Latch

Now, this is not meant to start a war...

Flexbeta has created a list of 13 reasons to use Firefox over IE. I didn't put this in the original FireFox thread as I thought this would reach more IE users.

Links are below, but the reasons are:

Popup Blocking
Download Manager
Tab Browsing
Integrated Search Engine
Options
Page Info
Faster Response
Keeps HTML Formatting
Security
Open Source Advantage
Cleaner Interface
Smaller Download
Block Images

The site goes into more detail on why it's better (in it's opinion).

Ironicially, the "Keeps HTML Formatting" part of the page doesn't seem to be formatted correctly for me (in Firebird 0.7 on Gentoo Linux). The "Text That Was Copied" line is on top of the first line of text.

Anyways, on with the links!

13 Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE [flexbeta]
FireFox Website

To read more on FireFox, check out the related link.

Enjoy!

Redjake

I still like IE. It's a nice, solid browser that doesn't have as many faults as people make it out to. All Hail Microsoft!

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Fallon

As many faults?
The other day I was trying to go to a webpage in IE, wouldn't load at all, in fact NO webpage would load. So testing my internet connection by holding a conversation with someone I know it isn't my internet connection. I load up Mozilla and pop in a webpage addy and the page loads. So now, I try to use Mozilla all the time cept when I need to bulk dl stuff from a webpage because I'm to lazy to install the flash get patch.

ToolBag

I gotta go with Fallon here, IE is the new.....horse shit(for lack of a better term). Firefox is excellent and with that nice list up there, there isnt any reason I would use IE again.

__________________
Jesus was a ruffies victim!

Dan 3:20

sailor

Me too I havent used IE in over a year now

__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

God of Thunder

Is the weather nice in your world, becuase you obviously aren't living in the real one.

F**K Micro$oft!!

All Hail Mozilla.

Have been using it for over a year now and browsing is soooo much better.

No pop ups & tabbed browsing are the 2 main reasons to go with it.

__________________
I reject your reality, and substitute my own

-- Adam Savage

SecretMethod70

I've been IE free since 2001 and I sure am proud of it I've watched Mozilla grow so much....*sheds a single tear*....it's just beautiful

Anyway, it should be said that "Keeps HTML Formatting" refers to properly written HTML. If someone doesn't know how to properly code a webpage then there are no guarantees.

Either way, the key to trying out firefox is this: you must try it for a full week at least, and you must actively utilize the sources you have - such as mozillazine.org, TFP, etc - to ask questions when you're not sure about how to do something.

It's a different browser, and it's NOT IE, therefore, some things will be done differently. And if you don't ask how to do them, you'll never learn, and never learn to appreciate it.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Silverbrain

"Smaller Download"

IE comes bundled with your OS, no download needed =)

Add the google toolbar and you can scratch off 3 more from the list.

Past that, guess im gonna have to download and try firefox )

__________________
Over Thinking, Over Analyzing
Seperates the Body from the Mind - MJK

Mephisto2

Now there's no need to get nasty.

IE is fine for most things and absolutely ESSENTIAL for some sites.

I use Opera for my day to day surfing. I like it so much I paid for it. How many of you can say that?

But this stupid IE bashing is kinda lame. It's not as good, in some areas, but is better in others.

Just deal with it. Sheesh...

Mr Mephisto

Cynthetiq

from a corporate standpoint... IE is much easier to support than Mozilla...

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Latch

True... kinda. Mozilla is more standards-compliant though.. so really.. it should be that IE is harder to support.. just too many people are using IE currently.

I hear of more places using Mozilla as a standard browser. Our University recently adopted it as the standard, and people seem to like it (as much as I can tell). Swithing to Mozilla will just keep progressing, I imagine. Part of that is because of the businesses that are switching to the "Linux Desktop".

SiphonX

eh, IE all the way. IE is the industry standard, and as long as it holds that title, that's what i'll use. it's a pain in the ass seeing a a message telling me that the webpage can only be viewed using IE. IE will also get beefed up with XP SP2, pop-up blocking and download manager. As for search integration, the google toolbar does wonderfully.

__________________
/Knowledge is Power/

grumpyolddude

msn.com won't let me play Hexic on firefox

Just now downloaded it... this is my first browse session with it... so far so good.

__________________
"Regret can be a harder pill to swallow than failure .With failure you at least know you gave it a chance..." David Howard

LaughingCow

I installed Avant Browser a while ago after a friend said he thought it was pretty good, and I decided to keep using it.
It's fast, blocks pop-ups, images, sounds, flash and it works. It's good enough for me, so I can't be bothered to go around DLing other browsers to see if there's a better one.

