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Features on things wordy, geeky, and webbyBrowser Switching Reports from the Field
Saturday, August 7th, 2004 at 10:48 AM | 19 commentsMany people have written about their experiences with Mozilla and FireFox (FF). It sounds like about half of them have had no problems with FF while the other half experienced problems like I did. My household reflects the statistic since two of our four computers run FF without issues while the other two constantly fight fires with it. Read on for the good, the bad, the so-so, and the uncategorizable…
The good…
Ted Marsden says he has cut spam about 60 percent by switching to Mozilla, FF, and Netscape. Leigh Klotz has been using Mozilla for a long time and never uses IE unless a Web site doesn’t work with Mozilla. Izzie has been using FF for several months and has had no problems.
Jean Jacque Duguay loves FF. He has tried Netscape v7.0, but it was too big and too slow. He has tested Mozilla, which he believes is a better version of Netscape. He is hooked to tabbed browsing. Slim Browser is another he has looked at, but he later learned it uses the IE engine, which means it carries the IE security issues. After trying FF, he believes he is finally free of IE.
Jerome Miller writes he has been non-IE browsers for many years; Netscape, Mozilla, FF, and Opera. FF is the pick of the lot. For Jim Harkins, the switch to FF was seamless.
Dwight Romanovicz has been using Netscape as his primary browser since version 2. Through all those years he has never been bothered by an e-mail virus or a home page hijacker. In the past couple of years webmasters have become too slack to test their pages with Netscape so the visual may have problems but far more important is that some file types are corrupted upon download.
Michael B. Johnson switched to FF for the following reasons:
Security - For example, Mozilla won’t run Active-X controls without his permission. I’m using Win2K (not XP), so the shell exploit doesn’t affect him.
Ease of use - Mozilla’s tabbed browsing and background loading. Also the “just type and I’ll find it” feature. And the Ctrl+Grey Plus key zoom-in/zoom out feature. And the Adblock plugin.
Open Source - He supports the movement.
Jo Ann Weaver made the switch and use FF as the default browser with Avant as backup. Jo Ann hasn’t used IE in almost a year.
DeVaux McLean loves FF. Steve Hydrick has switched to FF and Thunderbird (email client) and has no complaints. Though it does take a PC-savvy person to explore its options for extensions etc, but he likes that option! And, it is somewhat faster than IE6 so that’s a good thing too. Ad-Aware doesn’t detect any spyware since he switched.
Wayne Tuttle has been using Mozilla for years and has replaced the suite with FF since I only used the browser. FF safely transferred all of his bookmarks and, more importantly, his banking certificate like a regular upgrade of Mozilla, and after a day, he removed Mozilla.
Geoff Loats has been using Firefox for about six weeks and finds it leaves IE for dead. The only problem he has with it is that a page must completely load before you can activate one of the links on that page. It beats having pop ups galore making surfing a nightmare.
Myrl changed to FireFox and was astounded when running anti-spyware and found not one new occurrence since the switch. Myrl has only one disappointment, the ability to send only plain text emails from the Yahoo account, no hyperlinks, no color, nothing unless I use an attachment.
The bad…
Dick Bellin understands the reasons for switching and has no arguments. He has tried Mozilla and FF more than once, and each time after frustrations and failure to get the programs to work as promised, he gave up and went back to IE. He uses Avant Browser, however, Avant uses the IE engine and inherits all of IE’s security problems.
Cliff Walker removed FF within 15 minutes of installing it because it presupposes that the designers already know how you want the browser configured. They assume that you want all these commercial links on your toolbar, leaving about one-third of it for custom links and no way to get rid of these commercial links that we’ll never use and, actually, would prefer not being reminded they exist. No, there’s no way to free up this space and there’s no way to add to what little space they leave you with.
Cliff says, “Conspicuous by its absence was ANY control over animated ads: there’s no way to disable these flashing, flickering, looping distractions (and leave them off). In an application that I would have hoped would be advanced enough to have actually figured out a way to turn off Flash at will, we end up having to try to scroll the lowly GIF off the screen in our attempts to read what’s on the page.”
