I'm giving Firefox a try--

You know, the web browser? I'm wondering what other peoples' experiences with it have been like, compared to any/all other browsers? Give me the low down

Well, from what I noticed, it loads pages faster, doesn't get pop-ups and spam. I feel a lot safer with it too. Today, everything is hacking the crap out of IE. Only downside is that it doesn't have all those IE plug-ins and some sites require you to use IE.

Personally, I prefer opera. The only real drawback, is no ActiveX support, but its much faster the Firefox or IE IMHO.

I use Opera on occasion too. It has some innovations that IE has yet to steal. Namely tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, zoom, better customizing of the GUI and some slightly nicer GUI design. But it IS a little lacking in the compatibility department, partly just because everyone tests stuff with IE only. It's gotten better recently but I've run into sites on occasion where stuff just doesn't work and I have to load the Internet Exploiter up anyway. Opera's nice when I remember to use it instead of IE.

And Opera's new "mouse gestures" feature is really cool! The ultimate in lazy-man's internet surfing!

Opera DOES seem to load slower IMO (probably because sneaky Windoze is "partially loading" IE and keeping it loaded all the time so there's less to start), but I'm pretty sure it's faster in general. I say "pretty sure" because I'm not entirely convinced that it really matters much unless you're using OLD systems. I never noticed a huge difference in newer faster systems (still not sure if there is one or not).

Firefox is amazingly snappy. However, the most important feature that Firefox provides over IE is tabbed browsing!

Start up Firefox and hit CTRL-T to open another tab. Repeat until all your favorite sites are neatly contained in one window. Then create a single bookmark which contains all the tabs (it's a feature), so when you restart Firefox, you can with a single click load all your favorite sites in their tab.

But wait! There's more.

Go to a web page like the SL off-topic forum. Do a CTRL-Click on each link in the topics list and they'll all load in the background in a new tab. Then read each tab one at a time closing them as you go. When you're done, the first tab is still there with the original page. Reload it to see what's happened and repeat!

It's a completely different way of browsing that leads to new methods of accessing and organizing data. That in itself is reason enough to use Firefox.


In case you're curious, I use Safari and Firefox in MacOS both which have tabbed browsing.

~Ulrika~

Firefox is excellent.

You forgot it's RSS Live-Bookmarking feature too ...

Garoad: Not just Opera has mouse gestures... but yes, it would be a nice feature to see in Firefox. Personally I never liked Opera, but I agree, it's quick and also has excellent features. But then, a pen and paper would be advanced compared to IE.

My geek boyfriend turned me on to Firefox, and now I can't live without it. I'm using some sort of mouse gestures in Firefox, don't know if it's as good as Opera... I'm a dumbass behind the computer. Here I thought I was really cool for using Firefox.

I'm a convinced firefox user.
It's faster, it doesn't crash, you can have multiple tabs, you can have a bookmarks toolbar, you can skin the browser windows, it blocks pop ups and you don't get annoying porn toolbars.

The few downsides are that you have to get all the Netscape plugins to view flash, java and so forth, and that on certain sites designed for IE the images get kinda screwy.

But overall Firefox is a great browser, and I would recommend it to anyone.

I've been using crazybrowser all these while, and I love its tabbed capabilities as well as the anti popup. Havent tried firefox yet, but I might after hearing all the good things of it.

Firefox is everything IE should be but isn't. Firefox is teh r0xx0rz!.

And I am NOT a geek, don't listen to Kate, although I do use Firefox, and I play SL, and my favorite editor is vi and I can actually read perl and think that command flags on cat(1) are creeping featurism; but I'm not a geek, really!

Ahem

The above poster, that wouldnt happen to be me isnt it? I just said that I'd like to give it a try. So since you said dont agree with the poster above, you're advocating that people DONT give firefox a try?

I have used various builds of Firefox, including the most recent one. Ultimately, I have found the fact that it is not Internet Explorer to be a deal breaker for me. I run into too many sites where I lose functionality, things look odd, and on my Tablet PC it is a unuseable because it does not support the advanced pen features that IE does on all sites. However, I am a huge fan of tabbed browsing, so instead I use the web browser Maxthon, which has as much functionality as Firefox and Opera (tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, popup/activex blocking, ad blocking, aliases for URLs (type SL to go to forums.secondlife.com, for example), skins, plugins, etc..), but still uses IE as its rendering engine. It even has additional security features that IE lacks, and they have patched the recent IFRAME vulnerabilty in their own browser before Microsoft has.

Ultimately, it comes down to preference, but I find Maxthon to be the right balance between functionality and compatibility. As Firefox continues to get media attention, you will find it will quickly become a target for security flaws, which it does have - it is just a matter of time before they come to light (as some already have).

I primarily use Maxthon myself.

Besides this, yes, I am going to download the new version of Firefox. It's nice to have an alternative on hand.

You can also mouse middle button click a link (or your quicklinks) and the page will load up in another tab also.


I am using Firefox. I like that web site's icons are saved along with the link for bookmarks. I can deal with some of the compatibility issues by just loading IE for that certain moment, but there aren't too many sites I visit that need IE. I'm pretty happy ESPN's Motion (streaming video) works with Firefox when it didn't work in Mozilla 1.7.

I'd say the most important reasons why I use Firefox is:

-It doesn't load ActiveX programs. Adware/Spyware doesn't get installed on my computer.

-It loads pages a lot lot faster when you're running a game (or other resource heavy app) at the same time.

Damn, I havent used IE since... the 20th century?
I switched to opera first, and then mozilla, and now firefox. I am one very happy camper.

What is this "middle button" you speak of? I thought you may have meant the Apple logo but when I push it nothing happens.

~Ulrika~

Hey Ulrika

Hmmm if you are on a Mac, multibutton mice are available too. Ironchef refers to mice such as the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical or one of several Logitech models that have many buttons, including side ones.

Tee hee! I know that. I actually use a multibutton mouse on my Apple machine when I play SL.

Thanks for the thoughtful advice, though! You are the nicest guy in the forums.

~Ulrika~

Awwwwww Ulrika, thanks *does Neualtenburg Chicken Hat dance*

I'm surprised Mac doesn't just go along with the scroll wheel/middle mouse button. It's the coolest thing to happen to mice besides those mouse covers that look like a real mouse!

No, the coolest is the mouse that looks like a boobie