Does anyone have an opinion on using Foxfire as their browser? Heard any good news/bad news stories? Personal experience?

emmy

been using older version of it for months and recently downloaded and installed latest version.

it rocks. much easier tools than IE imho. able to load more pages than some other alternative browsers I tried. was able to set this browser up faster than any other over past several years. can't remember the last time I even opened IE.

Out of ten? Ten easily.

Downside? haven't come across any yet.

[(JD)]

I have only heard good about foxfire. Hey, wasn't it Dexter that used it and where IS dexter????

[PlanningtoLive]

I've used it and Mozilla.........they are really good. Never had a problem with either of them.

[newlife61]

I just joined this forum and came across the ? about Firefox.

It is simply the best browser that I have ever used. There are too many useful features to name here.

There are also a large number of plug-ins available to enhance the basic browser. More are being developed by the open source minded community as I am writing this.

For me, on a scale of 1-10, 10 doesn't go high enough.

If I find out how to make links in ebooks open with Firefox, then IE will be deleted from my system forever.

[(JD)]

kewl. Welcome! I'm still out there... too afraid I'll mess something up switching from IE... I got tangled with another early last year, and it cost to fix it. sigh.

[kimmydawn]

What is this? I can use something other than IE? How? still learning lot. thanks in advance.

kd

[h0kie]

I have Foxfire and Netscape. In fact, I don't use IE much at all anymore. It picks up viruses and weird downloads for me too easily. Every time I open it, I have a new "search" thingie at the top and I can't get rid of them. Yuck.

I like Netscape and Foxfire.

[DocJohn]

Yes, you can have both browsers on your computer at the same time, it won't mess anything up.

Firefox is available at no charge (ever!) at:

http://www.getfirefox.com/

[jtarbox]

Firfox is an admin's best friend. I manage 5 computers at NAMI-CV plus several others under contract. I have Firefox on them all. For these 3 reasons:

a. Load and surfs much quicker then IE

b. Less likey to get viruses and is less prone to attacks

c. God Love the tabbed the tabbed browsing!

[kimmydawn]

i just downloaded it for our puter. OMG! It's wonderful! quick download too.

hubby is just tickled. we were getting bombarded by pop ups even after running adaware and spyware programs due to some stupid free computer he signed up for! thought things would never be ok again

with firefox, it's soooooooo fast, love the customized links toolbar and NO POP UPS ... we're still getting them on IE.

glad for this thread cause i'd never heard about it.

kd

[(JD)]

OK! Nothing ventured, nothing gained... I'm downloading it now.

[kimmydawn]

let me know what you think sky. think you're going to like it,



kd

[(JD)]

LOL IE just gave me a "security warning" on the firefox, saying the identity couldn't be verified! LOLOL

[(JD)]

hmmm when I tried to download the GOOGLE from the firefox site, it said that the extension is incompatible or no longer available... what's this about?

[silver_queen]

I changed to Firefox about a week ago. Sometimes it acts a little weird though, and I have to go back to using IE. I give it about 7/10, but I am not sure if there is something not right on my puter that is affecting its performance.

[(JD)]

ARRRRGGGGHHHH! I never got pop ups with earthlink and IE, now I'm getting pop ups FROM IE telling me about a security breech by Myway, firefox etc! I didn't ask for the firefox homepage... so Earthlink should still be blocking

these things...and it isn't.. any ideas?

[(JD)]

OK another thing: I get the emoticons but nothing's moving... can't find where to fix this... need better quality of pages... forget where this is!

[kimmydawn]

sky,

I don't know what that's about. i didn't have a problem one. could existing firewall or something be intefering?

kd

[Azalysa]

After coming across this post today, I decided to try out Firefox. It needed some tweaking (uses a different Java, had to install some plug-ins, etc.) and overall I like it...

...however, one of my very favorite websites doesn't load right on it. Specifically some of the images won't load, although others will (strange!) and the page size is too large.

I've spent all morning trying to research and remedy these two problems and am getting frustrated. I notice in this (or another Firefox thread) that people who use it say there are some pages that won't load right and they still use IE for those. Has anyone found any new "fixes" or is that just what I'll need to do for that webpage?

Thanks in advance for any input!

[dexter]

Hey Firefox yea!!!

One of the problems with pages and Firefox is because Firefox is a better browser. Yea, that sounds like a paradox, it is.

The code that browsers read is called HTML. There is an organization that sets standards for HTML, how it should be written, and how browsers are supposed to display all the elements of a page.

Way back in the beginning when IE was battling it out with Netscape both companies would add features to their browsers that web creators could use for fancier things on their pages... but of course these extra features had nothing to do with the standards created for HTML and so a page written for IE might have features that would not display correctly in Netscape.

As time passed, IE became by far the most used browser. The biggest problem with it is that there is still a TON of non-standard compliant stuff in IE. Which means when a page is written according to the HTML standards, it won't display correctly in IE, and since most people use IE, web designers will write their pages to look the way they want them to, which "breaks" them in other browsers.

