackers.
Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape, the first popular Web browser, which kick-started the dot-com boom before being vanquished by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape was then purchased by America Online, which donated the software's code to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
After nearly three years of fits and starts, Mozilla has turned out a sleek, fast-running browser. While numbers are hard to come by, more than five million copies of the software have been downloaded in the last two months, and more than a million in the 10 days since its 1.0 "preview" version was released Sept. 15.
Most estimates put Internet Explorer's overall market share at about 95 percent. But a shift can also been seen among the early adopter crowd, which picks up on technology trends months or years before the mainstream...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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Exactly, FF can be configured nearly any way the user wishes. I stick with the stock browser appearance for maximum visible screen, and then use extensions like Tabbrowser Extensions, GMail Notifier, and Weatherfox to turn FF into my second desktop.
Can't wait for 1.0 final.
Now I'm getting paranoid. LOL!
I went to the direct link you provided...no downoad there either. This is frustrating.
Any articles on those tweaks?
It is lightning fast compared to IE in any case.
Just make sure you upgrade your Acrobat to the latest version...until I did so recently, PDF's would freeze up my computer when they loaded in Firefox.
Now it works fine though.
I am not a Microsoft Hater. But, I have finally gone to Firefox permanently.
It is awesome.
Really? Got a link?
That worked! Loading now...thanks. Now I'll go back and read the thread to get up to speed.
Where are the XPI settings (just to make sure they are set right). I can't find them in Options.
My argument in the past why to stay with IE was that Netscape was annoying as hell....had your own little profile, installing plugins was a ridiculous hassle instead of just working like IE....the program was crappier and webpages did not work as well etc....Netscape was a POS and I hated its guts.
But, even though Mozilla is based on it, I love Mozilla. It is TONS better than IE and the Netscape problems are not there with Netscape. Installing plugins does not involve 100 steps etc.
Mozilla rules.
The big shocker, is speed though. I had a friend of mine install it first on a P III 600Mhz system, which he uses for testing stuff. As expected, it was slow. I installed it on my P4 2.5 Ghz, and it is almost as slow. I upped my memory last week to 1 GB, hoping to solve some problems with my XP setup, which it did partly, but LH is still dog slow.
Other than the performance/speed problems, the interface is pretty slick. I haven't used it for Web browsing yet, or to run any applications.
I'm running netscape 7.0 right now. Anybody know if there's a big enough improvement to make this new browser worth downloading?
I've had some of those situations.
Mozilla is like a 2003 version of Netscape v2. Simple, elegant, functional, and fast enough.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1164437/posts <---US, Citing Security Concerns, Steers Consumers Away From IE
This followed a couple of days later: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1165119/posts <-----Microsoft Plugs IE; Warns All Browsers At Risk (Test Your Browser Here)
Actually, Firefox is built from scratch. The only thing it shares with Netscape and Mozilla is the Gecko rendering engine, but since it's been improved tremendously... yeah, we're leaps beyond Netscape here.
Opera is my primary browser, too. I love the tabbed pages and suspect we'll see that feature in a new incarnation of IE in the not-too-distant future. I've tried Firefox but it loses out to Opera on little issues. For example, just selecting part of the address in Firefox's URL window is a pain compared to Opera. And in that area, nothing touches Opera's cool "paste and go" feature. Opera's only drawback is that it doesn't always handle pages well if they have non-standard elements like Flash or whatever.
MM
Depends. Do you use a custom theme and some obscure extensions? Not everything has been updated for 1.0PR. My favorite theme, Le Breeze, is still 0.9.x only, with no update in site. Most extensions have been updated, though I get the feeling everyone is waiting for the 1.0 final release next month.
It's up to you, really. The RSS feed notifier is nice (did you know FR has RSS feeds? I didn't, until 1.0PR told me), the new theme looks great (I don't miss Le Breeze... as much), and with the need to update extensions to be compatible with 1.0PR, extension authors also added some new features. I love it, and of course, a couple of security holes were patched.
If you don't have any 0.8-specific items, go ahead and upgrade. Though it certainly can't hurt to wait for 1.0 final.
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