Looking to become a first time mozilla user

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Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Nomad25055 - 05-27-2004

Greetings Lurkers,

I am thinking about getting mozilla and would like to know if you have any suggestions as to what to get. Firefox, camino, etc. Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance :)

Nomad25055 B)

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - kandrathe - 05-27-2004

I have Firefox, but there are still some pages that I can only open with IE. I don't know about Camino.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Artega - 05-27-2004

I've some experience with Firefox and its earlier incarnations, such as Firebird, but none with Mozilla or Thunderbird.

From what I can tell, they're based off of Netscape, and not IE (I like IE's interface more, but I guess Microsoft made/would make a big stink over the usage of IE in that way), but that's rather obvious, especially since they mention that on the site ^_^

From what I've been told and what I've read, Mozilla's various browsers and client-side software are more secure than Netscape or IE, but I don't know much about it, so I'll just take their word for it.

Firefox and Firebird have repeatedly crashed my system in the past, though only when typing text into boxes with animated icons nearby (such as on InvisionBoard forums like these, and sign-up stuff), though I'm pretty sure that's just my system's instability, and not a bug with Firefox. With IE, I can click the "Stop" button, and all of the icons stop animating - with Firefox, I cannot.

Firefox also APPEARS to consume more resources (my hard drive accesses almost constantly while it's running), but I've been told that it doesn't "hide" its resource usage like IE, but that sounds like propoganda, if you ask me.

IE has worked fine for me, so I don't really see the need for Firefox or other "unofficial" browsers, but I'm sure that they're great if you know enough to be able to tell a difference ^_^

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - DeeBye - 05-27-2004

The full Mozilla Suite contains a browser, mail application, IRC chat client, HTML editor, and possibly some other stuff I'm forgetting right now. I haven't used the full suite in awhile, but when I did it all worked great.

The only problem I saw with it was that I didn't want/need half of the stuff that was bundled. It was bloated. Indeed, the direction that the Mozilla project is heading in is to split apart all of the Mozilla components into standalone applications.

Mozilla Firefox (previously known as Firebird, and before that, Phoenix) is the standalone web browser. It's a damn good one too. It's definitely my browser of choice, and I've tried them all. It's small, sleek, and ultra-customizable. That last point is key -- if there is something you don't like about Firefox, I can almost guarantee that there is a way to change it to suit your preference. Hell, if you love the IE interface you can copy it exactly.

I could go on and on about Firefox's features, but the two that are most appealing are built-in pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. I just can't browse without them anymore.

BTW, in my experience Firefox displays 99.99% of webpages flawlessly. I can literally go weeks and weeks without having to revert to IE to view a badly-written website.

edit: Here's what Firefox looks like for me, after spending a fair bit of time customizing it to suit me.
Picture
As you can see, I like the minimalist approach. I've done away with all the menu items I never use, and I've placed everything on one line to maximise viewing area. I'm currently using the Breeze theme, but I can tend to change it every so often when I get bored.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Assur - 05-27-2004

Hi kandrathe

Do I need new glasses or did you get a crusader instead of your normal avatar?

puzzled

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Kevin - 05-27-2004

I'm a Firefox user (been with it as pheonix and firebird). I really haven't tweaked it out all that much. I just want my tabs, my built in google search and the nice pop-up and add blocking features. I do have a more robust add blocking plugin installed but don't really need it.

I run into pages that don't render quite right (it happens on ESPN and Microsoft a fair bit) and there are some sites that I use at work that simply will not work with IE. The main issue is java scripting. IE seems to be a lot sloppier in what it lets through and there are times when buttons and such that use java scripting just don't work in Mozilla. There are also some web mail clients that aren't as full featured in the Mozilla based browsers as they are in IE, even if you have your browser report itself as IE.

I recommend just install browsers and playing with them and finding what you like. Generally things all play nicely and I've set up web dev systems with 8 or more (can't recall) browsers on them.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Yrrek - 05-27-2004

I use Firefox, and I am pleased, only a few times do I need to use IE, but it is mostly for something like connecting to FTP servers and just bad code. I know the CompTIA website doesn't agree with Firefox. Either way, it's a fun browser. Avant is another nice one to check into.