__________________
Haacha!

orphen

... IE has bunch of security loop holes. While i haven't used updated to firefox yet,, I know firebird is definately better than IE. Multitabs, serach bar (includes google/dictionary or antying else you want. Plus custom skins. I don't think IE can beat that

Destrox

Popup Blocking - Google Toolbar (GTB)
Download Manager - useless to me
Tab Browsing - again useless to me
Integrated Search Engine - GTB
Options - uh.. i hope a browser has this
Page Info - useles to me
Faster Response - saves me a whole 20 seconds of my day, yay
Keeps HTML Formatting - no clue what this is and why its good
Security - ie is too if you keep it updated
Open Source Advantage - and DISadvantages once it becomes popular enough
Cleaner Interface - not in my opinion
Smaller Download - 0 vs * ... right
Block Images - why?

There, thats my reasoning of why I, ME, NOT everyone, will continue using IE.

Choices are always good tho.

If I were forced to pick a other then IE browser, I'd go with Avant.

__________________
You bore me.... next.

phukraut

i never thought i'd use tabbed browsing (what's the point really!?). then i used it for a while. now i can't imagine a browser without it. it's just so much more elegant. firefox's adblock plugin is also amazing. but my browser of choice is still opera.. for now.

Grondar

I use MyIE2, so I guess that counts as IE.. But it's really much improved over the stand Internet Explorer application.

I'm really quite pleased with it.

__________________
"Yes, I rather like this God fellow. He's very theatrical, you know, a pestilence here, a plague there. Omnipotence. Gotta get me some of that." -Stewie

viper11885

MyIE2 is really good. Adds a lot of extra features to IE.

But I tried out FireFox and it is really good. Haven't had any problems with it at all. Webpages load a lot quicker compared to IE and Opera. A bit frustrating having to install all the gestures to get things customized the way you want it. But after you get through all of that, it is a very fast and efficient browser.

rsl12

tabbed browsing is something you have to try to realize how useful it is. you would be surprised how different it is from opening up a bunch of new windows all the time.

image block is great for keeping banner ads off annoying sites. along the same lines, you can get animated gifs to play only once, so that you can see what the intent was, but not have to look at annoying flashing banners.

google toolbar vs. the search sidebar? i don't see how they're that much different. however, if you approve of all the office XP stuff with all their sidebar additions, mozilla is like that but 3 times better. the options available on their sidebars are very very useful and intuitive.

finally, there's something called "mouse gestures" available for mozilla that for me is the BIGGEST advantage. imagine that, when you want to go back to the last loaded page, you click your middle mouse button and drag it left half an inch or so. and when you want to go forward a page, you drag your middle mouse button right half an inch. if you do more advanced things, there's a bunch of other shapes you can drag with the mouse (for example, drag a "b" shape to bookmark a page). it is incredible!!

text search: anytime you want to find a particular word that you know is somewhere on the page, you don't press f3, type the word you're looking for, and then do find-next find-next find-next until you find the right one. instead, you type "/" and the word you're looking for. it will find what you're looking for as you type and highlight it. if it happens to be a link, press "enter" and you're on to the next link!

ez sizing: are the words too small on your screen? press ctrl - + and they become bigger. press ctrl - - and they become smaller. somehow, i've found that this works much much better in mozilla than in ie.

on and on. these are real innovations, things that you can expect in the next version of IE, because they're so good, microsoft would be fools to ignore them.

__________________
oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.

rsl12

another nice addition: for you porn hoarders, linky is a kind of add-on that can create in a few clicks an html page that shows every image linked to a particular page in a single page, for ez downloading.

__________________
oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.

SecretMethod70

Unfortunately, that's expected MS writes things in such a way so that only IE does it properly since it is not standards compliant. They intentionally ignore standards to avoid people being able to have a choice in what they use. Luckily, developers are catching on and starting to say "screw MS."

It's odd to understand until you've used tabbed browsing, but I don't know anyone that after trying it out hasn't later said they could never live without it.

That means that when someone writes a web page the way they are SUPPOSED to, then it works. As it is right now, if a person codes a webpage correctly, many times it won't work properly in IE, thus many web developers dislike IE because it makes web development a pain in the ass. Were IE to follow standards, life would be MUCH easier for developers.

Not quite. Critical security flaws in open source software tend to be fixed in a matter of days. I don't think I need to bring up the "critical flaw" that MS JUST updated which they discovered 6 MONTHS ago

No offence, but that's just FUD. See above. Not to mention the countles research showing that OSS is more secure...except for the ones funded by MS

Someone already covered this, but it's great for blocking ads. Or anything else you don't like showing up.

