Enter the revolution. Enter Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is a web browser that has received enormous media attention and accolades recently. Developed as an Open Source project, Firefox serves as a reminder of what a community of dedicated individuals can accomplish. After countless hours and eyes looking at it, Firefox has become something for the mainstream. It is well worth checking out. Not only is it an alternative to IE, but there are numerous extensions that add on functionality. (Everything from popup blockers to tools that manage tabbed browsing.)
Firefox is currently at version 1.0.7, a polished, stable program.
Mozilla Firefox presents a fast and convenient way to browse the web - now you can open several pages in one window in separate browser tabs. Open links in the background while you read a web page, then continue to the links when you're done - pages are available when you need them, making the web feel faster even over slow connections. Read more...
Popup Blocking
Popup advertising is one of the most annoying things to hit the web in recent years. Mozilla Firefox shields you from unwanted popup advertising. It also gives you control to allow certain sites to open popup windows, if required to operate.
Integrated Search
Mozilla Firefox makes finding things easy. The built in Google bar provides convenient access to the best search engine on the web. Simply click in the Google bar or press Ctrl+K, type some words and press Enter.
Efficient Navigation
Details are important to us. Sometimes it really is easier to navigate with the keyboard. Mozilla Firefox lets you open links by simply typing some of the text in the link - no mouse necessary.
AutoDownload
Automatically download files to your Desktop or another location with the new AutoDownload feature. Downloading becomes much simpler without windows popping up asking you where to save, etc.
Security (Firefox doesn't have the problems IE has)
Size (For windows users it's only ~6MB)
As mentioned by "the lurker" here, Firefox is better because:
1. Popup Blocking
Internet Explorer users are constantly harassed by popup advertisements. This is especially a problem when someone has accidentally accessed a pornographic site (it's pretty hard to get out of there when new windows are being created faster than you can close them). Mozilla includes a popup blocker that disallows web sites from opening unrequested windows, and notifies you (by displaying an unobtrusive icon in the status bar) when popups have been blocked. If, for some reason, you want to receive popups for a particular site, you can do that, too.
2. Tabbed Browsing
With Internet Explorer, if you want to have multiple pages open at once, you must have multiple windows open, which can get cumbersome. Mozilla has a feature called Tabbed Browsing, in which you can have multiple pages open in the same window and switch between them with a small toolbar. A person's home page can even be a group of tabbed pages.
3. Standards-Compliance
The languages used for Web content are written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Unfortunately, Internet Explorer's implementations of those standards are generally bad and are far inferior to those of Mozilla. As a result, many correctly written pages look bad on Internet Explorer but look great in Mozilla.
4. No ActiveX
Internet Explorer supports a Microsoft-developed technology called ActiveX. While ActiveX can be useful, it poses major security risks (such as allowing spyware to install itself by you visiting a page) in comparison to other texhnologies such as Java, which are advocated by the W3C (for more information, see http://www.webdeveloper.com/security/security_java_activex.html). Mozilla does not support ActiveX, and therefore is much more secure.
5. Open-Source
Mozilla is open-source, meaning that anyone can modify it. This means that within hours after any security issue is discovered (which is uncommon), a patch is available, and will be incorporated into the next release.
6. Intelligent Cookie-Blocking
Mozilla features blocking of cookies based on sites' privacy policies. For example, it will by default flag both first-party and third-party cookies set by sites that may be collecting personally identifiable information without your consent.
7. Actively Being Improved
Because Internet Explorer has a near-monopoly on the browser market, Microsoft does not actively improve it. Mozilla, on the other hand, is actively being updated, with new releases occuring every month or two.
8. Extensibility
For those who like special features, there are a wide variety of add-ons available at http://www.mozdev.org. These can be installed for a particular user with the click of a button.
9. MathML Support
Mozilla supports MathML, a W3C recommmendation that is used for representing math. MathML is much better than PDF for representing math, since MathML includes the semantics of the math rather than just its presentation, and can therefore be read by a screen reader for blind people, or interpreted by a computer, and because just the math-related parts can be done in MathML without the need to convert the entire document into PDF.
