FireFox Pros/Cons [Archive]

Elro

10 Apr 2005, 09:51 PM

So.. I'm currently a user of IE, but I keep hearing people ranting about Firefox. I admit, I'm curious.

What's the big deal about Firefox, other than that it's not made by Microsoft? (Although this alone tempts me.)

garak

10 Apr 2005, 11:15 PM

It's not swiss cheese security-wise, it has tabs, it complies with years-old technology that IE still fucks up, and it has lots of extensions and stuff. Many other smaller reasons, but I think those are the biggies. Oh yeah, and it runs on many platforms. I couldn't run IE even if I wanted to.

indie

11 Apr 2005, 12:34 AM

Pros: way cute firefox icon, tabbed browsing, automatic popup blocker, nifty extensions/add-ons (weather updates, foxytunes, chatzilla, autocopy, adblock), customizable, live bookmarks for sites like slasdot-BBC News-boingboing-techdirt-etc, way faster than IE, free, open source, and quite iNtuitive to use.

Cons: a few (very few) websites are not compatible yet

sandwich

11 Apr 2005, 12:39 AM

The adblock extension deserves a reply all to itself. It has changed my world completely. Every time I install firefox on someone's computer, I also install adblock and show them the workings in all its majesty.

s0978

11 Apr 2005, 02:54 AM

So the tabs are better than multiple IE windows because it somehow saves on bandwidth, correct?

garak

11 Apr 2005, 03:07 AM

So the tabs are better than multiple IE windows because it somehow saves on bandwidth, correct?
No, not at all. They are just much more manageable.

s0978

11 Apr 2005, 03:16 AM

Well glad you said "no" cause I was gonna say I didn't notice.

misutii

11 Apr 2005, 03:26 AM

pimpzilla skin ownz

Scaro

11 Apr 2005, 04:22 AM

In addition to adblock, flashblock should be mentioned. No more annoying ads that sit on top of what you want to read.

j4ck

11 Apr 2005, 07:28 AM

Security is certianly a big issue, but I also enjoy how customizable (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips) FF is. It handles downloads very conveniently and conforms perfectly to W3C standards. (IE actually does NOT conform to W3C and in an effort to out-think webpage designers actually renders some pages incorrectly!) If you are into page design, etc., FF also offers a "View Page Source" option in the right-click menu.

However, if you download FF don't delete explorer. Some people (Gigabyte, for example) design their webpages specifically for IE.

garak

11 Apr 2005, 09:03 AM

I seriously doubt FF conforms perfectly to any single w3 standard, let alone all of them. Good, and much better than IE, but not perfect.

(they're too big and complex -- I doubt anything is perfectly compliant)

Shai Gar

11 Apr 2005, 09:07 AM

damn, i deleted IE as SOON as i got FF

Sackanaka

11 Apr 2005, 09:43 AM

I wonder if you can download/install IE again? Maybe through a boot disc?
In the case that you lose FF, you would need IE to reinstall it too.

Shai Gar

11 Apr 2005, 09:46 AM

no i wouldnt, i saved the setup files onto two different CDRW's

n0mad

11 Apr 2005, 10:32 AM

Con for Firefox. Though it does manage standard web pages in a beautiful way, it doesn't have clumsy interface, it's simple and beautifully designed, a significant amount of web pages are optimized for IE. That's because they are written and designed lame, but nevertheless, it's a con.

Shadow

11 Apr 2005, 02:07 PM

FF runs on more platforms than IE. FF runs on the platforms I run, whereas IE doesn't. Enough said.

(BTW: I use Mozilla, not FF. There isn't a significant speed improvement on my system. If I care about speed, I'll use konqueror sometimes)

kafkaesque

11 Apr 2005, 04:53 PM

Does anyone running OSX know how FF compares to Safari?

YardGnome

11 Apr 2005, 07:37 PM

I'm a convert. Sure FF doesn't display some pages as well as IE, however everything else about it absolutely topples IE in every way imagineable. The interface is better, tabbed browsing is awesome, bookmark management is great, updates are handled wonderfully and the built in pop up blocking is certainly a plus. Switch I highly recommend FF... (Over IE that is if you are using some other OS I'm not all that familiar with Opera or Mozilla or any of those other browsers out there...)

codeElemental

11 Apr 2005, 10:30 PM

There're a couple things I can't really live without anymore in firefox.

