everything counts

I’ve got all this stuff I want to write up, but I’ve just gotten supremely busy, and I probably won’t have a chance until next week to do it.
Until then, I strongly encourage WWdN readers who have had it with pop-ups and spyware to take a look at the latest release of Firefox. I started using it a few days ago, and I like it (and its totally bitchin extensions — especially bugmenot) so much, I’m considering switching from Konqueror, and making Firefox my primary browser. That probably doesn’t mean very much to anyone, unless you know how much I like Konqueror, which is a lot.
Okay, I have to go do real work now, so have a great weekend, everybody.

Discover more from WIL WHEATON dot NET

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

99 thoughts on “everything counts”

  2. interesting!
    I just downloaded it 2 weeks ago and had NOTHING but problems.
    So much so that I ended up re-formatting and installing the full version of Mozilla.
    Although I LOVE tabbed browsing, I have issue with some of it (not always tabbing, some tabs, some windows, etc))
    I’m debating even using the mail program as my default mail program.
    Thoughts?

  3. I’ve heard more and more people on messageboards talking about the advantages of Firefox. Why is it so good over other browsers, and will pages still look the same?

  4. I have found pages don’t ALL look the same as in, say, IE.
    I’ve been to several pages where the formatting is all screwy on Firefox.
    I imagine thats the web page designers fault, and not the browsers

  5. Right on. I’ll have to check that out when I get home from work later. I’ve been using Mozilla as of late, since I can’t quite get Konquerer to view certain pages I frequent…
    Thanks for the suggestion, Wil!

  6. I’ve heard good things and bad about firefox, one of the things that concerns me the most is that on occasion it will tie up recources. Other than that, I don’t really know one way or the other which is better.

  8. Firefox++ but who is the ASSHAT who decided CTRL-U would be “View Source”? CTRL-U is “clear the text box”, in every other browser in Linux. By messing with that, they make it so you have to go END DEL DEL DELDELDELDELDEL (etc) if you want to avoid overwriting the url you have in the clipboard and were about to paste in the address box with a quick CTRL-U CTRL-V as one is used to.

  9. Firefox is the shiznit.
    I’ve had to occasionally switch back to IE for a couple of things, but nothing major. And I went from having spyware from simply surfing the web to having -nothing-…

  11. no offense dude, I love your site and all, but if you’re touting firefox, You should also learn about web-standards… You should download the web-developers toolbar, and then start learning more modern HTML.
    You HTML is a few years out of date.

  12. Wil, waaaayy ahead of you on the Firefox Browser…I gotta gree with you, it’s totally sweet…I use many different extensions that have made my space constrictions on my old standby machine easy to handle…I specifically like Chatzilla for IRC!!!

  13. Oh yeah, so lovin’ it. Just downloaded the 1.0 version. The bugmenot I don’t think works with this one. I still have to use MSIE for some things, but I try not to.
    Oddly enough, I originally started using it because one of the sites I work with didn’t have a compatible menu system when updated through MSIE…

  14. I’ve been using Phoenix^H^H / Firebird^H^H / Firefox for about a year now, and I love it, but I’d never heard of BUGMENOT. AWESOME plugin!
    In other comments, Evan needs to download Tabbrowser Extensions _or_ Tabbrowser Preferences (not both) to be able to force everything to new tabs. Get used to right-click->”open in new tab”.
    Cheers!

  15. I LOVE Firefox. I’ve been using it for over a year now, and I can’t stand using IE. Unfortuantely, there are still many things built in the corporate world that rely on stupid ActiveX crap to where I have to use IE… luckily, I’m slowly working that out of stuff 🙂

  16. To remove spyware on my Windows PC (ok ok – Windows sucks Linux rocks – but i like my Windows) I use Spybot Search & Destroy. You can download it for free at “http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html”.
    As default browser I use Firefox 0.9.3 – the only thing I don’t like about Firefox is that I have to remove the old program a_n_d profie (as it is recomendet) to get the newer Firefox to work correct.

  17. Ever since I was (seemingly) the last person to realize that IE is the devil, and was happily letting in any and all spyware onto my computer, I’ve been using firefox and thunderbird. The tabs make me happy.
    Squee!

  18. I got endless popups with explorer, so i set firefox as the default browser about a month ago and haven’t gotten a popup since. Unfortuanetly, explorer is built in to windows SO I CAN NEVER GET RID OF IT!!!!