10. XHTML Support
Mozilla supports XHTML, which replaced HTML as a W3C recommendation in 1999. Despite it being around for over four years, Internet Explorer does not support XHTML. XHTML has several advantages over HTML, including easy integration with other XML-based languages, such as MathML, SVG (a vector graphics language), and RDF (Resource Description Framework, a Semantic Web language).
11. Correct content-type Support
Mozilla correctly implements the HTTP content-type header, which is used to tell user agents what type of file the server is sending. Internet Explorer incorrectly ignores the content-type, and instead tries to guess what type things are, which breaks a lot of documents.
12. Text Zooming
Mozilla supports zooming text to any size and has a keyboard shortcut for doing so, unlike Internet Explorer, which only supports five sizes, has no keyboard shortcut, and won't let you zoom at all if fixed pixel sizes are used. This is very useful for those with bad vision.
13. Alternate Style Sheets
When a page provides multiple or alternate stylesheets, you can select between them. This is required by the W3C CSS specification, but is ignored by Internet Explorer.
14. View Source
You can view the source of a page with syntax coloring, instead of having to open it in a standard text editor like in Internet Explorer.
All-in-One Gestures 0.12.4 - This extension allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures, rocker navigation, scroll wheel navigation and page scrolling.
BBCode 0.3.7 - Adds BBCode to the context menu for forums like Mozillazine (PHPBB and others). Based on Cussers pastequote extension.
BugMeNot 0.6.1 - Bypass compulsory web registration with the context menu via www.bugmenot.com.
ColorZilla 0.6.5 - Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
Download Manager Tweak 0.6.3 - A modification of the Firefox download manager that changes its appearance and allows it to be opened in a separate window, a new tab, or the sidebar.
ForecastFox 0.5.8 - Get international weather forecasts from weather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable extension.
FoxyTunes 1.0 - Control any media player from Firefox and more...
GooglePreview 0.8 - Inserts web site previews in google and yahoo search results.
Image Zoom 0.1.7 - Adds zoom functionality for images
Linkification 0.9.19 - Converts text links into genuine, clickable links.
Paste and Go 0.4.1 - Lets you paste an URL from the clipboard and directly load it.
Tabbrowser Extensions 1.12.2004120802 - Improves tabbed browsing. It's been suggested I put a warning on this, so here it is: Warning: This may cause a few problems, it is only recommended if you are familiar with Firefox and are confident in adjusting settings.
User Agent Switcher 0.6.1 - Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
ListZilla 0.5.1 - Outputs an alphabetical list of either extensions or themes to a text, vB code, or HTML file.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.4
<< I use Opera. Is there any advantages to FireBird over Opera? They sound the similar. >>
Firebird's free. I haven't used Opera, so I'm not exactly sure of functionality differences, perhaps an Opera/Firebird user can comment. (Might be smaller than Firebird too, not sure though.)
fybabyblue
Member
posted: Dec. 19, 2003 @ 5:12p
Opera at least used to be adware, and its pop-up blocker blocked ALL pop-ups, not just ones the user hadn't tried to open. Opera's got the crash recovery feature, though, which is great. I prefer Mozilla, but Opera's excellent too.
philipz
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 19, 2003 @ 5:24p
Or you could download Avant which does everything Firebird does plus you still get the speed and compatibility that IE offers. Avant is free.
<< Or you could download Avant which does everything Firebird does plus you still get the speed and compatibility that IE offers. Avant is free. >>
If you search the Mozilla forums you'll find Firebird builds that are optimized for different operating systems, with startup speed only a little less than IE. (And to me at least the surfing speed seems faster than IE)
ANY5546
Broke Member
posted: Dec. 19, 2003 @ 5:47p
Firebird rocks! Bump for anyone still using crappy old IE!
divatty
Ancient Member
posted: Dec. 19, 2003 @ 6:51p
Firebird is great, the bookmark organization is really well designed.
Yeah, firebird's a very nice browser. I finally did the switch from IE after seeing Microsoft drag its feet constantly when it came to patching there browser against known vulnerabilities. Currently there are at least 20 known vulnerabilities out there for IE that remain unpatched. .
