Why you should use FireFox.

[Soeru]

With this thread I hope to convince IE fanboys to make the switch to this l33t-ass browser. I urge you to read this post in its entirety.

Early this year, I heard about the greatness of this web browser called Firefox. Back then, I didn't care much for alternate applications from other developers, thinking that they wouldn't be compatible or would be extremely buggy. For shits I tried this browser and it proved me wrong, and ever since I've been using it.

What I really like about it is that the GUI is extremely similar to that of IE, so it was a matter of minutes to getting used to it. The icons looked much nicer, and it wasn't wacky/ugly as hell like Netscape for example. You can add toolbared bookmarks, and after the sites' icons load, it looks unbelievably sexy. Here is a pick of what the browser looks like:

Another cool thing is that you can re-arrange any of the icons(ie: back and forward buttons) wherever you want. It's stable, fast(the later versions load quicker and don't cause slow-downs), and has NEVER crashed on me(only once when I opened 55 tabs on a slow computer, while watching a video, and hashing a bittorrent download ). Oh yeah, tabs, you can view multiple pages in just one window. This saves system resources and makes it quick to switch from page to page. It automatically blocks all pop-up ads(it doesn't block pop up windows however, which is good), and its virtually impossible to get spyware/adware through the browser unless you install something yourself. It has it's very own download manager too, which you can change in numerous ways with the help of plug-ins. A built in google/other engine(which you can select) search-bar is also next to the address bar by default. Bookmarks are extremely easy to manage, and best of all: you can choose to import all of your bookmarks from IE.

One problem most people complain about is how the browser loads *some* pages incorrectly. To fix this problem, some clever guy made a plugin that allows you to select "Open this page in IE" by right clicking the page, fixing whatever problems you may have on a site(very rare, but it happens).

Speaking of plug-ins, this is what makes this browser stand out. Besides having your typical Flash, Shockwave, Adobe Acrobat, etc. plugins, there are assloads extensions with which you can do almost anything you can think of. A plugin called Adblock lets you block/hide whatever webpage ads you want and keep them blocked until you remove them from a block list. I got another plugin today that shows you weather forecasts as small icons wherever on the browser you want. One of the l33test plugins ever is the Gmail notifier plugin, which notifies you of new emails for Gmail users, but I won't get into that since not everyone has a Gmail account. (got 4 invites btw). FoxyTunes: an app that lets you control any media player through small buttons in the browser, so it's great for those of you who like to minimize you're player whilst you surf happily jamming to your music. FireFTP is a plug-in/built-in FTP app, very useful.

One thing that really kicks ass is a plug-in called FoxyVoice, which provides Text-To-Speech functionality, so you can have a computer voice read out a page for you while you read/do something else(although the MS Sam voice is a tad lame). My favorite plug in so far is the mouse gestures extension, by doing mouse gestures you can do numerous functions in the browser. Ie: right clicking and dragging left will go back a webpage, dragging forward will go to the next page, drawing an L will close your current site tab(or the browser if there is only 1 tab open), and a bunch of others. You can also zoom in whatever webpage you want with the appropriate plug-in. There are also a bunch of tools for testing bandwidth, web developer tools, thingy that lets you quote text(for forum people ), fixing small bugs/changing features in the browser, and endless other stuff I haven't checked out yet!

Just what could inspire me to write something this long so late at night? Well, the excitement of having this shiny new-feeling browser had already worn off and surfing around the internet went back to being dull again(with its exceptions of course, there's always something interesting to do/read, but I just lacked motivation). However, today I must've seen what Christians call "the Light"... the equivalent = most of the plugins and features I just mentioned that I previously did not know of. It really felt so refreshing I just felt the need to spread the word to the people who still don't have this browser(or to those that already feel that it has worn off). No, I am not as geeky as I appear to be by having typed all of this, I am merely trying to improve everyone's experience on the www. I hope this has convinced everyone that Mozilla FireFox is unbelievably superior to all other browsers. It's only a 4.5mb download, so give this browser a try, you won't be disappointed.


Now I'm off to spam various forums about the greatness of Firefox. Thank you for reading and good night.

Edit: You know what, I may just make this into a webpage.

[Xaenn]

Hopefully you can convert a few more IE users. It seems however a large majority of this community has already witnessed the greatness which is Firefox.

[Soeru]

That is why I'm trying to rub it in the face of those who haven't yet.

[Xaenn]

Traversing cyberspace to enlighten the masses?

[johnny blaze]

QFT.
Good work laddie.

[polobunny]

See, only happy people with FireFox!
Good informations on Firefox, for those who still hesitate to switch for it.
And a must, it's almost totally configurable, with a hidden control page. You can type in about:config in your adress bar, it will bring up the "secret" page with plenty of settings you cannot see in the gui. Those are mostly browser advanced config settings, but can be useful to set your plugins how you like them.

Ah, also, most plugins are under 100kb! Only big plugins like the weather one are bigger than this. So if your on 56k, you download firefox (4.5Mb) the adblock extension (blocks advertisements on webpages, you can get some blocked sites list on the official website of the plugin, so almost nothing to do! Under 100kb) and the gmail notifier (<100kb) and your bundled for a few months without downloading!
Additionaly, you can always download themes like almost every browser except Internet Explorer. So you can customize everything in your browser.
Firefox takes less ram than IE, is more web compliant (it doesn't make 10 connections to a website or ftp ...) but still loads pages faster.