EDIT: Just remembered that Firefox also has a nice pop-up blocker.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - LochnarITB - 05-27-2004

DeeBye,May 27 2004, 01:44 AM Wrote:edit: Here's what Firefox looks like for me, after spending a fair bit of time customizing it to suit me.
Picture

I'd have to agree with DeeBye's points about Firefox. Just to show that you can have a variety of setups for it, I have included a picture of my browser window of his browser window here (179 KB). It shows a different set of button graphics, a couple buttons DeeBye didn't have and the open sidebar of my links.

As stated previously, the biggest problem with Firefox seems to be pages written specifically for IE using scripting in buttons and links. This is easiest to see at the microsoft site and in microsoft product help files that want to be viewed in a browser. It's the same old story - microsoft does it their way because their way is always the best way. After all, they wouldn't hold the market share they do if they didn't know what was best, right? :blink: (Sorry, you can probably tell I spent a couple hours today fighting with windows and AOL, both excellent examples of selling bloated rotten fish as caviar - blech!)

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - DeeBye - 05-27-2004

LochnarITB,May 26 2004, 11:29 PM Wrote:Just to show that you can have a variety of setups for it, I have included a picture of my browser window of his browser window here (179 KB).

I have included a picture of my browser displaying LochnarITB's browser displaying my browser here.

This could get funky really fast :)

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - patriach - 05-27-2004

Another vote for Firefox. I've been using it for months and now I can't go back to IE anymore.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - LochnarITB - 05-27-2004

DeeBye,May 27 2004, 04:59 AM Wrote:I have included a picture of my browser displaying LochnarITB's browser displaying my browser here.

This could get funky really fast :)

Oh DeeBye - so predictable! ;) I wondered if it would be you or someone else that would pick up on the browser browsing a browser browsing a browser browsing..... idea. It's good to know one can still count on some things in life. :lol:

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - DeeBye - 05-27-2004

LochnarITB,May 27 2004, 01:31 AM Wrote:Oh DeeBye - so predictable!   ;)   I wondered if it would be you or someone else that would pick up on the browser browsing a browser browsing a browser browsing..... idea.  It's good to know one can still count on some things in life.    :lol:

You broke the chain!

YOU'VE RUINED CHRISTMAS!

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Fragbait - 05-27-2004

Hi,

I'm using Mozilla 1.6 at the moment. It's the latest full release of Mozilla, 1.7 is still in pre-release state and 1.8 is in alpha state. I was wondering if I should change to Firefox, but I can't see any advantages:

- it's still just a beta, basically; version 0.8 means some more bugs are yet to be corrected until the main release, no?
- Mozilla includes cookie management, pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing and image blocking, too
- even with all it's features, full Mozilla isn't altogether big (~12 Mb)
- Mozilla is already faster than IE

Now, there are sites that cannot be displayed properly with my version of Mozilla, mostly Microsoft affiliated sites. One strange issue: While everybody else can see the counter on my homepage displaying about 1300 hits, it insists to display 1.1 millions to me :blink: .

DeeBye, can you explain the advantage of tabbed browsing to me? You can't change with alt+tab between browser windows, can't close them with alt+F4, and you can't have several of them next to each other so that you can compare their layouts, for example, can you?
Anyways, just wondering.

Greetings, Fragbait

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Nomad25055 - 05-27-2004

So far the masses seem to lean in the same direction as I. So looks like Firefox is going to be the first to try. Thanks lurkers. :)

Nomad25055 B)

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Walkiry - 05-27-2004

Artega,May 27 2004, 02:06 AM Wrote:Firefox also APPEARS to consume more resources (my hard drive accesses almost constantly while it's running), but I've been told that it doesn't "hide" its resource usage like IE, but that sounds like propoganda, if you ask me.

Yes and no. IE loads itself up when you start up Windows, so it appears to work fast and snappy when you start it for the first time and doesn't look like it takes much more resources itself when you start it (because it was already loaded). In a sense it is "hiding" part of what resources it uses, but by the time you have three windows/tabs or so loaded with full graphics galore the difference is probably insignificant.

