Your favorite browser is now v1.5

[Mercutio]

If your favorite web browser isn't firefox, I don't know what's wrong with you.

It doesn't appear to have hit the main page at mozilla.org yet.

 

[Tannin]

Firefox sucks.

Opera and Mozilla both eat it. If there was no Moz and no Opera either, well, the dumbed-down "I'm a clueless moron but not quite as clueless as the ultramorons still using Internet Explorer" interface would bug me, but at least it would be better than Explorer.

As a modern web browser, it's third best out of three. But I'll try 1.5. Who knows, someone might have fixed it up a bit.

 

[Buck]

Now children, play nice.

 

[ddrueding]

Firefox sucks.

Opera and Mozilla both eat it. If there was no Moz and no Opera either, well, the dumbed-down "I'm a clueless moron but not quite as clueless as the ultramorons still using Internet Explorer" interface would bug me, but at least it would be better than Explorer.

As a modern web browser, it's third best out of three. But I'll try 1.5. Who knows, someone might have fixed it up a bit.

I've read your arguments on this and still think you're crazy. I can't imagine our usage patterns are that different. And many of your arguments definatly sound like nit-picking.

Let me know what you think of 1.5; I haven't tried it yet myself.

 

[timwhit]

Firefox sucks.

Opera and Mozilla both eat it. If there was no Moz and no Opera either, well, the dumbed-down "I'm a clueless moron but not quite as clueless as the ultramorons still using Internet Explorer" interface would bug me, but at least it would be better than Explorer.

As a modern web browser, it's third best out of three. But I'll try 1.5. Who knows, someone might have fixed it up a bit.

Yeah, everyone knows that Tannin is full of shit with this one.

Raise your hand if you agree with Tannin. No sock puppets are allowed to participate.

 

[Tannin]

With the modern browsers, all arguments are nit-picking. All three do the fundamentals to near perfection. All three have refined, generally well-organised user interfaces when you look at them in broad. The differences can only be minor. But, yes, small things do matter. And Firefox gets more of them wrong than either of the other two. (Which to be fair, have both been around a lot longer.)

 

[ddrueding]

Posting this from v1.5. I never would have called the old one slow, in fact I never remembered really waiting for it, but this is definatly faster.

 

[LunarMist]

If your favorite web browser isn't firefox, I don't know what's wrong with you.

I tried Firefox back in v 1.1 something and did not like it at all. Maybe when they get to version 3 or 4....

 

[timwhit]

If your favorite web browser isn't firefox, I don't know what's wrong with you.

I tried Firefox back in v 1.1 something and did not like it at all. Maybe when they get to version 3 or 4....

Aren't you still using IE?

I wouldn't touch IE with a 10 foot pole.

Remember that Firefox takes a little getting used to and can be highly customized through the use of extensions.

 

[timwhit]

I just got 1.5 installed with updated extensions. It is not all that much different.

The only differences that I have notices are the menus look a little different, the options screen is laid out differently and there is an option to clear private data.

Am I missing anything?

 

[Adcadet]

I've been using the 1.5 release candidates, and honestly, I can't tell the difference between 1.07 and 1.5. Maybe a little faster, but I can't tell.

Clear private data is nice, but a non-issue on my home machine. If it gets installed on all the computers at my school, in the hospitals and clinics it would be great. But fat chance of that happening any time soon.

 

[LunarMist]

Remember that Firefox takes a little getting used to and can be highly customized through the use of extensions.

I don't know anything about extensions. The Firefox options were rather sparse and I could not view an image without it flipping to another page. Very annoying.

 

[Gilbo]

I have to wait for my Linux distribution to package it. I'm still too much of a pussy to compile anything but a kernel myself.

I will add that I'm very excited and would love to participate!

 

[i]

Does the drag-and-drop tab reshuffling work?

If so, that might be enough to get me to try Firefox again. I agree with Tannin on this one: the parent Mozilla browser provides a much more comfortable browsing experience. Not that I have anything against Firefox -- I just don't like it anywhere near as much as Mozilla.

 

[Gilbo]

I find I can customize Firefox to be much more out of my way than Mozilla.

