Comments on: Better browsing

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 11:59:40 +0000

See here for my list of suggestions.

By: Benedict Eastaugh

Benedict Eastaugh — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 15:16:14 +0000

Eszter: the font element was deprecated some time ago.

By: james stevenson

james stevenson — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 15:36:13 +0000

It’s not just users who appreciate firefox. As a web developer, I cannot tell you how much nicer it is to design and code for Firefox. It’s probably somewhere around 95% compatible with the official CSS 2.1 spec, and the few places where it’s not are pretty minor. Compare this to the ridiculous number of CSS hacks one has to use, even now, when trying to get a page to look right in IE (hopefully, maybe, these will finally get fixed in IE 7). Even javascript and DOM standards are better supported. Safari and Opera are basically about as good in this respect, although there are still a few annoying CSS hacks in Opera. Check out the CSS section of QuirksMode for a good overview of the various bugs and gaps in IE’s CSS implementation vs. Firefox/Mozilla and Opera.
I second Jason’s enthusiasm for web developer. It’s absolutely indespensable if you make web pages. Another one I haven’t seen mentioned is refSpoof. It allows you to change the referrer header to any value you want. I was developing a simple PHP script that would direct users who’d come from a google search one way and everyone else another and this was a great way to test it.

By: Robert Wiblin

Robert Wiblin — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 02:03:30 +0000

For better word processing give Openoffice.org 2 a go. Just released yesterday. Completely free and open source: http://www.openoffice.org . It has replaced expensive Microsoft Word on my desktop!

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 23:47:39 +0000

Martin, it took me a while to switch from Mozilla to Firefox too, for much the same reason - the image and cookie handling in Firefox isn't so good. But now I use the AdBlock extension to manage images, and the CookieButton extension to manage cookies (I block by default, and enable for sites where I want/need cookies).

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 22:00:02 +0000

Thanks Andrew, I’ll take a look.

By: Jon Moyer

Jon Moyer — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:09:21 +0000

I use both Opera and Firefox—the latter because I’m a heavy blog reader and I slightly prefer Ff’s ability to load bookmark folders in tabs to Opera’s session manager.

But overall, Opera is my preference. My big complaint about Ff is what most Ff lovers claim is its advantage: extensions. The fact of the matter is that there are so many extensions and a very high percentage of them are either not very good, or can’t be relied upon to be maintained well (if at all). Just wait until your favorite extension fails to work with an Ff upgrade—it will be a very unpleasant slapping forehead moment.

It took me forever and a day to finally find a tabbed browsing extension (Tab Mix) that had most of the features I wanted, and could be configured easily. Just too much trial and error—I want to browse, not tinker.

With Opera, other than the session manager, there has been nothing that I have not been able to configure to my satisfaction, with a minimum of research, and I’ve been an Opera user for more than 5 years.

By: jb

jb — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 10:22:42 +0000

oh, i’m also quite fond of fasterfox, which appears not to be mentioned yet.

By: jb

jb — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 10:21:16 +0000

i’ve been tempted by opera, but the one extension that keeps me with firefox is, without a doubt, hit-a-hint. laptop users in particular should take note – it makes keyboard browsing not just practical but preferable.

currently, my “magic key” is semicolon and my link keys are asdfrvcexwqz. it’s worth a try, and it’s something that opera has yet to offer.

By: hugo

hugo — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 01:41:38 +0000

Opera++

Firefox was my browser of choice, but since I installed Opera I have no desire to go back.

By: ArC

ArC — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 01:14:22 +0000

I’ve been using graphical browsers since Mosaic. Mozilla and Firefox were the first ones I used that didn’t allow Ctrl-O as an “open URL” command. I used to go in and hack the innards of Mozilla to fix this, but now Firefox has the much simpler Keyconfig extension, which I highly recommend if you’d rather adjust Firefox than your muscle memory.

I’d also recommend Bookmark Backup. It backs up the browse history as well, optionally, which is handy for me since Firefox regularly dumps all my history (known bug, I believe). With the backup extension, I only lose about a day’s worth of history rather than everything.

By: A. Nony

A. Nony — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 23:19:48 +0000

Opera 8.5 is it. Solid code that crashes only as often as IE or FF, both of which have been tried on this same install of – yes – Win98. Opera will also pretend to be either IE or FF so that exploit will attempt to attack IE or FF, not attack Opera, and fail. Works great. Also tres magnificent for trolls as proxy server logins are built right in.

RSS feed handling is top notch. Quick downloads of images is uniquely powerful feature, as is the opening of pages in background. A few glitches in the UI, the password wand, and image loading, but all appears to be on track for this to be The One.

Opera: There Can Be Only One.

By: jason

jason — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 23:03:55 +0000

I can't believe that no-one mentioned the extension that, for me, puts FF light-years ahead of the rest: the Web Developer Extension. A-freakin-mazing...

By: novakant

novakant — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:25:05 +0000

would have to agree with mikmik: don’t go to pr0n or crack sites, don’t click on flashy ads, don’t download anything you don’t want to, run MS Antispyware Beta and a good virus scanner weekly, when all else fails hit alt-F4 or pull the plug and you’ll be safe ;)

P.S. I like Avant Browser

By: Eszter

Eszter — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:21:03 +0000

Thanks, mikmik!

A reader writes in with a suggestion: FireFTP. It looks promising. It’s an FTP client that runs in just one tab of Firefox.

Re the open-source software thread, I’ll post something along those lines in the next few days.