Saturday, June 18, 2005
My Firefox Plug
Part 1: My Browser Past
Firefox is the best browser that I have had the pleasure of using. Before I talk about Firefox, I would like to show that I’m not just dedicated to Firefox for its own sake and that I have been open minded with browsers. If you don’t care to hear about my history with browsers, just skip down to Part 2. First, I will give a little history of my use of browsers.
I started out using Netscape and at first it was good. Regrettably, this did not last. Netscape 4.7 was an embarrassment. It would freeze up the Internet connection so badly that I would have to restart the computer to reconnect to the Internet. To make matters worse, Netscape couldn’t really run Flash or Shockwave files even with a plug-in. Netscape apparently fixed that problem, but then became bloatware trying to package more and more into one system. The size and the glitches made Netscape too unbearable to use. I then switched to Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). At first I didn’t want to as I didn’t and don’t have good luck with Microsoft products, but Internet Explorer 3.0/4.0 were excellent products. In fact, IE was such a good product that I used it up till March 2004.
Then I heard the former host of the late TechTV series “Call for Help” and “The Screen Savers”, Leo Laporte, talking about this cool new browser called the Mozilla Suite. The Mozilla Suite was made by the Mozilla Foundation from an open source version of Netscape code that Netscape released before AOL bought up the Netscape company. The Mozilla Suite was good, but not great. It was an all-in-one solution but that was also its shortfall. It was a web browser, but it had difficulty running Flash or Shockwave files. It was an email client, but it had to start everything besides the email client to run the email client. It had a chat client, but I don’t “do” chat. It had an HTML editor on it, but I didn’t see the need for one with so many other, separate programs out their. The Mozilla Suite was just bloatware with a browser attached. While on the Mozilla Foundation website I found Firefox.
At first I thought Firefox was just a browser-only version of the Mozilla Suite. Then I realized that Firefox had a different feel than the Mozilla Suite. It was sleeker and newer than the Mozilla Suite. Even though at the time Firefox was a beta at Version 0.7 and Mozilla Suite was at Version 1.5, Firefox was more functional and more versatile in its ability to play Flash and Shockwave files and Firefox could open and run more webpages than Mozilla Suite, especially Microsoft-proprietary webpages that were designed to be IE only. The Mozilla Suite felt like Netscape with less of the things that made Netscape bad, so I didn’t notice much difference between Mozilla Suite and IE. Firefox, on the other hand, was such a leap forward that I realized just how clunky and out-of-date IE was.
I started out using Netscape and at first it was good. Regrettably, this did not last. Netscape 4.7 was an embarrassment. It would freeze up the Internet connection so badly that I would have to restart the computer to reconnect to the Internet. To make matters worse, Netscape couldn’t really run Flash or Shockwave files even with a plug-in. Netscape apparently fixed that problem, but then became bloatware trying to package more and more into one system. The size and the glitches made Netscape too unbearable to use. I then switched to Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). At first I didn’t want to as I didn’t and don’t have good luck with Microsoft products, but Internet Explorer 3.0/4.0 were excellent products. In fact, IE was such a good product that I used it up till March 2004.
Then I heard the former host of the late TechTV series “Call for Help” and “The Screen Savers”, Leo Laporte, talking about this cool new browser called the Mozilla Suite. The Mozilla Suite was made by the Mozilla Foundation from an open source version of Netscape code that Netscape released before AOL bought up the Netscape company. The Mozilla Suite was good, but not great. It was an all-in-one solution but that was also its shortfall. It was a web browser, but it had difficulty running Flash or Shockwave files. It was an email client, but it had to start everything besides the email client to run the email client. It had a chat client, but I don’t “do” chat. It had an HTML editor on it, but I didn’t see the need for one with so many other, separate programs out their. The Mozilla Suite was just bloatware with a browser attached. While on the Mozilla Foundation website I found Firefox.
At first I thought Firefox was just a browser-only version of the Mozilla Suite. Then I realized that Firefox had a different feel than the Mozilla Suite. It was sleeker and newer than the Mozilla Suite. Even though at the time Firefox was a beta at Version 0.7 and Mozilla Suite was at Version 1.5, Firefox was more functional and more versatile in its ability to play Flash and Shockwave files and Firefox could open and run more webpages than Mozilla Suite, especially Microsoft-proprietary webpages that were designed to be IE only. The Mozilla Suite felt like Netscape with less of the things that made Netscape bad, so I didn’t notice much difference between Mozilla Suite and IE. Firefox, on the other hand, was such a leap forward that I realized just how clunky and out-of-date IE was.
In Part 2, I will discuss what Firefox has that won me over.
# posted by Keith Gallistel @ 10:02 AM 
