Firefox - A Newbie's Perspective

J.Lincoln · 01-07-2007, 04:49 PM

Firefox - A Newbie's Perspective

I was spending hours upon hours researching a topic for school; that dreaded final paper of the semester was due. I had my research spread across 5 instances of Internet Explorer, and was finding some good information. Suddenly, it happened: Without warning IE crashed on me. Of course, when IE crashes, all of your new bookmarks, history, and any progress you may have made are instantly wiped out. Well, after about the fourth time this has happened to me in as many months (yes, I’m a slow learner…) I decided to see what other browsers there were.

I once tried Netscape Navigator, but never really liked it. All the web pages I went to seemed to look different in Netscape than IE, and it had a feel I just couldn’t get use to.

So I was suggested by a friend to try Mozilla Firefox.

From the beginning I was skeptical after my Netscape endeavor. I didn’t feel like I wanted to learn a new browser and all the workings of it. The install went simply enough at least. I was pointed here to get the quick download, and the installation went without a hitch. After firing it up for the first time, I got to play a round a bit.

Options

The settings were pretty easy to configure so that it was similar to IE. It took only 5 minutes of reading to understand the options in Firefox and get everything where I wanted it. This was mostly because of Firefox’s intuitive user interface. Everything was already configured how I needed it!

Tabbed Browsing

This was a new idea and one that I can’t live without now. I can easily manage all of my windows and organize the websites I am browsing on Firefox. It is a lot easier when working with tabs than searching through multiple windows. Firefox does this beautifully!

Coding

All the web sites that I view normally in IE look just as good in Firefox. No more of that annoying code rendering where the same site looks completely different. I was worried about this one, but I know now that it is really a lot better than I thought.

Stability

I’ve been using Firefox heavily for 4 months now, and it has yet to crash. Despite my best efforts, I can’t get this browser to go down! Another plus about Firefox is that it will remember your favorites and history even if it does crash (from what I read, no experience with this yet!).

Overall Experience

On a scale from 1-10, I give Firefox an ELEVEN! From great stability to a wonderful user experience, this browser has it all! I feel more secure with it as well, because all of the security flaws that are present in Internet Explorer don’t apply to Firefox. Even though only a small percentage of users on the internet use Firefox, I think we’ll see those numbers go up dramatically in the next few years. It is faster, more secure, more stable, and more user friendly. What more could you ask for?!

If you haven’t tried Firefox yet, test it out now. You’ll be hooked, I guarantee it.

**Lyte** · 01-07-2007, 05:07 PM

The only problem I've found with Firefox so far is that most of what's coded on the internet is for Explorer. This means when I browse with FF, I see all sorts of "errors." I hate seeing big "X"s or pages not properly aligned.

Lyte

firestorm · 01-08-2007, 10:15 PM

i never see x's

**Lyte** · 01-08-2007, 10:23 PM

On our home page the TigerDirect search box at the bottom doesn't come through.

Lyte

firestorm · 01-09-2007, 05:15 PM

ok...1 x then...big deal, i never see viruses or pop ups either :P

**Lyte** · 01-09-2007, 05:54 PM

That's a plus! lol

Lyte

AngelArs · 03-19-2007, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyte

The only problem I've found with Firefox so far is that most of what's coded on the internet is for Explorer.

How so? Any good designer/coder is going to check their work on the top 3 browsers before they release it. FF 2.0 is still a little buggy, but that will get ironed out.

dr911 · 03-19-2007, 11:52 PM

Hey Everyone,

About Fire Fox (FF) and web site "errors"....FF is basically the "new kid on the block".

As AngelArs stated:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyte
The only problem I've found with Firefox so far is that most of what's coded on the internet is for Explorer.

How so? Any good designer/coder is going to check their work on the top 3 browsers before they release it. FF 2.0 is still a little buggy, but that will get ironed out.

This is very true about designers get the codes "ironed out". ( I should know, I have been designing for the past 10+ years or so.)

Also...here is a way to make FF run faster !!

DO NOT do this if you have dail-up !!