I think I've mentioned it before, but I dump all the buttons and pull down menus that I use into the menu bar (buttons to the left of File, Edit, etc and search and address to the right), kill all the toolbars, enable small buttons, and voila, a browser which gets out of my way and doesn't hog screen real-estate. I even keep a couple bookmarks there, but I edit them so they have no titles --you just see the website icon (you can't do this until you've moved the bookmarks toolbar into the menu bar and disabled the bookmark toolbar --which is now empty anyway). The titles take up space. You end up with one thin menu strip. Anyway, that's my get your web browser out of your face tip...

 

[timwhit]

Does the drag-and-drop tab reshuffling work?

If so, that might be enough to get me to try Firefox again. I agree with Tannin on this one: the parent Mozilla browser provides a much more comfortable browsing experience. Not that I have anything against Firefox -- I just don't like it anywhere near as much as Mozilla.

I can rearrange, but I have tabbrowser Extensions (2.02...) installed. Still the best tab options extension around if you ask me. The other ones just don't have the options that I need to function properly (I'm very picky about my tabs).

 

[CougTek]

I have absolutely no extension and I'm using Firefox 1.5RC3 and I can reshuffle tabs by dragging them.

I'm sad to see that v1.5 still doesn't pass the Acit 2 test. Otherwise, I can't really complain. I prefer the way to clear private data in v1.07 ("Tools" - "Option" - "Privacy" - "Clear All"), but I can live with the new way.

The bookmarks drag-and-drop without having to go to "Manage Bookmarks" is nice too.

 

[Mercutio]

The reason I switched from Moz to Firefox is that several must-have extensions are Firefox only. I don't know where Tannin gets his "dumbed down" opinion - the UI is clearly better than Opera (then again, what isn't?) and almost everything can be modified or customized to one's approval.

 

[MaxBurn]

My major hangup before was the way it would alphabetize my bookmarks and mix the folders up with the links. I want the folders to be grouped first and the links to be grouped second and then both to be alphabetized. You know, the way everything else works?

There is no automatic way to accomplish this, but in this version I found that if I use the bookmark pulldown and right click and select sort by name it will accomplish this. This does not work in the Side Bar or in the Manage Bookmarks application, has to be done on the Bookmarks pulldown. Furthermore it won't update itself when you add new ones so you have to redo it.

The ability to do this at all finally enabled me to switch from IE, I want to like firefox but I use bookmarks very heavily. Still remains mildly annoying.


What I really need now is a textbox spell checker, similar to IE spell for IE. Anyone know of one?

 

[Adcadet]

re: textbox spellchecker - Gmail has one built in for email nowadays. Not a browser-specific feature, but cool nonetheless.

 

[sechs]

Disappointed that Ebay Negs and GrayModern aren't 1.5 approved, but it does well enough otherwise. Definitely a bit peppier; does better than the CPU-optimised 1.07 build that I was using.

 

[Tannin]

"Dumbed down" ain't an opinion, Merc, it's a demonstrable fact. Go TOOLS >> OPTIONS in the Fox, then EDIT >> PREFERENCES in Moz. The difference is obvious and substantial. Firefox was designed with a fresh UI in order to attract the average not-too-bright IE user. It does a good job of that. But it fails to provide anything likr the flexibility and range of customisations for non-dumb users that the more mature browsers (Mox & Opera) both do.

Don't talk to me about extensions. Extensions are horribly time-consuming to search for, evaluate, download, and install, particularly if (like me) you have a number of systems in regular use. WTF should I switch to an inferior browser just so I can waste a whole lot of time trying to get back the effortless functionality that I already have with both Opera 8.5 and Mozilla? It's not even as if Firefox is faster or smaller or anything, not compared to Opera, which is significantly faster at most things. Mind you, speed on modern machinery is a bit of a non-issue. Any current browser is fast enough. Moz and IE both take a while to load (IE hides its load delay at boot time, as you know), but who cares? I start Moz up about twice a week at the most, and it runs 24 X 7.

Right now, I have a medium workload on my laptop. Lets count them up:

Mozilla: 25 tabs in three windows. (Often quite a lot more than this.)
Firefox: 11 tabs in 1 window. (Rarely more than this.)
Opera: 53 tabs in 5 windows. (I seem to be using Opera more and Mozilla less these days. Is it the extra speed? Or just that I get tired of the arrow keys not working with too many windows open at once - this must be a Gecko bug, as it is common to both Mozilla and Firefox. Maybe 1.5 will fix it, in which case I guess I'll soon be trying out another Sea Monkey build - last time I tried SM it wouldn't install at all.)

