Courtesy of Slashdot, World Firefox Day calls for little old people like me – and you – to spread the word about Firefox – the open source webbrowser. It works well and has a range of features like tabbed browsing that are terrific. Microsoft is trying to catch up and seems to be doing a good job, but its INternet Explorer 7 is still in beta. It’s easy to switch. And if you do, and you let me know, you and I will be in Firefox 2’s code. If we go through the bureaucracy of letting Firefox know who we are I guess. Anyway, what better offer are you likely to get from a not-for-profit (I think) that doesn’t charge for its software?
I’ve been using Firefox for a considerable time. It conforms well to all of the web standards. It has really good connections with external applications that, for example, are needed to interpret documents, photos, movies and suchlike. It has a range of extensions that will appeal to a wide range of people who need just that little bit extra in the way of helpers. I had been using Opera because of its tabbed browsing—but Firefox does the job just as elegantly. It also has better support for disabled users than IE.
And what else would you want than an elegant piece of software that you can use on common platforms (Win, Linux & OS X10.2)? Oh, the help-desk people are so nice too!
I’m a big fan, but IE7 is also very good. When I next change computers, I may switch…
How come none of you firefox lovers ever mention how dismally slow firefox loads and closes? IE is much, much faster. Opera is easier to use and its tabbed browsing is much better integrated. The only real advantage Firefox has over the other two is its support for 3rd party plugins.
Opera is the far superior browser for ease of use, and IE for performance and compatibility (because all major websites design with IE in mind, not firefox). I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had to close Firefox and Open IE in order to access Dynamic content or Java applets.
You firefox nerds are as bad as Mac freaks.
Yobbo,
The reason it is slower is because IE actually loads at boot – slowing everything down. If you also use the defaults on firefox it will be slower.
Firefox is also set up to be kind to your internet connection.
The real strength of firefox lies once you start tweaking. Try this:
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.
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Or just get the fasterfox plugin and tell it to preload everything.
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The tabbed browsing is also great – I can get it to open all my normal pages at once just by selecting “open in tabs” off my bookmarks. All the blogs I read open at once. With fasterfox it also snaps quickly to the pages underneath.
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To address the opening speed by emulating IE’s trick of loading at boot try this.
Yeah, I know, if you are a lazy bastard IE is faster. Give it a bit of work to be right for you and it will kick IE’s ass. Up to you.
Thanks Andrew,
Seems to work well. I have a problem with a firefox bug – or some incompatibility with my (XP home) OS. When I go to the pull down menu ‘go’ it takes a good five seconds of freezing the program before it displays the menu and ditto if I select history. This has survived all upgrades to FF 1.5.
Any ideas?
Not a problem I have. It responds immediately on mine (XP Pro – even on my old hardware). Looks like you are not alone, though. You can get rid of the “Go” menu using this to at least make it stop, but if you use the Go menu it does not help.
Sorry – a google does not reveal any other answers I can see.
Andrew,
I tried you tweaks and they’ve been too much for Firefox and/or my system. It spends a fair bit of time crashing around not doing anything now, as it used to when I opened too many tabs. So I’ve reset it.