Anyways, it's all up to the user. I have no problem with people choosing to use IE or whatever other browser they want, but just like Opera users or Mozilla users that go "why would you use IE?!" it's just as bad for an IE user to go "why would you bother with Mozilla?!" I couldn't tell you how many different browsers I've tried - I remember showing my friends the benefits of Opera way back in 1998 when it was version...I don't even know, before Mozilla was even created.

The problems with MyIE2 and AvantBrowser come in the fact they're really only cover-ups of IE. They still use IEs inferior HTML rendering engine and are no more secure than regular IE.

It's almost funny how many times someone has asked me why Mozilla hasn't had a security update for such-and-such and then I explain that was only a flaw with IE. Point being, if you're too lazy to download and configure a new browser, that's totally fine, but don't say IE is just as secure. It simply is not.

hehehe yes, I love Linky

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Destrox

I've used tabbed browsing before, and I simply never have enough windows open to make it useful.

As for the rest of the reply, good stuff.

__________________
You bore me.... next.

soccerchamp76

Does ESPN's pages view differently for anyone else on Firefox then IE? Now the bar on the right is all the way at the bottom of the page. Anyway to fix this?

__________________
Brian Griffin: Ah, if my memory serves me, this is the physics department.
Chris Griffin: That would explain all the gravity.

SecretMethod70

Interestingly enough, I see no bar whatsoever in IE and I see a bar on the right in Firefox.

Nonetheless, there's probably not a way to fix whatever the problem is you seem to be seeing. It's almost definitely caused by poor coding on ESPN's part...one of the ways MS holds onto the browser marketshare by perpetuating non-standard compliant coding methods Unfortunately, some people still follow them.

Honestly though - the only difference I saw was that Firefox had a section of the page that IE didn't even show. So I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

soccerchamp76

Click on NHL Scores
Click on St. Louis Blues
Notice how the bar of information that should be on the right of the screen is now at the bottom of the screen.

Edit (link): http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/clubhouse?team=stl

__________________
Brian Griffin: Ah, if my memory serves me, this is the physics department.
Chris Griffin: That would explain all the gravity.

Macheath

I jumped on board when Firebird 0.7 came out. This latest one looks nice and that little red panda is awesome. ("In the footsteps of Gentoo - naming Open source projects after cute animals".)

Extensions are great, it's like getting a new toy to play with each week. I remember once wanting to block an annoying website flash advertisment so I went to extensions and found "Flash click to view" within about ten seconds. Community support makes it dead easy to monkey around with. I was screwing around with userChrome and transferring my cookie blocking preferences directly over from Mozilla 1.5 - and I'm FAR from being a programmer type.

If I NEED to use IE with my bank's website I'll do so, and then maybe ring the bank up afterwards and say "Would your bank tell the Federal Reserve to piss of and let you print your own money, because that's what happens when IE actively encourages website designers to break html standards.

SecretMethod70

soccerchamp, I see what you mean now. Refer to my above post for the explanation. Something like that is only caused by poor, standards-ignorant, IE-specific coding. Should send an e-mail to the ESPN webmaster and ask that they start coding their webpage according to standards so that you, the user, aren't forced to use any one particular browser to view the webpage. Remind them that they turn people off to the site (whether it's true in your specific case or not) by creating it in such a way that not everyone can view it equally well.

Unless we, the users, speak up about things like this, we'll never have choice and the message will never get through to the webmasters that are still using IE-specific code.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

gal

I'm surprised anyone haven't mentioned the great keyboard interface Firefox has. This is especially handy on my laptop - I can just start typing a link name, and Firefox will do an incremental search for the link text as I type. Other features I couldn't do without is tabs, mouse gestures, the location bar searches (google, imdb, dictionary) text links, adblock.. ok I guess that's it.

Pacifier

IE has too many bugs and igores the html standard

I especially like the IE cupholder Picture:
http://www.maxg.org/~max/cup_holder.jpg (Watch for your CD drive)

for those of you who speak german:
why IE sucks http://piology.org/ie/

__________________
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

Lasereth

Well, I decided to give Firefox a try. I like how it spreads the webpage wider across the screen than IE. I also like the tabbed browsing.

A few questions: when I load a webpage that has pictures, the pictures don't take long to load, but they load one at a time, and roll across the screen when they do. That's annoying as piss. It takes forever to load graphic-intensive webpages, and seeing the images roll to the right as they load is equally as annoying. Is there a way to fix this, or make the images load faster like in IE?

