posted
Just out of curiosity--I'm not much of a geek. What makes one browser faster than another? Is the difference perceptible? Does it make any difference if you're still on a dial-up (like I am at home)?
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posted
I like Mozilla's products. I've been using Firefox for a few months now and it's pretty good.
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It does have some notable fixes, though you may or may not care about them (check the release notes for FF 1.0).
As to speed, a lot depends on the algorithms used, and yes, it can make a difference, but might not. As for dialup, it can make a difference, but less so if lots of image files or flash stuff or the like is embedded in the web page. Seeing as FireFox is free, and doesn't try to take over your computer, you could always try it out for a while, and uninstall if you don't like it.
When you try it out, be sure to add extensions to the browser, they are nice, easily-installed add-ons that can do nifty things. Also, tabbed browsing is really nice, if you try it out.
posted
A related problem: with a dialup, I'm not willing to download an 8 MB file on a lark. Which is why I'm still using IE 5.5 (which works very nicely, I think).
I'll probably download Firefox and play with it here at work. Safari has some shortcomings that even I notice and get annoyed with.
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posted
Yes this is newer than the 1.0 Preview Release, yes it will run faster on dialup. When I had dialup I actually noticed quite a bit of a performance increase when I switched from IE to mozilla. You may want to try downloading from one of these mirrors as mozilla.org is taking a big hit right now.
posted
Also try Find As You Type and you'll be hooked for life. Just start typing and it will highlight as you type and bring up a bar at the bottom of the screen showing what you have typed and giving you options such as find next/previous and highlight all.
Posts: 331 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I've tried downloading extensions, but I keep getting errors "This object has been blocked."
I put the domain on the allow list for both pop-ups and allow web site to install software, but that doesn't change anything. I've tried in both FireFox and yes, of all horrors, in IE. Settings for allow have been done in both FireFox and Internet Options.
Any suggestions?
Edit: This is a ZoneAlarm issue. No advice required.
posted
I just switched to FF this week and I really like it. It seems a bit faster and I have not had a problem with it yet, although I am still trying it out. I don't think I will ever get rid of IE, but it might not be my default browser much longer.....
posted
But Opera, for me at least, has some pretty major glitches that prevent hassle free browsing. FF, otoh, doesn't. I'm still sold on FF.
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posted
Out of curiosity, what was the nature of your "major glitches" quidscribis?
I've been using Opera since it's early 5.xx release and except for the rare page which doesn't want to display correctly, it works flawlessly for me.
I'm still running windows 98, however. Perhaps that has something to do with my success (kinda counterintuitive isn't it!)
Posts: 692 | Registered: Feb 2000
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frequent crashes pages not loading properly never saved a single password/userid/etc ever bookmarks - didn't save properly
Did I have problems with trying to save files? Possibly, but I'm not entirely sure. And a few other things most likely that I don't remember off hand. It was a while ago and I've got a bad memory at the best of times.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Kwea, the nice thing about FireFox is there is an "IE View" extension that lets you open a page in IE, if it renders funky in Mozilla (which is uncommon, but not unheard of).
For the record, FireFox was a 4.7 MB download when I tried it.
-Bok
My Extensions:
WeatherFox AdBlock IE View Dictionary Search One of the Download managers that creates a bar at the bottom of the window, rather than a popped up window. I forget the name. BugMeNot
Posts: 7021 | Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
List of 1.0 compatible extensions. Some of these are repackaged versions not made by the extensions authors, but they still work fine. If you want to get old extensions to work type about:config into the address bar, then type extension into the filter box, doubleclick app.extensions.version and set it to 0.10 and that should do the trick.
quote: I recently downloaded and installed Firefox after hearing several people here rave about it.
Then I uninstalled it 2 hours later.
Firefox is almost everything Opera has been since I started using it 4 years ago.
"Yes, but Firefox is FREE!" you might say.
To which I would reply: You get what you pay for.
Actually you can get Opera for free if you don't mind looking at ads I actually had about the same experience with opera, I downloaded it and installed, it kept giving me an error message whenever I used it from a limited account, It had WAY too much clutter and kept giving me annoying pop up messages. I'm used to firefox where the options are few and the "fun" stuff is enabled by default and the "crap" is not. I think Opera is somewhat bloated and needs to be trimmed down. I know, I know, "but it's smaller!" Firefox is smaller than opera when it uses the same compression, but they use 7-zip instead (probably because it's open source but I'm not sure.) If Opera cleaned up the interface I might like it, but I honestly like it less than IE. Just my 2 cents.
[ November 11, 2004, 04:30 PM: Message edited by: Liquor and Fireworks ]
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Which is why I'm still using IE 5.5 (which works very nicely, I think).