And as Soeru said, you can get the "Open this page in IE" extension, no more hassle about pages not loading with Firefox. You can get it in your native language too.

Enough, go download it. We know you'll love it!

[Soeru]

I'm glad you all liked my little essay, I'm thinking of publishing this somewhere(like an already-existing site, because if I make one it will most likely not gain popularity with just one article... and my writing skills do not compare to that of Maddox's ).

Can't believe I forgot about the configuration page. I should've also mentioned the themes and stuff. If I decide to publish this somehow, then I'll add all that stuff in.

[MaXim]

Basically, Firefox is Mozilla without the cream and icing on the cake. It's almost practically identical to Mozilla's browser. I've always favoured Mozilla over Internet Explorer as it has more features, is more secure and is, overall a more stable program. Firefox is just what I needed, I never really used Mozilla's IRC client or Composer. What really bugs me that a large amount of today's web pages are written to be compliant with Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example many pages are modelled on Microsoft's DOM (Document Object Model), rather than the W3C standard. Mozilla (and Firefox)'s DOM conforms to the W3C standard, which means that Mozilla may appear to render many pages incorrectly. Many people hence say that Mozilla does not conform to standards. The truth is, Internet Explorer does not. There isn't much we can do about it either, as it will always be more attractive for businesses to model their pages on Microsoft's DOM, as Internet Explorer is currently the most popular browser, with an estimated 70% of the market. IE is, however starting to lose ground against Mozilla.

[Soeru]

Basically, Firefox is Mozilla without the cream and icing on the cake. It's almost practically identical to Mozilla's browser. I've always favoured Mozilla over Internet Explorer as it has more features, is more secure and is, overall a more stable program. Firefox is just what I needed, I never really used Mozilla's IRC client or Composer. What really bugs me that a large amount of today's web pages are written to be compliant with Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example many pages are modelled on Microsoft's DOM (Document Object Model), rather than the W3C standard. Mozilla (and Firefox)'s DOM conforms to the W3C standard, which means that Mozilla may appear to render many pages incorrectly. Many people hence say that Mozilla does not conform to standards. The truth is, Internet Explorer does not. There isn't much we can do about it either, as it will always be more attractive for businesses to model their pages on Microsoft's DOM, as Internet Explorer is currently the most popular browser, with an estimated 70% of the market. IE is, however starting to lose ground against Mozilla.

*pats Maxim on back*
Well spoken. Care to explain a bit more about this W3C standard?
Since I doubt a small developer like Mozilla will gain as much popularity as M$, I guess they'd have to change their applications to conform to the popular standards to avoid loading/rendering problems as you've mentioned.

[MaXim]

The name 'Mozilla' was used to refer to Netscape Navigator from it's infancy. In 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation released Netscape Navigtor's code under an open source license. The Mozilla Organization was formed, which aimed to further develop Netscape's code, under Open Source. Netscape, as we all know had a huge bite into the browser market, and had been around before the bith of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Today's Mozilla is based on the Gecko layout engine, which was a result of the work of the new Mozilla Organization. Netscape 6 was based on Gecko, and a bit later was actually only a rebranded version of Mozilla and its tools, customised to suit AOL's tastes (AOL purchased Netscape and its assets, including the Mozilla Organization some time after the Mozilla Organization was formed). In July 2003, AOL announced that it would close down its Browser division. As a result, The Mozilla Foundation was formed and continued the development of Mozilla up to this day.
Gecko was written to comform to today's most popular web standards, such as HTML 4.0, XML 1.0 and the W3C DOM.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is a consortium that produces standards or recommendations for the world wide web. The standards, or recommendations that they produce don't provide a level of conformance for a manufacturer to follow. Microsoft Internet Explorer uses its own DOM which does not agree with W3C's in many areas. In the late 90s when the dominance of Netscape declined, Internet Explorer gained the upper hand in the market - through questionable means (such as bundling it with Windows). This has made many of Microsoft's own standards more popular.

Microsoft Internet Explorer, to an extent supports some of W3C's standards (such as CSS 2.0). Internet Explorer can never fully support W3C because it is based on Mosaic's code (one of the first internet browsers). And because many web developers choose only to test their creations with Internet Explorer, whose rendering engine contains some bugs, browsers built from the ground up such as today's Mozilla will most probably display them incorrectly.

[ZeikHunter]

been using firefox since it's debut, but never knew there were so many plugins. and i cant find shit on their site... (i dont know, theyre probably there, but corporate sites confuse me. im not a user, im an admin. i dont understand things aimed for users)

[Norgus]

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/ There's the extensions. I only have one grudge about this page, and that is I can't find a way to search it other than manually going through the catagories.

[ZeikHunter]

search... i dont like the new mozilla search. shoulda left it like ie. cant stad tyhe little thing @ the bottom

[Norgus]

I perfer it at the bottom, less intrusive. But its strange I can't find an option to switch between old fashon'd style and the new fangled one.

[Xaenn]

I like the new fangled one, I thought it demented at first, but now I think it's quite nice.