Posted on 11/04/2004 3:56:42 PM PST by BigSkyFreeper
Commentary--Firefox has been getting a lot of press lately. Firefox is free software in the Stallman-sanctioned sense--released under a GPL license and built atop technology developed for the Mozilla project. Everybody LOVES Firefox. Not only is it a great browser, but it will make your teeth whiter and secure you a date with Carmen Electra.
Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but on that note, I haven’t seen ANYONE criticize Firefox. To a certain extent, this is because it is the best alternative in a world dominated by Internet Explorer (cue Opera/Safari/Konqueror fans to go into a frothing rage). On the other hand, as I can personally attest, it is politically incorrect in the extreme to criticize anything stamped with the open source moniker.
In short, though Firefox is a good browser, political considerations have allowed it to escape some deserved criticism. Firefox supporters make some rather costly demands of Web sites, particularly given that it commands such a small, albeit growing, share of the browser marketplace. Recent feverish Firefox support pieces aside, I still think that ignoring IE’s non-standard features will prove a large, and unnecessary, barrier to the success of the best alternative to Internet Explorer.
My Experience providing support for Firefox
As a certain square-jawed actor might have said had he been abducted by aliens and forced to write software, "the experience of one programmer doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Even so, for a browser that touts its support for HTML standards, I was surprised to find that it had difficulty with standard HTML.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.zdnet.com ...
It opens, but any cell with an incompatible formula gets the formula error message of #NAME. Then of course you have to re-enter the formula using the open office syntax. Bottom line: If you want want seamless switching between Excel and open office, dream on.
Have you contributed time, money or code to the Mozilla project?
If not, keep your whining to your self and use something else.
If you have, have you submitted your problems to Bugzilla?
Mozilla isn't free. It's community supported. If you downloaded it, that means you.
Just loaded it in IE. The navigation features don't work, and I don't see the footnotes you're talking about. I do, however, have an "Error on page" message in my status bar.
Well, if it works for you, keep on going.
Who said I was whining? Certainly not I. Some people just read what they want to read and ignore the rest, while preaching their gospel with canned posts.
If you use Adobe Reader for PDFs, you must have a little program called Speed Up.
It speeds up AR opening.
Info:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1069854583/1
I am pondering the points while viewing in Firefox. And it beats the tar out of IE.
Mozilla is the all-in-one application suite, while Firefox is just a stand-alone, lightweight, modular browser. Both are great products depending upon what you want and need. I dig Firefox myself, because I have no need for the web page development or email features in Mozilla.
That link opens on Genesis, chapter one. You'll see a raised, bracketed footnote in verse two, after the phrase "Now the earth was." Mouseover that footnote, and you get a yellow popup window containing the words "Or When God began to create the sky and the earth, 2 the earth was."
And NOW you know... that!
Dan
(c8
Biblical Christianity web site
Biblical Christianity message board
Mozilla is made by a lot of the game guys who worked on Netscape, so there are some similarities. Netscape 7.x has about 0.5% marketshare of web browsers. Firefox is approaching 10%, IE is sliding down to 90%. Some people do still indeed use Netscape, but IMO, with Mozilla and Firefox available, there's no need to use Netscape any longer. Heck, Opera is good too.
I just took Internet Exploder off one of my systems and use firefox exclusively. My others run Moz
First computer I owned was a Vic-20 with it's whopping 20K of memory. Walked the dog while my favorite text based game would load from the cassette tape.
Thanks. Doe Firefox actually have any features that are not available in Mozilla? Other than little cosmetic things.
Ahh, I see now. Yeah, that looks to take advantage of some IE-specific stuff.
Well, as long as you enjoy the 'net your way.
O.K. I'm actually ready to jettison IE (running on XP Home) and my choices for a new e-mail client/browser are 1)Netscape 7.2 (custom install to avoid bloatware I don't use), 2) Latest non-beta version of Mozilla (is it 1.7??), or Firefox browser with ??? e-mail client.
Suggestions, please.
Off the top of my head, Live Bookmarks and the Find Toolbar are Firefox-only. There are some extensions that will only work on Firefox and not Mozilla, but there aren't too many of those. Firefox is, at its core, a basic browser. To reduce bloat and system load, you choose which features you want via extensions, and you don't wind up with stuff you never use.
Post 6
He cites the same problem I see with Firefox. Don't misunderstand, I like Firefox as well, but it makes for having to code a site for multiple browsers by having to do several HTML workarounds.
Post 10
Firefox just executes slower.
Post 25
Yep, and Firefox doesn't abide by all of the W3C standards.
Post 97
Tell the creators of FF to look at those pages, not me.
That's a lot of complaining about Mozilla.
And you didn't answer my question. Have you contributed to the Mozilla project, or do you want something for nothing?
Yes I remember when the Commadore was popular. I never owned one. After the Apple experience I did not so much with computers for a while until the IBM PC came out. It was all Dos back then, but at least you really had to be stupid to get a virus in those days.
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