 

[Tannin]

I'm sad to see that v1.5 still doesn't pass the Acit 2 test.

Nice link, Coug. Interesting too.

Moz and Firefox both screw it up.

IE 6 is hopelessly wrong. (Are we surprised?)

Opera 8.51 is very close to correct, easily the best I tried. But Opera still has the odd quirk on other pages. Not too often, and quite possibly less often than the Gecko twins these days.

 

[time]

I can confirm that Opera 8.51 renders the Acid test better than IE, Mozilla or Firefox at this time.

I also think that Tannin's comments are fair and balanced on this. Apart from users with 'special needs' such as Merc, most people have better things to do than fart around trying out dodgy plugins, just to achieve functionality that's been standard in other browsers for ages.

And yes, you can drag Opera's tabs anywhere you like, such as converting a tab into a separate instance.

 

[Adcadet]

Firefox 1.5 lets you drag and drop tabs between different browser windows. Neat trick.

 

[Mercutio]

"Dumbed down" ain't an opinion, Merc, it's a demonstrable fact. Go TOOLS >> OPTIONS in the Fox, then EDIT >> PREFERENCES in Moz. The difference is obvious and substantial. Firefox was designed with a fresh UI in order to attract the average not-too-bright IE user. [/url]

... or, alternatively, you could say that the Firefox Options are uncluttered by things you do not need. Someone who wants greater functionality can either do about:config or find an extension that exposes a wider array of options. The only thing I ever change in Firefox options is the default download location. That's it. Everything else gets left in its default setting.

Don't talk to me about extensions. Extensions are horribly time-consuming to search for, evaluate, download, and install, particularly if (like me) you have a number of systems in regular use. WTF should I switch to an inferior browser just so I can waste a whole lot of time trying to get back the effortless functionality that I already have with both Opera 8.5 and Mozilla?

You don't have the functionality extensions give you, from Opera or Mozilla. 90% of the extensions that're out there have the same basic functionality regardless of the gecko browser you've chosen. If you don't want to wade through dozens of extensions, don't. Download the ones you like. Drag them into the extensions window on each of your PCs. Poof. Everyone is up to date. Or switch to Portable Firefox, which allows one to keep extensions and bookmarks, along with the app itself. Install it to a pen drive. No more sychronization issues.

Neither Moz nor Opera have anything like Adblock. Neither have anything like Noscript or Linky or Magpie or the Bookmarks Synchronizer. Those tiny little extensions - each of which takes all of about 15 seconds to download and install - create a massive upgrade in browsing experience.

You can fuss and bitch about how much you like those other browsers, but the fact is, I have a better browsing experience for the five minutes I took to install my extensions.

Opera, of course, is just broken. Doesn't share keyboard shortcuts, doesn't share UI elements, doesn't behave in the manner I expect a browser to behave. That's broken and wrong. Even Konqueror behaves better. What the fuck is wrong with the Norwegians?

 

[Bozo]

Bitch, bitch, bitch.....try here

http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_1.html


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[LiamC]

Man I love this shit Everytime the browser wars are mentioned. Where's the popcorn? :mrgrn:

 

[CityK]

Yeah, I tried those browsers last night. They just plain sucked! I've seen browsers suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

[Exits thread as gracefully as he entered]

 

[Adcadet]

About two months ago I was in my radiology rotation when the tech support guy (who's office is within 100 yards of most of the reading rooms and available by phone 8-4 every day - pretty sweet setup and the system is awesome too) came in and started gabbing to the attending physician. Browsers came up, and to my shock and horror BOTH of these tech-saavy people hadn't even tried Firefox or Mozilla. The attending didn't know anything about it, but the tech support guy had "read an article about it" but was totally uninterested in even trying it. He wailed "why would I go against the big guy (Microsoft)" and "why use anything but the standard" and "my browser works just fine." He could not seem to understand the appeal behind tabbed browsers, nor the concept that Microsoft had gotten lazy. Now, the attending I can forgive - he's ignorant and just doesn't know. And he's busy (playing golf...he is a radiologist, afterall). But the tech support guy is clearly going nowhere other than where The Man is leading him. I'm sure when MS releases Big Poop in a Can, priced at only $999 for their special customers, he'll be the first to get the steaming pile of crap and love the fact that he's got The Standard by which all other Poops in Cans are judged, and never bother to look at other companies Poops in Cans and will immediately be suspicious of open source Poops in Cans (afterall, can poor hackers under the age of 25 and not part of an industry-dominating company produce any good software....uh, nevermind Bill Gates and early MS).

 

[LiamC]

...and will immediately be suspicious of open source Poops in Cans (afterall, can poor hackers under the age of 25 and not part of an industry-dominating company produce any good software....uh, nevermind Bill Gates and early MS).

Steve Jobs,
Jeff Bezos,
Bram Cohen,
Shawn Fanning,
Sergey Brin,
Larry Page,
Linus Torvalds,
Ben Goodger et. al.

Nah, I don't think he is likely to get it.

 

[Tannin]

a whole pile of stuff about a terminally incompetent IT guy

There is no excuse fot that level of incompetence in anyone who works in IT. In my book, that appalling level of ignorance in the field that the employee supposedly specialises in is just cause for immediate termination. Further, failure to terminate a demonstrably incompetent worker is, in any organisation, cause to seriously examine the suitability for continued employment of the supervisor. If you are in charge, it is your job to see to it that your subordinates are competent and up-to-date with the industry they work in.

If that piss-poor excuse for an IT specialist were here in Australia, and if I were the Tsar, I would immediately place him in charge of a surgery ward, and get the surgeon to do the IT support. It's a pretty fair bet that both new appointments would do better than the prior incumbents.

Huh? OK, fair enough about the Ignoramus Technology guy, but what about the surgery, you fool! People might die!)

(Don't you read the news Tea?)

(Oh.)

 

[LiamC]

Careful Tony, that is borderline seditious--and the penalty for treason in this country is death, or it soon will be.

:eekers:

 

[Tannin]

You mean I get Doctor Death or I get Honest John? You mean I have a choice?

 

[LiamC]

You mean I get Doctor Death or I get Honest John? You mean I have a choice?

There's a difference? :eekers:

 

[Adcadet]

This guy used to work at the residency program that I'm now rotating through. The news piece was aired on TV Wednesday night.

 

[time]

Firefox 1.5 lets you drag and drop tabs between different browser windows. Neat trick.

Same in Opera.

Neither Moz nor Opera have anything like Adblock. Neither have anything like Noscript or Linky or Magpie or the Bookmarks Synchronizer.

Opera has more useful popup blocking than Firefox, which frankly, is all the ad blocking most people want or need. Personally, I gave up on ad blockers years ago, not least because they were hurting sites I wanted to support. If you really want it, plugins and external solutions are available.

I don't know why, in this day and age, you would need something like Noscript - unless, of course, your browser has a history of security problems. Oh wait, Firefox had more security problems in the past year than all other browsers combined - bummer.

Magpie is purely and simply a tool for content thieves:

"It is designed to help you quickly bulk-download media linked from web pages, as well as numeric ranges of files from sites using the Bukster protocol. Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing/decremeting numbers in it, and for "sanitizing" links to real content by stripping off redirector script prefix/suffixes."

 

[Buck]

...and if I were the Tsar...

I thought you were.

 

[Fushigi]

Magpie is purely and simply a tool for content thieves:

"It is designed to help you quickly bulk-download media linked from web pages, as well as numeric ranges of files from sites using the Bukster protocol. Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing/decremeting numbers in it, and for "sanitizing" links to real content by stripping off redirector script prefix/suffixes."

Sounds more like a tool for maximizing content extraction. If the content is not protected by requiring a user account, then it is available for public consumption. How the public consumes it doesn't matter.

Security by obscurity is no security at all.

 

[Mercutio]

Magpie is an awesome tool, and it's written by Bed Goodger. You know, the Firefox project manager? The man clearly understands the needs of those of us who enjoy downloading the porno.

Noscript is essentially a quick javascript toggle. I don't install it because I'm worried about security. I install it because 80% of the crap javascript is used for is basically annoying.

As for ad blocking? If I want to support a web site, I will do so directly, with a paypal or amazon donation. I will not live in a world where I'm forced to face commercials on every flat surface within the range of my vision.

Firefox bugs, unlike those of certain other browsers, tend to get fixed within minutes, maybe hours of when they are discovered. Unlike those of certain other browsers.

I'm sure Opera has security problems too. They would become more readily apparent if more than three people on earth used it. Fortunately, they don't.