The so-so…
Sid Huff reports a few problems at his office, a New Zealand University, as a few systems don’t work with FF, but work fine with Internet Explorer (IE). He says when he clicks on a link, he gets a ’save file’ dialog box. I have had this happen before and fix it by closing / re-opening FF. For him, FF takes longer to load. But others report it’s speedier. Sid says, “All in all, while I appreciate the theoretical advantages, I am not impressed with the practical on-the-ground results.”
Ben Trotter switched browser because of the warnings with IE. He chose Netscape and says it is acceptable, but not as convenient as the IE engine.
Ed Norris used FF occasionally and liked it. Somehow it became contaminated and every time he opened the program, it would also open all my favorites in IE, forcing me to close all the tabs individually. He uninstalled FF and downloaded it again, same problem.
Virginia Scofield changed to Firefox and it was working like a charm. Then she did an update on it and installed the security patch. She used it the next morning and it took about two minutes to load - then was almost impossible to use due to the slow reaction of the mouse with the menus. Since then, I have uninstalled, reinstalled, tried all the little tips, etc., etc. - and still cannot use it due to the jerky slow movements of the mouse/menu. It doesn’t get her vote.
Sally Davenport lost out on a good deal on eBay because of FF. She used FF to access eBay to complete a transaction. She ended in a loop between “Buy It” and the Legal Agreement page and couldn’t proceed with the purchase and missed out on a good deal. She contacted eBay and its prompt answer was that Mozilla/Netscape wasn’t compatible with its software. She likes the program in general, but not its method to add sites.
The uncategorizable…
Allan Erdman suggests using Deepnet Explorer, but the program shares IE’s engine and therefore, inherits its problems. Here is a quote from the Deepnet Explorer forums, “As Deepnet Explorer shares the HTML rendering engine with IE, it is exposed some security vulnerabilities from IE. However, these are confined to only vulnerabilities in the HTML engine. There are many other security enhancements in DE that makes it much more secure than IE. Please see this for more info.”
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19 comments
Browser Switching Report from the Field
Many people have written about their experiences with Mozilla and FireFox (FF) after reading Firefox After 500 Miles. It sounds like about half of have had no problems with FF while the other half experienced problems like I did. My…
Cliff says, “Conspicuous by its absence was ANY control over animated ads: there’s no way to disable these flashing, flickering, looping distractions (and leave them off)…
Yeah, IE does that, yes, way to go IE… duh~ u DO have control over Flash in FF, if u know where to look… ever heard of extensions, Cliff? obviously, our dear Cliff won’t ever find out, becoz he only had FF for 15 mins and concluded it was no good. For the rest of the world, check out FlashBlock.
<offtopic>
Thing about FF/Moz/Opera is that they EMPOWER USERS, something that IE failed miserably… In fact, with extensions, FF/Moz gave a whole new meaning to the term “my browser”. My main use of IE is just to check that my pages will render properly in it (don’t get me started on IE’s CSS quirks)…
</offtopic>
I’m not entirely sure what ‘commercial links’ Cliff Walker is referring to in the toolbar. Yes, there are a few promotional links for Mozilla.org, but nothing extremely irritating; my guess is that the link toolbar got imported from IE or NS7. And unwanted links are quite easy to remove from the toolbar– just right-click and choose Delete!
As for turning off animations– there’s also AniDisable, which does the job simply and nicely.
Why not try Opera?
Opera is awesome! I love it! The best out there and the Suite of features is awesome!
I can even use Opera IRC to chat with other IM protocols by using public servers of BitlBee.
The keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, etc….. wow!
39 minutes into the show … interview with Opera CEO: http://www.webtalkguys.com/mp3/webtalk-7-3-2004.mp3
Also,
http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/
http://www.opera.com/features/
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WhyOpera
Why not try Opera?