I use Firefox and I'm very happy with it. It's very stable, works as intended, and tabbed browsing is very useful. That added to the plethora of plugins you can find for it to do several things like blocking images and ad scripts based on regular expressions (*very* useful and powerful), the built-in popup blocker and the much better cookie management makes it a sure winner. You will notice the difference even if you don't know it enough, makes surfing a much more pleasant experience.

Vanilla Mozilla is a lot bigger and more bloated, but then again, it's intended to include everything and the kitchen sink if you want (a bit like the difference between the NEtscape navigator and the Communicator, with the whole E-mail/Usenet/whatever clients all rolled in one).

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Nomad25055 - 05-27-2004

Whoa. Way faster than IE and much more customizable as well. I think I am going to stick with Firefox. Must....have....more....tabs......

Nomad25055 :rolleyes:

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - DeeBye - 05-27-2004

Fragbait,May 27 2004, 01:50 AM Wrote:DeeBye, can you explain the advantage of tabbed browsing to me? You can't change with alt+tab between browser windows, can't close them with alt+F4, and you can't have several of them next to each other so that you can compare their layouts, for example, can you?
Anyways, just wondering.

With tabbed browsing, I can have one instance of Firefox running instead of several, no matter how many webpages I have open at once. Switching between them is simple. All you do is click tabs. Closing them is equally simple. Just click the tab and hit the button (or right-click the tab and close it from the context menu).

I prefer this to having a bunch of the same thing cluttering up my taskbar. When I first heard about tabbed browsing, I didn't really see the big deal about it either, but when I started actually using it I found that I couldn't browse the old fashioned way again.

Take a simple task like a Google search for example. Tabbed browsing makes sorting through search results very quick. I can load links in new tabs by middle (mouse) clicking, while keeping the search results page open in the event that the links aren't what I'm looking for. If a link is irrelevant, I can just close the tab and go back to the search results index and try the next hit. I don't have to retype a search query, and I don't have to open links in new windows (which was always a pain in the ass for me). If a link is semi-relevant (or is just plain interesting), I can leave it open in a tab for later perusal while sifting through the other search results.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Walkiry - 05-27-2004

DeeBye,May 27 2004, 03:21 PM Wrote:With tabbed browsing, I can have one instance of Firefox running instead of several, no matter how many webpages I have open at once.  Switching between them is simple.  All you do is click tabs.  Closing them is equally simple.  Just click the tab and hit the button (or right-click the tab and close it from the context menu).

Hate to point the obvious but... (I actually love it) you can switch between tabs with Ctrl+Tab and close tabs with Ctrl+F4, so it's easy to use them that way.

As for what they're useful for, I really like the fact that I can simply middle-click a link and it'll load in a tab in my current browser window while I keep reading (they open in the background), very good when you're, for example, checking some sort of picture/screenshot gallery. Middle-click them all, go to the last opened one, and start closing tabs as you look at the pictures (You close the tab it sends to the front the one immediately to the left). Reading a news story? I cna open related links the same way as I read through, then check them when I'm done with the main page.

Tabbed browsing gets a bit to get used to, at first I didn't see any advantages either. That changed.

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - Bob - 05-27-2004

and, if you don't set them to open on top, you can go through and set 4 or 5 of them to open in new tabs, and by the time you've set the last one loading, the first one will be up ready to be read, you can then close the tabs down as you get through them.
If you find one which has what you want, you can then right-click on that tab, and close all the others with 1 click.

Mozilla (which is apparently pronounced motzilla, although I can't vouch for the validity of this), also doesn't run activeX controls unless you download a plugin, which means that it won't run them by default, which means that evil sites can go around installing stuff on your computer under your nose quite so easily.

-Bob

Looking to become a first time mozilla user - yangman - 05-27-2004

For the first 10 tabs, you can also use ctrl+<number>, where 1 is the left-most tab, increasing in number as you progress to the right.

Ctrl+W closes tabs as well.