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Firefox Gaining Ground


Deverill

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IE's apparently losing ground and Firefox is apparently worth Microsoft's attention. It's not a huge percentage but Firefox is a baby product and with a few more features and a major publicity push it may well be a factor to consider.

 

Many say that people will not use a 3rd party browser and they are too lazy or inexperienced to bother with it and they'll only use what is already on their machine, but at one time Netscape was neck and neck with IE so I'm not sure I believe that.

 

Here are a couple of articles on the growth of gecko based browsers, esp FF.

 

internationalreporter.net/scripts/techDetails.asp?id=110

www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116848,00.asp

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From Slashdot:

The Mozilla guys would have liked to reach 1 Million downloads of the Firefox 1.0 pre-release version within ten days of its release. After four days, the download counter now shows 1,006,060 downloads, surpassing the 10^6 mark more than twice as fast as they desired! Congratulations!

 

Is this enough evidence for the skeptic people, that Firefox is indeed a very good browser and a more than good replacement for IE? :dance:

Edited by TCH-Raul
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that Firefox is indeed ... a more than good replacement for IE?

But it's not! It doesn't have a single one of the security vulnerabilities that IE has so when I go to a virus site I won't get infected! It's a lousy replacement for IE! :unsure:

 

Personally, I love it and I'm excited about the future of the program once this momentum builds a tiny bit more. I only use FireFox unless I find a site that won't work with it and that's usually only Microsoft.com

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microsoft.com doesn't work with Mozilla? :unsure:

What exactly doesn't work? I can see they have a new cool look on the site but it all seems to work fine, here. Unless it's something deeper in the site, like the MSDN documentation. I remember that didn't work with Opera or Mozilla, some time ago.

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Nothing immediately obvious. Just down deep in the knowledge base or MSDN I'll hit a page that just won't render. Probably a rogue page they haven't gotten around to updating to near-compliance, but then again look at how many broken links they have. :)

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I've been using Firefox for about 6 months and LOVE it! It loads faster than Opera and I love the flexibility of it.

 

The only drawback is certain sites do not work well with it e.g., shopping carts, stock chart updates etc. I'm hoping that this will be resolved shortly, so I don't have to revert to Netscape for those particular sites. (I *never* use IE :) )

 

My AWstats show that Mozilla is still the 2nd most used browser and Firefox is down the list a bit - but still there.

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I've found most sites which do not look good with FF (my preferred browser) are those sites which had to be manipulated due to MSIE's inability to follow strict HTML standards.

 

The sites I have created usually start out as strict HTML 4.01 (looking great in FF) and modified to look good in IE. This is unfortunate as I would MUCH rather follow standards than have to search the web for ways to tweak the page for IE.

 

Of course, there are SOME items needing tweaked for FF because I don't know how to properly format the pages myself. For example, left floating divs and my problem with the text going past the footer div. But that is MY error. :)

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A lot has been happening with firefox lately.

* Version 1.0 is near release. 1.0 Preview Release is out.

* A new website, spreadfirefox.com has been launched. My favorite quote "You're our marketing deparment.

* The developers working on IE 7 acknowledged on their blog that "People want people to download firefox."

* As the premier product from mozilla, firefox now boasts of its own guidebook and CD, purchaseable from mozilla store.

* All gecko based browsers (firefox, mozilla, netscape) together reached 19% share at w3schools website and 18% on CNET.

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Great! :dance:

How are you liking Firefox, Thomas? Are you missing IE?

Lets put it like this...

This morning I wondered where the h... my I.E quick icon was. :dance:

 

Or more seriously...

Its good...so far. ;)

Only 2 things is

 

1) that it loads/opens much slower than what I.E did

2) in "managing bookmarks" I can not sort folders by name automatically, only the "normal" links". I need to drag them to the correct place.

 

There was one other thing which I can not remember now so it can not be important.

:)

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Yes, it is slower to load than IE is but after being loaded, it's much faster than IE :dance:

 

As for sorting the folders, check this out:

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/morei...hp?id=51&vid=54

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/morei...?id=117&vid=265

 

They're both for Firefox 0.9.x but I'm hoping there will be a version for 1.0 soon :dance:

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Thomas, don't hate Firefox for that, hate Invision Power Board. They're the ones who didn't make this work as it should. If I remember correctly, they use proprietary IE stuff to insert the smileys at the cursor, instead of using standard code, like the one in phpMyAdmin when you're building up a query. Try that and you'll see that it's possible to do that outside of IE :D

 

Edit: just to show you how easy it would be for them to do that, try this Google search for "javascript text cursor position" and see for yourself how much information is available about this issue.

Edited by TCH-Raul
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I'm not sure about whether you uninstall or just install on top, however either way your data (emails, extensions, themes etc.) are rarely stored in the program folder so even if you uninstall and re-install they should be still there - though you may start getting problems with extensions/themes (I'm not really sure - may be a language conflict but don't take my word for it)

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Those are great news!! Thumbs Up

 

I especially like that setting that says "Force links that open new windows to open in: a new tab" :whip:

Firefox already blocks windows that try to pop up when the page loads (and at some non-user-triggered events) but this means a full goodbye to every pop-up window, even those that pop up when we click a link :whip:

 

It also takes care of one of the most annoying things in any browser: when you click a link on an external (non-browser) window, it opens up a new browser window. Now you can tell Firefox to open that external link in a new tab or reuse the most recent tab! :huh:

 

Excellent news indeed :)

Edited by TCH-Raul
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Thomas, it really depends. Some days the nightly build may be stable enough but the next day it may be completely broken.

 

If you don't want trouble, I'd say you should stick with the stable release - unless, of course, you want to help hunt down the nasty bugs and help improve the software :P

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  • 4 weeks later...

I like both Firefox and Thunderbird on the PC--use them religiously and exclusively with the exception of that damnable Windows Update site since Firefox was Firebird and since the .7 release of Thunderbird.

 

However, they both are incredibly sluggish on the Mac (G4 1.2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM running 10.3.5). So alas, Safari and Mail will be the primaries there, regulating Firefox as one of the browsers for testing the web site with Thunderbird gone the way of the Trash.

 

Troy

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