Secondly, is there a way to change the favorites icons in Firefox? My IE Favorites list has every webpage designated by an icon. I like the icons a lot, and it seems that Firefox doesn't let you change it. It loads the default page icon, but IE does that too, and I usually change them.

Is there any way to make the annoying "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" go away in the Favorites list? I hate having unnecessary clutter in my favorites list. In IE, you can make the Links folder hidden so only your favorite pages are there. You can't get rid of the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. Is there a way to do it?


When I scroll in IE, I can use my scroll wheel and get to the bottom of TFP in about 3 scrolls. Using Firefox, it takes like TEN. Is there a way to make the scroll feature go faster, or show more page per scroll? That's REALLY annoying. I'm not sure I could get used to it. It's like using someone else's computer when they have the mouse sensitivity all the way down so it takes four mouse moves to get across the screen.

If these problems can be fixed, then I'd probably switch to Firefox in a heartbeat, mainly because the popup blocker and tabbed browsing is awesome. If the problems I've mentioned can't be solved, then I'll probably stay with IE.

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Redlemon

Lasereth: let's see what you think of these.

1. There are some tweaks, described in this Mozillazine thread, that discuss various ways of tweaking the way image loading and other elements of reflowing as a page is loaded are handled.

2. Tabbed Browsing Extension (TBE) has the ability to permanently set favicons to bookmarks. However, the current build of TBE is completely fucked. It should work in the future for you, however.

3. No, the toolbar folder is stuck there. That annoyed me at first, but I don't mind anymore.

4. This requires a deep setting; type 'about:config' into your address bar (there isn't a space between 'about:' and 'config', but the board seems to want one there). Set the "mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines" pref to false and change the "mousewheel.withnokey.numlines" to a suitable number of lines. There is also a "general.smoothScroll" pref you can set to true to make the scrolling be smoother. More information, and a suggested extension if you wish, in this Mozillazine thread.

__________________
I can't read your signature. Sorry.

Lasereth

The mousewheel thing worked great. Thanks!

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Johnny Rotten

I use IE for work because there are some IE-oriented compliance issues, so I use them back-to-back on a daily basis.

I noticed someone pointed out that IE was built in to Windows, therefore the download size advantage of Firefox was irrelevant. I would respectfully suggest that you factor in the megabytes and megabytes of patches necessary to keep IE reasonably safe to use.

Also, one of the advantages of Open Source development is that the people making the product won't go out of business and leave all its clients in the lurch. Also, with Open Source, if the software is taken in a direction the client doesn't want to go (less secure, bloated, unstable, oversimplified, etc.), you can simply switch over to something else without dealing with nasty licensing contracts, and your second choice can be almost identical, thanks to the GNU Public License. You also don't get locked into proprietary file formats.

It might seem ridiculous that Microsoft would be essentially dead in the water five years from now--but look at what happened to IBM's OS/2 Warp, which completely disappeared from the desktop in as much time. Look at what happened to Atari, who crashed and burned shortly after mucking up the Nintendo contract back in 1983, and now exists only in name.

__________________
"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

JusticeForPhat

i've had it installed for about 5 minutes now and I have to say it works pretty well. Tabbed browsing is pretty nifty, especially since I keep 4-8 windows open at once.

Silverbrain

After using Firefox for a better part of my day's surfing, im overall pretty happy with it. Ive been using NetCaptor to get tabbed browsing in IE. Ill keep working with this browser from here, just for something different, seems to run a bit faster too. I do click on a "get this plugin now" and it opens a whole new instance of firefox, defeating the purpose of tabbed browsing...hmmm.

One thing i'd like to see implemented, when you open a new page in a new tab, NetCaptor has the great idea of putting the tab right next to the page your viewing now and bumping the rest over to the right, I kinda like that )

__________________
Over Thinking, Over Analyzing
Seperates the Body from the Mind - MJK

SecretMethod70

That can be accomplished with the Tabbrowser extensions

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Silverbrain

Holy extensions list, very impressive...and customizable for his / her pleasure! )

__________________
Over Thinking, Over Analyzing
Seperates the Body from the Mind - MJK

bltzkriegmcanon

I'm lazy. I like IE. I've used IE since I was 13. It's worked. As much as I like fucking with different programs, I find that I just prefer sticking with IE.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Embic

the only advantage firefox would give me is the HTML Formatting, which isnt a big deal to me. IE works great for me, ive never had a problem.