Opera is awesome! I love it! The best out there and the Suite of features is awesome!
I can even use Opera IRC to chat with other IM protocols by using public servers of BitlBee.
The keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, etc….. wow!
39 minutes into the show … interview with Opera CEO: http://www.webtalkguys.com/mp3/webtalk-7-3-2004.mp3
Also,
http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/
http://www.opera.com/features/
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WhyOpera
I’m surprised no one has tried Secure IE. It has all the flash blocking, popup blocking and activex blocking as buttons on the toolbar so I can turn them on and off at my whimsy. It has a million little features (shortcuts to search, highlight web pages etc.) but was really made to fill the security holes in IE.
I use FireFix on my Home Laptop with much less hassles then with IE. I have to Mozilla at work because for some reason Firefox suffers from memory leaking where as mozilla does not. I sometimes have to use IE for certian web applications due to the use of VB etc…
My problems with FF are that when I open a link, my “save file” dialog box opens every single time. Annoying.
The other problem is that I use my links bar a lot and I can’t find a way to change the icons on my links bar as I can with IE. It speeds things up when each link has an identifying icon instead of them all being the same.
I also miss my old google toolbar and being able to customize it.
Mozilla is a unique browser and different that the IE we’re all used to.
For the toolbar links, either delted them right in the toolbar or click Bookmarks then Manage Bookmarks and you can do anything you want with them.
For machines that don’t like Mozilla I would remove any other browsers except IE. Defrag, reboot and try Mozilla again. There is one exception here though. Many brand name, mass marketed computers have a ton and a half of proprietery support software built into them. Some could even be considered spyware as far as I’m concerned and these things could be conflicting with Mozilla trapping the user into an IE only machine which is Micro$oft’s true desire not to mention the computer maker who wnts to know everything it can about it victi…. err purchaser.
As to clicking a link opening a dialog box. Try setting Mozilla as the default browser. Other than that clean out other browsers, defrag, reboot and reinstall Mozilla.
Remember FF is still beta, Mozilla isn’t.
I too get erratic mouse operation at times. Closing Mozilla and dumping all cache and temp files (I use Disk Cleaner) seems to solve the problem. I haven’t done it yet byt I plan on reinstalling the IntelliMouse software to see if that has any affect on the problem.
Personally, I enjoy the speed and increased security of the Mozilla browser and don’t plan on going back to IE except for WUPdate or similar pages. Right now I’m running version 1.7.2 and it’s great. The Mozilla forums are a fantastic place to get answers also. A hack of a lot better than trying to find answers in the MSKB for IE issues.
That’s my 2� folks.
John
Out of all the people that are having problems. It sounds like not one of them tried a new FF profile. I have found with my own experience as well as others that when uninstalling/re-installing does not work. The next step is to delete your FF profile and start a new. If you have any thing wrong with your profile it does not matter how may times you re-install FF. It does not touch your profile. It is located in different places in different OS’es. These instructions should help http://texturizer.net/firefox/edit.html#profile
I hope that this helps some people out there in there decision to switch to this great browser.
I have been using Mozilla off and on for years (Netscape before, used to crash alot) and found it ok but not great. With the recent problems associated with IE, I decided to give FF a try. The first incarnation worked pretty well but less well after I upgraded. I tried an un-install/re-install and that helped somewhat. I never thought of the profile as one of the other readers suggested. I finally decided to un-install and tried Mozilla 1.7. That has been working very well for about a month now. I do not use IE at all except where I have to. One thing I tried that did not work. I tried to disable IE. The computer did not like that. I tried to make Mozilla my default. The computer did not like that either, especially Outlook. I finally went into programs-set defaults and enabled Mozilla and IE. So far, no problems. Outlook will open IE if I click on a link, update will use IE but I use “Linkstash” (great program for favorites) and set it to open in Mozilla. So, the majority of my internet usage is done with Mozilla. I will try FF again once they have gone to 1.0 but Mozilla has been very quick and stable. I must admit, I like the way Mozilla looks more than FF. FF is kinda plain.