<< Yeah, firebird's a very nice browser. I finally did the switch from IE after seeing Microsoft drag its feet constantly when it came to patching there browser against known vulnerabilities. Currently there are at least 20 known vulnerabilities out there for IE that remain unpatched. . >>
Yeah, and Firebird is very secure.
fse
Member
posted: Dec. 19, 2003 @ 8:36p
Yeah Firebird is great, so is Opera . I use Safari for the mac, and it seems like a nice browser, a simple one...
No other browser comes close to SlimBrowser. Far too many features to list, and once you use it, you won't use any other - ever. >>
Similar features, but is it open source? No. And it also looks like it's based on IE (from what it looks like, with the IE official Googlebar in the screenshot) so it's probably vulnerable to the same security problems that plague IE. Interesting though, hadn't seen that browser until now.
No other browser comes close to SlimBrowser. Far too many features to list, and once you use it, you won't use any other - ever. >>
SlimBrowser's an IE wraparound, just like My IE2. Looking at the feature list, My IE2 has SlimBrowser beat with its plugins feature. There are lots of plugins written for it, including ones that do things like automatically clean all ads (flash and image) off a page with a click, a great one that enables right click on most pages that annoying disable it, one that'll hunt the flash ads on a page and display them to let you ad them to the popup/inline content blocker, and so on. It's great. I also like its groups features, which I'm not sure if SlimBrowser has. I use it for contests I'm entering daily for one thing, and it's handy to just tell it to open the contests group, and it'll pop up a window to each contest page for me. Combined with the form filler, it's a snap to enter them each day. My carpal tunnel thanks me.
<< Opera at least used to be adware, and its pop-up blocker blocked ALL pop-ups, not just ones the user hadn't tried to open. Opera's got the crash recovery feature, though, which is great. I prefer Mozilla, but Opera's excellent too. >>
Opera is still adware. I love free (as in speech) software, but sometimes you need to compromise on principles for quality software. Opera is faster & has more features & is a lighter download (3 MB for mail+browser, while mozilla is at least 5 times that). For the last SEVERAL builds of opera, they've had accept/refuse all popups or accept in background or accept only requested. You can use mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts.
Mozilla is a good browser, but the only thing it has going for it that Opera doesn't is the fact that it is open source.
fishinginar
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 20, 2003 @ 11:39a
Thanks to the OP... I gave Firebird a testdrive and liked it... but, in my case anyway, special thanks to:
philipz said:
<< Or you could download Avant which does everything Firebird does plus you still get the speed and compatibility that IE offers. Avant is free. >>
I tried it out too and like it the best of all...
I supposed that's why there's chocolate and vanilla!
You can see an interesting demo of the URL-spoofing exploit at NetSquirrel.com/spoof, third link down. It's the link which appears to go to Microsoft.com, but instead goes to eBay.
How does Firebird react, does it show the little square to warn you that there is something weird about the link, or does it fall for it hook-line-and-sinker like IE?
kmeleon.sourceforge.net - excellent tabbed/popup-blocking browser. The developers are using Mozilla as a base with all new coding and whatever they did - the browser (informal tests) is faster than Opera/Firebird.
Also, I was a Crazy Browser user. BUT!!!! Crazy Browser (Slimbrowser, AVANT) are shells around lets have a security problem of the day IE!
In my opinion, this browser (as it stands now) should be what Firebird aims to be when it grows up.
k-meleon renders at approximately the same rate as opera (which is faster than mozilla & MUCH faster than IE). But Opera has mouse gestures and other shortcuts, which makes navigation faster. There are mozilla plugins to add mouse gestures, but they don't work as well as Opera's IMHO.
One that is faster and lighter than even opera is the off by one browser. This isn't HTML 4.0 compliant, but can browse a majority of sites that are out there.
jleung
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 20, 2003 @ 7:29p
Learnt a lot here. So there are browsers besides IE and Netscape.
Does any of them have a light weight version for the PDA? I have an iPAQ running PC2002. I tried to do web browsing with a Linksys 802.11b CF card. The performance is very slow. I am not sure where the limitation is: the browser software, the bandwidth bottleneck of 802.11b at the CF card, the CPU power, or something else.
