Firefox

[That Annoying Kid]

alrighty then let's get into the meat and potatos of this thread

I finally got firefox wooo, go me!

So far it's cool, tabbed browsing for the win

Umm, what other nifty little things does firefox possess that I can use to my advantage? what are some good plugins, I can recall hearing about mouse gestures and the forum size / color plugin, but what else would be worth the time to get? I'm 56.k but I can leave the downloads on at night if it's more than a small download  :ph34r:

Thank you for your time in reading this thread, and thank you for your suggestions in the matter

[Clashen]

They're really fast to download. I'm on 56k and i have both mouse gestures and BBCode-plugin. They rox.

[Leaderz0rz]

get the bbcode plugin, mouse gestures, and nifty skins

[Geminosity]

bbcode? ~blink~

[duherman]

Is firefox worth getting. The IE browser I use is Internet Explorer with a google toolbar that seems to worth fine at blocking popups.

[devicenull]

Is firefox worth getting. The IE browser I use is Internet Explorer with a google toolbar that seems to worth fine at blocking popups.

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Yes, its a lot better then IE.  Download it and try it for a few days, I highly doubt you'll want to go back to IE.

[TheMunch8]

Basically, the advantage of FF is the customization.  If you are fine dealing with IE's normal interface, enjoy.  I have customized FF a lot so far.  In the Status Bar, I have Adblock, which blocks specfiic ads i tell it to.  I have Homeland Security Threat Level, for kicks.  I have Foxy Tunes, where i can control ANY music player.  Name it, it is probably able to be controled. And i have Weather Fox.  I see what temp it is now, and tonight, but you can add a 5 day forecast if you want.  

I have a couple of other Extensions, such as mouse gestures, which i am just getting used to, Download manager tweak, which adds it to a tab, Translate, which you can click a button and it tranlsates any page, and Image Zoom, which lets me click on any image, shrink it, enlarge it, etc.

To sum it up, It is worth trying out.  I am still getting used to it, and its been a couple months.  You can not try it for a day, say "its the same" and then leave it.  Thats wrong.  I am just now getting into features i didnt know i could use.  Ive added search engines into the upper right field, such as IMDB, Ebay, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com etc.  I am still customizing mouse gestures to make my browsing easier.

It may or may not be more secure.  If FF has half of the market, and IE has half of the market, only then will we know which is 'more secure.'  It may be faster on your system, it may be slower.  For mine it is faster loading webpages, and sometimes faster loading up.  It does have trouble with *some* webpages, but that is why i have a plug in called IE view, which you right click on a link and it says Open in IE.  And it will load IE up to view it.  Its all up to you.  What do you want Your browser to do?

Edit:
Oh yea, I recently redid one of my roomates computers.  I took off all links of IE off, and installed FF.  no extensions.  I made it the default browser.  He loves it.  Havn't heard a complaint yet.  He says it seems faster then before, but of course, that is right after a reinstall of a computer.  Point is, you can switch back and forth between IE on one computer, and FF on another, and barely notice.

[duherman]

Sounds impressive. Is this a trial program or is it for free?

[TheMunch8]

Free.  It is open source, So you could even go in there and change things if you wanted to.  call it a step chilld of Netscape.  The Mozilla Foundation started with Netscape Code after IE took over.  Firefox is a mean lean version of Mozilla

[Leaderz0rz]

http://jedbrown.net/mozilla/extensions/#BBCode

[Uranium - 235]

Firefox doesn't handle ActiveX for ^^, meaning lots of websites won't work. I don't know why they haven't fixed this yet, because it pisses me off whenever I have to move to another. I also never use tabs at all... so whatever. If it weren't for the increased security and immunity to IE exploiting code, I would never use Firefox.

[lolfighter]

Well, according to The Firefox FAQ, the lack of ActiveX support is intentional:

There is no support for VBScript and ActiveX, two technologies which are the reasons for many IE  security holes.

In other words, the immunity to IE exploiting code is partially due to the lack of ActiveX support. Read this article for a more detailed explanation.

[duherman]

Basically, the advantage of FF is the customization.  If you are fine dealing with IE's normal interface, enjoy.  I have customized FF a lot so far.  In the Status Bar, I have Adblock, which blocks specfiic ads i tell it to.  I have Homeland Security Threat Level, for kicks.  I have Foxy Tunes, where i can control ANY music player.  Name it, it is probably able to be controled. And i have Weather Fox.  I see what temp it is now, and tonight, but you can add a 5 day forecast if you want. 

I have a couple of other Extensions, such as mouse gestures, which i am just getting used to, Download manager tweak, which adds it to a tab, Translate, which you can click a button and it tranlsates any page, and Image Zoom, which lets me click on any image, shrink it, enlarge it, etc.

To sum it up, It is worth trying out.  I am still getting used to it, and its been a couple months.  You can not try it for a day, say "its the same" and then leave it.  Thats wrong.  I am just now getting into features i didnt know i could use.  Ive added search engines into the upper right field, such as IMDB, Ebay, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com etc.  I am still customizing mouse gestures to make my browsing easier.

It may or may not be more secure.  If FF has half of the market, and IE has half of the market, only then will we know which is 'more secure.'  It may be faster on your system, it may be slower.  For mine it is faster loading webpages, and sometimes faster loading up.  It does have trouble with *some* webpages, but that is why i have a plug in called IE view, which you right click on a link and it says Open in IE.  And it will load IE up to view it.  Its all up to you.  What do you want Your browser to do?

Edit:
Oh yea, I recently redid one of my roomates computers.  I took off all links of IE off, and installed FF.  no extensions.  I made it the default browser.  He loves it.  Havn't heard a complaint yet.  He says it seems faster then before, but of course, that is right after a reinstall of a computer.  Point is, you can switch back and forth between IE on one computer, and FF on another, and barely notice.

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Where do I get all these so called plugins

[Dark]

go to tools and click extensions

there you will find a huge list of them when you click "get more extensions"

[TheMunch8]

There actually is a way to get Active X working in Firefox.  Look on the support forums, its a sticky.

[Black Mage]

Firefox doesn't handle ActiveX for ^^, meaning lots of websites won't work. I don't know why they haven't fixed this yet, because it pisses me off whenever I have to move to another. I also never use tabs at all... so whatever. If it weren't for the increased security and immunity to IE exploiting code, I would never use Firefox.

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see ActiveX is what we call a 'security hole' something akin to using swiss cheese for the door on your safe.
think of it this way: ActiveX is almost as big of a security threat as the weatherbug and MyDoom.F

oh, and for those people who claim that 'firefox doesn't display XXX page correctly' run the page through one of these and email the admin (tell them to stop using frontpage and follow the w3c standards while you're at it)

HTML/XHTML/ISO-HTML Validator
CSS Validator
RDF Validator
XML Validator

also, we have a nice page showing how IE can hang when parsing proper XHTML and CSS (i took screenshots because i don't want the ie users to crash when they click on the link, though the url is in the pics)



edits:
[XML added]
IR:
i'm on a public computer at the moment (no ff because i don't have install ability and cannot be bothered to take it by force) but go to options, click on the 'extensions' tab/cat/button/thing and there should be a link on the bottom left with the text 'Get New Extensions' when this link is clicked it will take you to a page filled with more extensions than i can count ... so that's at least six