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New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow

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New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow

from JoeUser Forums
Forty-five days and some 13 million downloads after its official release, Mozilla's Firefox browser is showing undeniable momentum--but does it signal the beginning of the end to Microsoft's monopoly over the basic software used to access the Web?

Even as Firefox gathers steam, powerful brakes are poised to kick in that could limit its long-term growth: Interoperability has long dogged non-Microsoft browsers, which are often glitchy on some Web sites. Firefox claims some significant progress on this front, but a handful of sites, including Microsoft's Windows Update site, are still inaccessible.

In addition, Microsoft's deep hooks in corporate IT departments could make it impractical for many businesses to consider switching from Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future. Microsoft, for one, sees those hooks as a staunch bulwark against corporate defections, keeping its most profitable customers close to the fold.

Since its launch last month, Firefox has already nudged Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser below the 90 percent mark for the first time in years, according to one survey. Now the question is whether the Web browser can surmount thorny market dynamics to become more than just another niche player among the crowd of lilliputian rivals that have long stood in IE's shadow.

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With the success of Firefox in winning market share, Mozilla is finding Web authors more receptive to its message about standards and compatibility. The group is now fielding between 10 and 15 calls per week from individuals and organizations asking how to make their sites work with Firefox.

These are only exerpts from C|Net News. Read detailed article at Link
23,553 views 39 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I use FireFox, and it rules!! I use IE, and it rules!! I use MSN Explorer, and it also rules!! lol, I find it so funny when people say that this or that product rules...
I have firefox 1.0, and let me tell you, it's as quirky as MSN or IE. I actually think MSN explorer has the best all-around look and feel of the 3. IE is just too sqarish and kind of slow for me now, and Firefox has actually become more unstable for me since upgrading from 0.9 to the official 1.0 release. A LOT of pages will not display correctly or without all their options in Firefox, though its autocomplete features are more advanced than MSN's. Pity that the MSN software doesn't come for free, but with subscription a-la AOL. MSN is strong on the pop-up and spyware blocking front as well, just as firefox is. I use both because MSN will display ALL PAGES with no problems, and Firefox will keep a lot of passwords that MSN will not save, simple as that. Firefox is more streamlined, but I actually don't see any differences in the speed in which any of the 2 browsers will display webpages, they are on par. MSN will display ALL pages with ALL their features, while with Firefox sometimes I miss some buttons, graphics, clickable links and so on, and no, IT'S NOT BECAUSE THE WEBSITE IS NOT "FIREFOX OPTIMIZED" because the same will happen with IE. that being said, it's annoying having to switch browsers now and then to see a a page in its entirety or to have a form pre-filled, but until one of the 2 browsers I use gives me all the features I want, the both will have a place in my PC.
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
personally i don't like firefox, and i don't like IE either. Why? As far as browsers go they haven't evolved all that much. I use firefox for some pages (where tabbed browsing is convenient) and IE for others. At work I opted to use Konqueror because I chose to run Linux on my workstation - in that environment, Linux gets my work done faster and more reliably. At home however I use Windows.

What am I getting to? There's a place for pretty much every program. Competition is good, and maybe it encourages some evolution for the web in general. I wish Firefox the best, but I don't see why people are zealous about it. To each their own.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I started using Firefox about 6 or 8 months ago. Wasn't real impressed with the pre-release, but the full release is working much better.

I'm not a developer so maybe I'm sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, but I found this easy tip on a political forum that I frequent and am just wondering if anyone thinks IE is anywhere near as simple to tweak for the common user. In any case, I made these changes and it works very well, especially on sites like WC where graphics is King! Here ya go:

[quote="MikeB"]If you really want to speed up Firefox try this.

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!


From http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As several users noted above, IE is the standard whether you like it or not. And for a great many corporations (and users), it's not going away anytime soon.


IE's dominance can be easily contributed to it's free/previous compulsory bundling with a popular OS.

For what it's worth, the government department I work for, which represents 20% of our government's total spending, has recently instituted the Mozilla suite as standard browser/email client. We have IE, but it's only used internally for ActiveX/VBScript applications, it's very definitely ring-fenced away from the big bad web.

The times they are achangin' - Firefox's growing market share shows exactly why you need a standard that is non-partisan.
The net is supposed to be robust - coding for one specific application is not robust at all, as you can't rely on that application always being available or usable, as certain security flaws have shown.
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
After the incessant bugs with Outlook 2003, i'm considering switching to Thunderbird..