My iPaq (running Pocket PC 2003) and a wireless card shows web pages pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the size reduction frequently makes them hard to read.
Is there a browser that lets you turn a PDA 90 degrees, to better fit the pages to the screen? Is there a list of common web pages (cnn, yahoo, etc) that have PDA-formatted versions?
Arthas76
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 20, 2003 @ 10:18p
i downloaded firebird and was impressed with everything except the speed (which is more important imo)...it was a dog loading pages and i have a fast machine and connection. i switched back to IE...might try avant. does it have an autofill option?
Arthas, have you tried one of these builds? They are optimized and tend to run faster.
wildjag
Dismembered Member
posted: Dec. 21, 2003 @ 9:17a
thanks
microman56
Member
posted: Dec. 21, 2003 @ 10:07a
HotStuff2 said:
<< I've said it before, I'll say it again:
No other browser comes close to SlimBrowser. Far too many features to list, and once you use it, you won't use any other - ever. >>
All features Multiple site browser based on tab-page interface Seamless integration with AI RoboForm FormFiller/Password Manager Built-in Popup Killer based on intelligent identification and pre-defined filtering Site windows killed by mistake are FULLY RECOVERABLE Convenient access to major search engines by Quick-Search Bar Seamless integration of most Internet Explorer tooblars ScriptPad: Built-in VBScript/Jscript/HTML/Text editor. View screenshot. Hidden Sites : hide and show a site at users' request Skinned window frame. Free-zooming of any web page. AutoLogin: automatically connect and log into specified website with just one click. Seamless integration with online translation engine and dictionaries Ability to suppress script error message dialog Site Group: Open and save a collection of sites as a group Flexible control of startup actions URL Alias: Type short alias instead long URL.
<< Arthas, have you tried one of these builds? They are optimized and tend to run faster. >>
I downloaded the original version. Is there a way of upgrading to the build without losing the extensions I have installed?
fishinginar
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 21, 2003 @ 11:27a
Arthas76 said:
<< i downloaded firebird and was impressed with everything except the speed (which is more important imo)...it was a dog loading pages and i have a fast machine and connection. i switched back to IE...might try avant. does it have an autofill option? >>
yes, RoboForm works well for this function... I'm a new fan of Avant!
jleung
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 21, 2003 @ 12:31p
fse said:
<< There is a version of Opera for PDA's though it is not free... >>
How is the performance? How much is it? Are there any browsers that have a PDA version for PC2002? The performance of IE is slow that deemed my wireless CF card useless.
projecthenry
Senior Member - 1K
posted: Dec. 21, 2003 @ 12:49p
i've used all kinds of browsers. i like the slim browser & IE2(both nice features) but my favorite is Avant Browser.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Slimbrowser, Avant Browser and IE2 just changes to IE? If so, they wouldn't correct IE's myriad of security problems. Mozilla and Firebird are very secure. For me at least it took a while to get used to something other than IE or an IE derivative, but now I'm hooked on Firebird. No more IE for me!
2N TURBO
Senior Member
posted: Dec. 22, 2003 @ 2:25p
I've been using MyIE2 for awhile now and will never go back to non-tabbed browsing.
A few questions, does Firebird have: - the ability to have the tabs on either the top or bottom - Super Drag&Drop or the like I find this feature invaluable. I can highlight a word and drag my mouse and said word will be Google'd. I can also highlight a url, drag, and the url will be opened in a new tab. - Mouse Gestures or something similar - will open tabs be remembered/recoverable in case of a crash
There are a few MyIE2 plugins that I find pretty handy that I'm not sure Firebird has:
Font Changer - I can change the font (font, size, and style) of a page to anything I want T!nyURL - Click it and it creates a T!nyURL of the current page (I don't know why T_i_nyURL is a no-no word, odd) Flash Save - save Flash objects Image Viewer - Opens all images on a page in new tabs Zoom - enlarge and shrink images in browser
and much much more . . . MyIE2 has really provided everything I have wanted and more in a browser.
Skipping 596 Messages...
VikeFan84
Senior Member
posted: Mar. 20, 2006 @ 10:05a
Yeah - but they want too much $$$$ for it. Where can I get it cheaper?
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