That is my story.
No idea what Cliff Walker is talking about. Not only are the FireFox toolbars completely customizable, I have never seen any “corporate promotion” on them - nothing flashing, nothing blinking, no ads. There were a couple Mozilla bookmark buttons that were very easily removed, and I did. I now have buttons going to news sites and email there, but I could have just turned off the toolbars.
Heck, you can run it with NO toolbars if you want to. What on earth was he seeing?
I have all 5 on my computer (IE, Netscape, Opera, FF, and Moz)… My biggest beef with Mozilla, is that it is ‘just’ basically Netscape! It has a couple features I enjoy, but none that blow me away. FF, also, I’ve had a problem with it running a java applet, and it really doesn’t seem ready to even be competing with the big boys. Netscape seems just too sloppy. I used to enjoy it, but with everything aimed at IE these days, its not worth using. IE, ofcoarse works on most pages… Although people enjoy to bash IE, it is really a great web browser. To a point, I’ve also had quite a few problems with IE, and it does not offer any of the extra options I desire. Now “OPERA”… That is a different story. Opera by far in my opinion is the best browser out there. It has litterally trillions (exageration) of options for you to use, like (right click + left click) moves you back a page to were you last were, and (left+right) moves you ahead in your browsing respectively. You can use your scroll button as a middle button to open webpages in a new window or tab, infront of your current screen or tucked behind it…. and it has plenty more options for powerusers then those. Reliability is another attractive quality of Opera, most pages look great on it, and combined with the options it gives you, it really is the best browser out there. Go get it if you haven’t, because it blows FireFox and Mozilla away.
http://www.opera.com - Opera’s website. Free Download
I’ve been a non-IE user from the beginning which was 93-94 for me. First Netscape, then Opera, then Mozilla, now Firefox - though I still use Mozilla when I’m composing web pages. I’ve been using Mozilla for a couple of years now. I don’t use the tabbed browsing but I know a lot of folks who do. Mozilla is a class act. Not only do they have a great browser they have a great email client. And they have the best price around - FREE. I shared my Independence From Bill recently with an online women’s group I belong to (http://www.divinediva.org/news/0704/tech.html) and got some excellent feedback. I can’t say enough about these browsers. They make my life on the net WAY easier and I’m ecstatic that I don’t have to be forced into using IE anymore - even at microsoft.com!
I’ve been using Firefox for less than a month, and I am not easily impressed with most software, but I am incredibly impressed with Firefox browser. I’ve never before experienced the internet like this. I have found much help in the support forums for the few issues I have encountered, and I especially appreciate the security the browser
affords. The options for customization are nearly limitless, and the ability to have personal profiles with different bookmarks, homepages, extensions, etc. means no more browser sharing with others in the household. No popups/spyware either. These folks are on top of things. IE cannot hold a candle to FF. I have just seamlessly upgraded to FF 0.9.3 from 0.9.2 and I’m anxious for FF 1.0 to go live. Firefox truly does make the internet all that it should be.
Release the Hounds
Before it grows dark, Firefox will be in my forgettable past. I’m thinking that I have one of the computer/OS/registry/version…
If you get a Save As dialog box on some links, you may want to contact the system administrator of the site you are viewing.
Many such problems arise from misconfigured web servers that serve wrong MIME types to browsers. IE does not use MIME types in any way, this is how it gets away with misconfigured servers. But there are exploits related to IE’s ability to find the MIME type from data supplied.
Sorry, Meryl, that is the most sophmoric report on
software I have ever read. Seems that many of the cons whine about email issues, which are non FireFox related - it is a stand alone BROWSER, yet you do not differentiate. Then, there are the usual whines about why the program doesn’t wipe you and flush the toilet for you, even though IE never even showed you the loo.
now that I think about it, locker gnome has become sophmoric in total - the latest layout is useless. Sounds lie a cancel subscription coming up…
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