Firefox

[cmtar]

Can someone tell me why i should use firefox instead of ie? I hear everyone telling me i need to use firefox but why? Yea i get you can customize it all all that but other than that why is it so better?

[tcusta00]

I notice that it runs quicker and, since I can also customize it, it's a no-brainer.

Why don't you try it out and see if you like it? It's free and there's always the uninstall feature of your OS if you don't like it. :)

[Greg Alsobrook]

It's best quality..... It's not made by Microsoft.... :lol:

[mhayes70]

I use FireFox at home and work and I love it. I can tell a difference in the speed.

[bonscott87]

It's about 1000% more secure. You'll have a lot lower chance of getting spyware or virus by using it.

Plus a lot faster and just plain better in all ways. It has taken over 30% of the browser market for a reason. :)

[dmurphy]

Can someone tell me why i should use firefox instead of ie? I hear everyone telling me i need to use firefox but why? Yea i get you can customize it all all that but other than that why is it so better?

Because it's not subject to Active X security crap.

But then again, neither is my Mac. :-)

[Stuart Sweet]

The security features are great - you can tell it to automatically forget everything you've typed --EVERYTHING-- when you exit. It runs faster, gives a cross-platform experience between Windows, Mac and Linux, and is so much more customizable.

[pprather]

It's an open source browser and the 3rd party apps that are being developed are fantastic.

[dmurphy]

The security features are great - you can tell it to automatically forget everything you've typed --EVERYTHING-- when you exit. It runs faster, gives a cross-platform experience between Windows, Mac and Linux, and is so much more customizable.

Exactly... much like "Private Mode" in the Safari browser... which is still my browser of choice ...

[xzi]

Those people claiming it's "faster" are the ones who've been using it for a while. It has NEVER been faster then IE. It's a resource hog and it's a second browser when you already have one.

You can claim a lot of things about Firefox, but speed has never been one of them. 3.0 might be better I guess.

Personally, I'm not one for installing alternative things when I already have one that works--and that's IE vs. Firefox for me. Why put on iTunes or Winamp when it comes with WMP?

Then again, I'm a Microsoft admin by trade :)

[Stuart Sweet]

I use Firefox instead of Safari because it's much more supportive of the java apps I need to run for work. Nothing against Safari, it just doesn't work for me.

[Ron Barry]

Those people claiming it's "faster" are the ones who've been using it for a while. It has NEVER been faster then IE. It's a resource hog and it's a second browser when you already have one.

You can claim a lot of things about Firefox, but speed has never been one of them. 3.0 might be better I guess.

Personally, I'm not one for installing alternative things when I already have one that works--and that's IE vs. Firefox for me. Why put on iTunes or Winamp when it comes with WMP?

Then again, I'm a Microsoft admin by trade :)

Depends what version of IE you are talking about. If you are talking about IE6, well the Javascript engine in IE6 performance is horrible compared to FF and Safari. IE7 is better but still not there. Not even close.

In terms of standards compliance, even though IE7 has improved in this area FF and Safari once again are leaders here.

As for Speed, you have the right to your opinion but you might want to take a look around the net and you will find that the statement of FF NEVER being faster than IE is just not true. All the test I have seen and my personal experiences as a web developer that has just spent the last 2 weeks doing performance analysis on our web site with both FF and IE7 found that both perform pretty close in our application. Actually FF was about a second faster in most test. There are a lot of things that go into the perception of browser speed so one must be careful when making blanket statements like NEVER faster than IE because the data on the net just does not back this statement up.

I personally would not choose my primary browser based on speed alone. For me, FF is my primary because I like the flexibility, has great add-ons, and it renders 99% of the sites I go to (Ones is does not is because of proprietary IE only technology choices). Also, you can actually run FF2 and FF3 on the same machine at the same time unlike IE which makes it good for the transition time when upgrading.

You also can skin the browser.