Good web designers use a lot of tricks and workarounds to make their pages display correctly in all browsers on both PC and Mac. Sometimes it can be quite difficult. A non-lazy web designer also has to take into consideration that some people with vision problems will want to increase the type size of the text, which will also "break" the layout if the page isn't designed correctly. Other lazybones create their pages in such a way that the type size can't be changed, which just makes the page unreadable for people with vision problems.

There are also people who use audio browsers... the browser reads the page to them instead of displaying it visually. A good page is designed so that when it is read by one of those browsers, everything gets read in the proper order so that the page makes sense, there are good text descriptions of all of the images on the page, and a clear order to the links so that they are usable to someone who can't see and only uses a reader.

Yes it is complicated.

To make things even WORSE... IE has become more and more standards compliant over time. But of course then IE can't even display the pages properly for sites that were written to work around the bugs of older versions. If you look at the "source code" for any web page, near the top you will see a "doc-type" or document type. One of the specifications in that line can tell the newer, more "correct" versions of IE to actually simulate the errors of the older versions... so that older coded pages with display properly. This is called "quirks mode" and such a page tells IE to operate in "quirks mode" so that all of the errors will go back in place. In "standards" mode IE is supposed to display things in a more standards-compliant way.

There is a good example of how screwed up IE is... it is at : Complex Spiral Demo

If you view this page in a standards-compliant browser, you will see some neat effects, including some semi-transparent areas for the menu on the left that move over an image that remains stationary as you scroll up and down. The cool thing about this page is that it uses ONLY standard HTML to create those effects... that is, there is no JAVA programming, Flash movies, or any other "add-ons" to get it to display that way.

If you look at the page in IE however, you won't see what the page is supposed to look like.

The page uses "style sheets" which are a relatively newer addition to the HTML standard... this way of creating a page is much more flexible for designers but the code standards for using these style sheets are all over the map with different browsers. One of the big debates right now is how much of this new coding to use, since it is more technically advanced, but then again if it won't work in common browsers... well its all a mess.

But you'll notice on the Spiral Demo... if you are using Firefox, on the bottom left of the browser window, in the status bar, all the way to the left is a little icon with a letter "A" in it. If you click on that, you will see a list of style sheets that the site creator has set up. You can choose one of the different styles and see how the page changes. This is a sort of frivolous example, but a practical web page could offer a style sheet with a larger type size that includes an easier to read font... a stylesheet that gives more contrast to the page so some will find it easier to read... in general the technology allows you to design the layout of the page separately from the content of the page and that's what makes it so powerful. Well, if it worked correctly.

The whole web thing is a mess, frustrating for people trying to design attractive and useful webpages that everyone can read.

Its getting better though. The next version of IE is supposed to be fully compliant with the way style sheets are read, the current IE still has a lot of bugs in that area.

[dexter]

I use Firefox... in fact I'm still using the beta version. I have a lot of extensions for it loaded that make tabbed browsing even more efficient. And I like the way you can search for text on a page just by typing... you don't have to choose a "find" menu command or anything. I think they changed that in the released version though. Poo.

I keep IE available so that I can check the web pages I create in it, and also for pages that have problems in Firefox. I don't seem to ever really have display issues, but sometimes forms won't fill out properly (again, forms created with programming that is adjusted to the IE way of doing things) so I use IE for that.

[dottie]

Thanks again Dexter for stimulating these old brain cells of mine!!

[Azalysa]

Thanks, Dexter!

Being a former computer geek back in the DOS days, I love this stuff! (Except when I frustrated that something isn't working right...lol)

Yes, some of the info I found on the web basically said it wasn't Firefox's fault that certain pages didn't load correctly for some of the reasons you noted.

I've been using Firefox pretty much exclusively since I installed it and do find it faster. I haven't played around with the tab thing yet so probably not getting the most out of it.

It's just that ~one~ site that doesn't load right...interestingly, at first I wasn't getting a certain image on the page; now when it loads I get half of the picture. Weird!

Thanks again!!

[Azalysa]

Ok...back at my last post I had just installed the current Firefox (1.07, I think). I had an issue with it not displaying a few images on websites and/or the page being too big to fit the screen. Since it just happened on a few pages, I lived with it.

NOW I upgraded to 1.5. All the above issues are now corrected!!

BUT...now I can't hear any imbedded music. And I know it has to do with having BGSOUND instead of IMBED tags. I have almost gone blind and spent HOURS searching the Mozilla user forums. Have downloaded every plug in recommeded, have tried every fix or workaround and NOTHING will make the embedded music play. (And this worked on 1.07)

Has anyone upgraded to 1.5? And can you get imbedded music to play. And how???

Thanks...(I've been coming out of my latest bipolar episode but dealing with this is about to cause me to pull my hair out!!)