1) search engine bar in upper corner (with several additional search plugins)
2) finding text on a web page beautifully handled
3) Web developer extension

And of course, the pop-up blocking, extensibility, tabs, etc that have been mentioned several times.

As far as cons, I've had it hang on me a couple of times (requiring me to kill the process before it'd work again) and some pages not rendering right (written for IE)

Chall T. Dow

12 Apr 2005, 12:21 AM

I just recently got Firefox to try it out and so far there are two things in IE that I like better. The first is that the favorites are like a separate little box off to the side. I know Firefox has the tabs, which are good for a small number of links, but when I tried to load my comics folder which has somewhere around 80 pages, my computer said, "F*** You, I'm gonna take a break." Also, I seem to have forgotten the other thing so I'm down to one.

Chall T. Dow

Claverhouse

12 Apr 2005, 12:44 AM

You can put the Bookmarks on their own sidebar. ( Not that I could stand doing this: I resent the stumbleupon toolbar taking up so much space ).

Claverhouse :ph34r:

And it's not that much use saying some themes are smaller, because you load up with themes, and then your profile goes west and you have to start again. But extensions are great. Usually. Unless they make your profile go west.

Sackanaka

12 Apr 2005, 01:22 AM

I combine the stumble and foxytunes in one toolbar :D
although yeah, without complimenting the other, either becomes a waste of space.

jetboots

12 Apr 2005, 01:54 AM

Claverhouse

12 Apr 2005, 02:24 AM

Umm, ok, on my firefox, i can "copy" text, or so it seems, but really i can't cause when i go to paste it somewhere, its as if i never copied it cause the paste is not an option....anyone ever have this/ have a fix?
Use CTL V instead. It works then. ( I'm not going to learn how to modify my user.jss: life is short ).

Claverhouse :ph34r:

ApeTheDog

12 Apr 2005, 02:31 AM

Use CTRL+F9 to make the stumbleupon tookbar go away when you're not using it. Alternatively, right click on the toolbar, and deselect it. They don't have to take up place at all.

I like firefox's functionality, I just wish there was a little bit more polish to it, so I could really love it.

garak

12 Apr 2005, 02:43 AM

As far as cons, I've had it hang on me a couple of times (requiring me to kill the process before it'd work again) and some pages not rendering right (written for IE)
I've had the same thing happen and it always seems to be related to child processes. Doing a gdb attach <pid-of-firefox> and then just exiting gdb seems to cause firefox to snap out of whatever it's doing. On unix anyways.

Claverhouse

12 Apr 2005, 02:54 AM

Use CTRL+F9 to make the stumbleupon tookbar go away when you're not using it. Alternatively, right click on the toolbar, and deselect it. They don't have to take up place at all.
Yeah, you can get rid of most of the clutter if you really want, but one of the joys of tabs is that while I'm here I can be in 20 other sites as well, in the same window. Don't want to click stuff on and off all the time [ sulks ].

Just be nice if there was an option of 'use tiny miniscule icons' in the customize table, so the bars shrank to thin slits...

Claverhouse :ph34r:

jetboots

12 Apr 2005, 03:06 AM

Use CTL V instead. It works then. ( I'm not going to learn how to modify my user.jss: life is short ).

Claverhouse :ph34r:

nnnnnope, does not work with the ctl shiznit either.... im at a loss, i downloaded 1.0.2, cause i was running 1.0, and that didnt help either.

BTW: this problem is recent, it used to do it... a few days ago it stopped. everything else on my comp is fine.

deviousingly

12 Apr 2005, 05:47 AM

Umm, ok, on my firefox, i can "copy" text, or so it seems, but really i can't cause when i go to paste it somewhere, its as if i never copied it cause the paste is not an option....anyone ever have this/ have a fix?

Ahhh...this drives me crazy.

This happens to me when I want to paste something from the internet into a word processing program. I highlight and copy the text and attempt to paste it in the other application a bunch of times before the 'paste' option finally shows up. Maybe you just have to be more persistent.

Chall T. Dow

13 Apr 2005, 08:51 PM

I just had another problem with Firefox. As soon as I installed it, my computer started crashing at random times for no apparent reason. I spent 2 days trying to fix it and then finally just had to uninstall it.

Chall T. Dow