Outlook is soo annoying.. At home, and at work, when I check multiple email accounts, it pauses at 75% about half the time, and locks up.. Regardless of what machine, and regardless of where i'm at. Worse, outlook tends to stick in ram at times.

Guess its Thunderbird time. Might as well, since i stopped using IE months ago.
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Outlook is soo annoying.. At home, and at work, when I check multiple email accounts, it pauses at 75% about half the time, and locks up.. Regardless of what machine, and regardless of where i'm at. Worse, outlook tends to stick in ram at times.



Same here ............
Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've had firefox installed for a couple of weeks... and i really can't see what all the fuss is about. On my System it's actually fractionally slower than
explorer to appear, by hotkey. There are three things it does that aren't standard to IE.
Tabbed Grouping. Well Blow me over... Isn't that what the task bar's for?! Plus it doesn't seem to work all that well, half the time it still opens another window altogether. XP even does that grouping thing on the taskbar tho most people turn it off because it's just annoying. To be honest it's just going back to the way of MDI interfaces which we abandoned about 4 years ago! SDI is so much better because you know when you press ALT-F4 you are only closing the window you are looking at. (I know you could theoretically press CTRL F4)
Download pause/resume Facilitys... Erm yeh I've had one of those bolted on to explorer about 9 years ago now, yes it would be nice to see it integrated... but so what!
Pop Up Blocker... erm see above.

On top of that the standard toolbar shipped with it doesn't have the buttons explorer does.

To me its just another browser. Lets face it they aren't that difficult to make either. Just about every programming language comes with an HTML renderer now adays.....

I suppose you do always have the advantage that it's open source though!
Mind you which would you prefer to be given, a house that cost a company many millions to build, and to which joe bloggs can't see the plans for the security for, OR a house which every can see the plans too, built for free by people that have too much time on there hands? Just a thought.

Anyway. Surely it plays right into Microsofts hands if FireFox users do increase.
They don't make much money from Explorer do they? Just Windows. Better interfaces/Greater Stability or Security for Windows will only stop greater flows of people to LinuX.

Anyway to much ranting!
Happy New Year Everyone.
Thanks for all your brilliant customisations, and lets hope theres more in the new year
BTW I think there should be a sound section to this website. It's all very well it looking funky, but it doesn't work if it has standard windows sounds really does it!
Mr (hriZ
Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
#22 by GCube


Regarding the toolbar buttons: No they do NOT work. However, you can get Firefox themes that change the look of many bits of the Firefox interface.
Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Tabbed Grouping. Well Blow me over... Isn't that what the task bar's for?! Plus it doesn't seem to work all that well, half the time it still opens another window altogether



Sounds like you didn't setup Firefox right, and don't understand it very well.

Try getting Tabbed Browser Preferences extension, then going into options and turning its features ON. *THAT* is how Tabbed Browsing is supposed to work, and IE can't TOUCH that.

I only use three extensions, but the 3 I use, pretty much means IE is USELESS to me in comparison.. (Tabbed Preferences, Download Manager Tweak, SearchStatus)

Its like going back into the stoneage to use IE now. Taskbar? Pffft.
Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Lets hope in the new year, JoeUser.Com is fixed so it works right with Firefox.
Reply #38 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Mouse Gestures, IEView (for those few sites that are hard coded for IE), Smiley Xtra (to quickly add extra smilies/images to forums such as here ), Spellbound (spell checker), Firesomething (useless but fun, changes the name of the browser in the titlebar), Google Preview (show a thumbnail of the web page when doing a google search), Tiny URL Creator (handy way to paste lengthy URLs in forums), TabBrowser Preference (enhances the Tab browsing experience), Forecastfox (local weather and forecast in the status bar), CuteMenus (adds cute icons to the menus), View Cookies (allows to view and delete cookies when visiting a site), QuickNote (a little Post-it kind of thing), Measure It (a little ruler thingy that enables me to measure the width and height of things on a web page).

These are the extensions I use and are enough reasons never to go back to IE ever again.
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hello everyone,I'm from Beijing,China,so happy to enter the family, and my English is not very well,I hope someone could else help me,I wonder where are you from,yes I choose the size ,so I choose the whole friends here,Happy new year,supporting the family,expacting the new future she will own.