Firefox 1.0 - The Better Browser if We Can Just Break the Internet Explorer HabitNov 11 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Firefox is a stable, easy to use and extensible browser that really is a better choice than the browser of habit - Internet Explorer.
My four year old daughter sucks her thumb. She's trying to stop, because the dentist told her that it's bad for her teeth. She also wants to stop before school starts because big kids don't suck their thumbs. But, her thumb is always there. It's easy to pop in her mouth, and there's no real immediate pain resulting from her sucking it. So, breaking the thumb habit isn't easy. I think her thumb-sucking habit and my Internet Explorer habit are pretty similar. I am a total creature of habit, and it’s hard not to click on Internet Explorer when I want to surf the web. It's right there. It's easy to use. It doesn't hurt when I use it. But, it's not the best browser I could be using. So, I am working on making Firefox my primary web browser and breaking the Internet Explorer habit. What is Firefox? Firefox is a free, open source web browser developed by the Mozilla project. It is a totally new code base, designed to be better and faster than the older Mozilla and Netscape browsers. It also is designed to be very customizable and extendable, which means that you can make it look like you want it to look and do just about anything you want it to do. Why is it Better? 1. Better for Tired or Older Eyes Believe it or not, with all the bells and whistles that you can have with Firefox, the main reason that it beats Internet Explorer in my book is that it allows you to enlarge text on any web page. With Internet Explorer, users can easily change the text size to largest, large, medium, small, and smallest. BUT, if a web site developer has hard coded the font size, this setting won’t enlarge the text. There is a way to get around this using user style sheets, but that becomes a pain. Firefox, on the other hand, can enlarge the text on any site. This means that my tired, nearsighted eyes don’t have to work as hard to read what’s in my browser window. Hurray for Firefox for getting this right. 2. Extensions Firefox is a pretty basic web browser out of the box. But, it was designed so that any programmer can create add-ons, which you can easily install. For example, there are extensions that allow you to block banner ads, use mouse gestures, see your local weather in your browser tool-bar, receive notifications if you have mail in your gmail account and even to play card games in your browser. Extensions mean you can get the functionality you want in your browser, without adding a lot of overhead for features you don’t need. 3. Themes Themes allow you to change the color of your browser toolbars, the size and type of buttons in the tool-bars, and other aspects of the appearance of your browser. I’m not a big user of themes. I tend to stick with the default look. But, if you are into tweaking the look and feel of your computer software, themes are a lot of fun. There are products which you can use with Internet Explorer to modify its appearance. But, some of them are bloated memory hogs and others are buggy. 4. Tabs When you use Internet Explorer, if you want to have several web pages open at the same time, each one is displayed in a separate browser window. Firefox gives you the option of using a tabbed interface, which makes it a bit easier to manage multiple web documents. Out of the box, the tabbed interface isn’t perfect, though. For some reason, Firefox doesn’t allow users to decide if they want web pages to open in a new window or in a new tab. It opens them in a new window unless you right click the link and ask for a new tab. An extension is available that allows you to set your preference for links to open in a new tab rather than a new window. With this extension installed, tabbed browsing is hard to live without. 5. Open Source Some people believe that Open Source software is the only kind to use. I’m not that rigid, but do prefer Open Source software if I can get it. Why? Because the development on popular open source products tends to be much faster than commercial products. Internet Explorer hasn’t had any really major feature additions for years. With Service Pack 2, some security enhancements were added, but no new bells and whistles have been added since 6.0 came out. And, new features aren’t likely to show up until Microsoft releases its next version of Windows and those new features won’t be available for users of older Microsoft operating systems. Because the development of Open Source software is controlled by people who use it, new features and bug fixes tend to come out more frequently. This means that you benefit because a programmer who uses Firefox is annoyed enough by some bug or some missing feature to fix it and share the fix with everybody else. 6. Security Out of the box, Firefox blocks popups, which Microsoft didn’t do until Service Pack 2 came out. It also is impervious to most spyware, which is targeted at Internet Explorer users. Most hackers and trouble makers code with Internet Explorer in mind. Why? Because they either hate Microsoft or because they want to annoy a larger user base. Generally, some of the more annoying security exploits are not aimed at Firefox, which means you benefit from using a less popular browser. Also, remember that Firefox is Open Source software. If security holes are found, programmers who user Firefox are going to be very motivated to fix those holes as fast as they possibly can. 7. Multiple Home Pages I saved one of the best for last. Every morning, I log onto yahoo mail, eaforums.com and kings of chaos. Firefox lets me set all three of these as my home page. When I start the browser, it opens with three tabs with my desired pages loaded and ready to go. To do this, merely separate the urls of your desired pages with a | symbol. For example: http://mail.yahoo.com|http://www.eaforums.com|http://www.kingsofchaos.com Are There Any Downsides? Of course. Some web sites still code explicitly for Internet Explorer and render themselves unusable in other browsers. Also, most users don’t like changing default web browsers because they are comfortable with the way Internet Explorer works. When you want to look up something quickly on the web, most people reach for the old familiar way of doing things. So, it may take a while before enough users transition to Firefox to ensure that web developers keep it in mind when designing their pages. Final Recommendation You may not make the switch to using Firefox for the majority of your time online, but you should at least download it and play with it. It’s free; it’s easy to use, and it is very customizable. If enough of us make the switch, I think Firefox will only get better with a larger user base.  |
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