Well My advice is.. Give it download and try using it as your primary browser. Look at the add-ons and play with it a bit. Can't hurt and if you don't like it uninstall it. I am in the camp that one should always have two browsers on a machine.

For the record during the day at work I use both since I develop web apps, but my preference is FireFox by a mile.

[RDH416]

I have some sort of minor problem with IE on my laptop which causes it to periodically freeze up until I minimize the screen and reopen it. Although a relative minor problem, it did occur much more often than I would like. I was not able to get the problem corrected so I loaded Firefox and have never had a moment's trouble with it freezing. I did keep IE on my laptop since I found that it was necessary for accessing certain information on Microsoft's website.

[Mark Holtz]

Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 is more standards compliant than Internet Exploder. And, yes, Firefox 3 is much faster in rendering pages.

And, if you build quality web sites, you quickly learn that there are two ways of building websites.... the right way.... and the Microsoft way. Pages that render fine under Firefox, Safari, and Opera, and pass compliance tests sometimes do not render properly under Exploder.

[EXTACAMO]

After reading this thread I installed Firefox on my aging Thinkpad A31 running WinXP SP3. What a surprise! It installed without a hitch and is allot faster then IE7. Thanks.:)

[airpolgas]

And once you get used to Firefox, try to dabble into some extensions. You will absolutely love it.

try these:

ad-block plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865)
Adblock Filterset.G Updater (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136) (use in conjuction with Adblock Plus)
NoScript (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722)

[Rob77]

There is no question that Firefox is more secure and faster. The share of people using it is increasing. The only reason there are not more then 30% is that a lot of people don't understand what is available to them, and just take whatever Microsoft feeds them :)

[harsh]

o Firefox 3.0 is much closer to the ideals of the W3C with respect to following the published web standards. Standards won't be a serious part of IE until at least version 8.

o If you're a web developer, you would almost certainly wish for a world full of Firefox clients as opposed to the rather disparate IE6 and IE7.

[Ron Barry]

I really wish everyone would all jump from IE6 to IE7 at a minimum. It sure would make my life a lot easier. :D

[B Newt]

Can someone tell me why i should use firefox instead of ie? I hear everyone telling me i need to use firefox but why? Yea i get you can customize it all all that but other than that why is it so better?
I like the built in spell checker.

[Ron Barry]

oh.. I forgot about the spellchecker. Definitely a really cool feature!

[harsh]

I really wish everyone would all jump from IE6 to IE7 at a minimum. It sure would make my life a lot easier. :DThe problem that I have with that is that more than a few applications aren't compatible with IE7 and they do not readily coexist.

Of course the happy part is that applications written to either IE6 or IE7 probably won't work with IE8. Microsoft is suffering mightily because they keep producing new versions of various tools that are decidedly less backward compatible.

[B Newt]

Seamonkey is also great. It use to be Mozilla browser. I like the built in email/newsgroup reader.

[Ron Barry]

Of course the happy part is that applications written to either IE6 or IE7 probably won't work with IE8. Microsoft is suffering mightily because they keep producing new versions of various tools that are decidedly less backward compatible.

Actually one of the things that will be in IE8 as I understand it is IE6/IE7 and IE8 rendering engines. In addition they are going to create an meta tags that a site can add to indicate the version the site was designed for and IE8 will then render using the meta tag. I also believe it will also allow the user to select the rendering on the fly. That should in theory handle this issue.

There was a big deal made a few months back because they planned on default to IE7 for sites without the meta tag identifier and that had a lot of the standards based people annoyed.

[dthreet]

I notice that it runs quicker and, since I can also customize it, it's a no-brainer.

Why don't you try it out and see if you like it? It's free and there's always the uninstall feature of your OS if you don't like it. :)

I agree. If you don't like it then just uninstall it. I like it because it seems faster.

[harsh]

Seamonkey is also great. It use to be Mozilla browser. I like the built in email/newsgroup reader.Seamonkey = Netscape Communicator.

[deltafowler]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox