Mozilla Firefox vs IE

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I've been using Firefox for about a day now and I haven't encountered any problems. It's safer than IE and for the rest, I haven't noticed much difference (yet).

So I was wondering why so few people use it...what's the catch?

 

No idea. I use firefox, and I know most people concerned with their system security use it as well.

 

You gotta download it. People can be so lazy ...

Even when I give them the damn link.

 

Here's a nit-picky complaint I have with Firefox...when I hit the 'Back' button, it takes me back to the beginning of the previous page. IE takes me back to the section of the previous page that I linked from. Speaking of laziness I guess...

 

It does and it doesnt. I sometimes go back to the top... but not always.

[ November 27, 2004, 19:29: Message edited by: Takara ]

 

Depends what you consider previous location. If the URL, then Firefox is right and if the exact place including scrollbar position, then IE is right. You can also go by the URL and show the page refreshed, or you can access it from cache and give the user the exact thing he was reading or watching. All depends on interpretation, I guess.

On this PC, I have IE, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox, but that's because I make websites and before I put it online or give it to someone, I need to check it in all reasonably popular browsers.

Firefox is probably the fastest of them all, but I use IE as the default one. IE is the most likely to reflect the intended look and personality of a website. Because most people don't realise there are different and possibly better browsers? Maybe. But still.

 

I was very sceptical about browsers like Firefox until I tried it out about half a year ago, when I started being concerned about the safety of my computer. I can't imagine browsing without it now.

That was always what I thought before using Firefox (and even that some sites weren't accesable at all with Firefox). However, I think that most sites are displayed exactly the same and if there are differences, they are are so minimal that's hardly noticable. Correct code should be displayed the same with all browsers, but if the looks are different, it is most likely due to the fact that IE displayes code incorrectly; they made an incorrectable mess of the program, in attempts to correct its flaws.


EDIT: Most of the things I said are somewhat like what Tal said, because I was typing while he was posting.

The bugs they take out of Firefox are nothing compared to the major security flaws they take out of Internet Explorer. I'm not saying that Firefox doesn't have any security issues; maybe you don't hear about them that often, because most people with malicious intentions target the general public that uses IE. But over the last few months in which I am using Firefox, I had to install a lot more critical updates for IE, than I had for Firefox.

[ November 27, 2004, 15:28: Message edited by: Mesmero ]

 

Majority of people uses Windows, thus majority of them end up to use IE too as you cannot expect everyone to understand that it is the crappiest browser you can have. Like they say: "If it works, don't fix it."

I just wish governments and schools would move on to freeware like this completely. After all, Linux works much like Unix which is used in majority of universities. No Windows = no IE. That piece of crap is simply too tightly integrated to the OS.

 

All the extensions available for Firefox too, and they add an unparalleled browsing experience. Here's a decent place to get some of the better ones: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/

 

Updating to v1.0 did more harm than good. Have to wait for all those interesting extensions to be upgraded.

 

I liked 0.9.2 the most, actually, but I'm positive the mozilla crew will fix it up with the next release. Mozilla 2.0 is coming sometime next year too.

 

The reasons why most people don't use Firefox are:
a) They have never heard of it. I had not heard of it before reading this thread.
b) Even after hearing about it, they still don't really understand what it is, how to get it, and whether it will stuff up their machine.

Where do the Firefox people get their money from then, if they give the software away for free? How do they feed their families?

 

I bought a stuffed firefox from them. I contributed.

Most of the extensions for Firefox are quite rubbish - I just use an automatic refreshing the page thing, a dictionary thing, a thing that lets me use GetRight for downloads, and a popup-counter for no real reason.

 

GetRight is infected with spyware, right? I didnt download it for that reason.

 

Meaning that it could be understood to be spyware, as it connects to home-server and installs stuff without permission. In this process, it quite likely gives out information about you.

 

now, please don't get me wrong (i am *not* going to defend ms here) but my bets regarding the security issue of ie/firefox are as follows :
should it ever happen that firefox gains more than 10% market-share (and thus becomes an interesting target for *serious* hackers) firefox will only turn out as unsafe / leaky / buggy as we all know ie is.

just browse with win98. nobody codes virusses for that anymore