Type about:config into the Firefox address bar.
This displays Firefox configuration file.

Scroll till you find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Double click it and set value to 8

Also check that adjacent entry network.http.pipelining is set to TRUE.

If not, double click and change it.

Restart FF !!

FF is really faster than IE. When you get time, do a "speed check" on both browser. I check my speed @ http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

I'm and sure others are interested in this subject. If you could, list the speeds of both browsers and aslo include your ISP's speed they say your suppose to have !!

**Lyte** · 03-20-2007, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AngelArs

How so? Any good designer/coder is going to check their work on the top 3 browsers before they release it. FF 2.0 is still a little buggy, but that will get ironed out.

Hey Angel,

Well, it just seems that when I'm using my FF and browsing the internet, pages don't look as good as when they are seen on my IE. I'll have to find an example and post it here.

Too true, a good designer/coder should check how their pages look before publishing but maybe I'm in the habit of visiting poorly designed pages!

Lyte

AngelArs · 03-21-2007, 12:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyte

pages don't look as good

Can you be more specific? The only thing that I've ever noticed is that FF displays text a lot smaller, but you can compensate for that in the toolbar. IE is legendary for being the worst browser around, and IE7 is worst yet. IE is not XHTML compliant, needs javascript to render Flash properly and if you use IE7 you'll start to see javascript problems pop up. IE is so bad that MS actually has what is called 'IE conditionals' for coders which fixes some of IE display problems. I don't completely blame Microsoft for it being so bad though. Part of the problem/responsibility also goes to those who use it. They encourage MS to continue doing the same old-same old.

**Lyte** · 03-21-2007, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AngelArs

Can you be more specific?

Well, I'll have to browse around with it tomorrow. I typically use IE and only FF on rare occassions. If I find an examples of something "distorted" on FF but not on IE, I'll post the link here.

I do know that our rotating banners (top right) here on PC101 looked okay on IE but not on FF. Granted it was fixed with some coding changes but what a hassle to have to code for three different browsers. No?

Lyte

AngelArs · 03-21-2007, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyte

what a hassle to have to code for three different browsers.

It's one of my pet peeves, especially in this day and age.

Mike Livsey · 03-21-2007, 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyte

Hey Angel,

Well, it just seems that when I'm using my FF and browsing the internet, pages don't look as good as when they are seen on my IE. I'll have to find an example and post it here.

Too true, a good designer/coder should check how their pages look before publishing but maybe I'm in the habit of visiting poorly designed pages!

Lyte

I will have to add a PHP tutorial on detecting browsers and using either javascript or alternate pages/html to service each browser.
Of course you could just code to strict XHTML 1.0 but there is no fun in that!

AngelArs · 03-21-2007, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Livsey

Of course you could just code to strict XHTML 1.0 but there is no fun in that!

That wouldn't work for IE anyway because it is not XHTML compliant

Mike Livsey · 03-21-2007, 09:11 PM

Technically maybe not, but in practise coding to 1.0 standards tends to eliminate most cross browser issues.

edited: for spelling

AngelArs · 03-22-2007, 01:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Livsey

in practise coding to 1.0 standards tends to eliminate most cross browser issues.

Do you mean 'most' as in all the ones except for those that IE doesn't pick up on? You could have a perfectly coded page, and IE will still render it wrong

The easiest way to handle it is through CSS and IE conditionals, which is what most good coders do anyway.

eeeboy · 03-22-2007, 08:25 AM

Mozilla Firefox rocks.

But sometimes I faced some annoying bug, but hopefully I was able to find their solutions in Mozilline forum. But still the shutdown of XPCOM:Event receiver bug is a troublesome one and bothers me sometime.

AngelArs · 03-22-2007, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eeeboy

Mozilla Firefox rocks. But sometimes I faced some annoying bug

Are you using 1.5 or 2.0? There are still some issues with 2.0 and it is still a bit buggy. We're going to wait till this summer to upgrade to 2.0. Hopefully by then they will have ironed out all of their bugs.... er... I mean undocumented features