  19. Nobody has mentioned Safari yet, so I thought I’d oblige :-). For me it still has an edge on the Mac over Firefox (though OmniWeb may well beat both when v5.1 appears).

  20. The best way of getting rid of these damm popup’s on Win XP / IE is to install ServicePack 2. With ServicePack 2 there is a build in popup blocker in IE – and if you switch it to the highest level you have to confirm every popup with ‘ctrl’.

  22. I have firefox and regular mozilla, mostly becaise of popup blocks and tabs, and the fact that IE crashes everytime a popup does popup.umm..yeh
    I was extremely happy when the school computer finally put Mozilla on all the lab machines.

  23. Hey Wil, I just had an insight, and I know this is not related to the post in any way, but I thought I’d share my thoughts with you and all WWdN readers, too.
    Okay. Here goes.
    I recently watched my favorite movie Moulin Rouge!, and in the movie, a couple of characters are torn between befriending the “children of the revolution” and selling their nightclub as well as their dreams to the evil Duke. In the end, they choose truth, beauty, freedom and love- everything the children of the revolution stand for, and the Duke is left walking away from the Moulin Rouge in the snow.
    Well, this kind of reminds me of an inner struggle I had, and others here might have had the same internal struggle. You see, I was a theater freak back in high school, which already earned me some popularity because it was cool if you sang, danced and acted. We had a chance to be in with the popular crowd- we dressed nicely, we were optimistic and upbeat, and we were polite to everyone. But I also related to the less popular students- the ones that were smart, the ones that saw that there was life past clothes, trends and the opposite sex, and the ones that were open-minded and accepting.
    I took a year off after I graduated from high school and did a little soul-searching. I can honestly say I’m more of a geek than a popular person. I speak three languages, I love to read, I love to write, I know a lot about astrology, I’m into seventies trends and fads, I’m into ’80s pop culture, I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and last time I took an I.Q. test, I scored 118.
    You wouldn’t guess these things about me, because I don’t look like your typical bookworm. But I’m definitely a geek at heart, and seeing as this Web site celebrates geekiness, I thought I’d share this with all of you.
    Funny how there are more geeks than populars- there were more children of the revolution than there were dukes in Moulin Rouge! I thought that was a good analogy.
    In closing, I say we are this century’s children of the revolution, and we shouldn’t sell our dreams to evil dukes.
    Thank you.
    -Vanessa Nichole

  24. Without this becoming too techie… I’ve kept a watch on Firefox (and predecessors) for a couple of years.
    Only with version 0.9.3 () do I think it has suitably replaced IE. Pages that don’t work on Firefox are generally not compliant with relevant standards, and have been designed to ‘look good’ on IE, without testing across other browsers.
    The nature of the open source development means it will be less of a dinosaur in developing features that Joe Public will want. On balance, I’m prepared to stick with Firefox, and keep IE handy for those sites that misbehave.

  26. To those folks who have had problems with firefox (e.g. version 0.8), remember that it is still in beta release.
    It’s now up to 1.0 (preview release) and they’re finally hammering all the bugs (though I find more in MSIE).
    I find firefox to be rock stable. It’s great. Bugmenot is a wonderful extension, I also have the gmail plugin, web developer, HTML validator (lovely), single window and ieview (which hops a page to MSIE – I only ever use this to check that MSIE isn’t doing something silly with a stylesheet).
    I did have some problems with an earlier build of Thunderbird, but this too looks stable now. Both thunderbird and firefox have good support for RSS feeds – personally I think that the thunderbird model for RSS feeds is better (the RSS updates and it looks like new email).
    http://www.murky.org/archives/2004/09/thunderbird_and.html

  27. Firefox frellin rocks! I started using it in late spring.
    If you haven’t seen them already: there’s a great extension for tabbed browsing (Tabbrowser Extensions), one to display the weather in your status bar (WeatherFox), & a Gmail Notifier for letting you know you received new mail in your gmail account. 🙂
    I’m never going back! Never!

  28. I’ve spent some time in Firefox but prefer Mozilla.
    I like Mozilla’s password manager, which Firefox doesn’t have. The differences between Mozilla and Firefox really aren’t too significant, just enough that I prefer to use Mozilla on a day-to-day basis.
    I have a copy of Portable Firefox on my USB flash drive for when I have to visit a foreign/new computer.
    A few extensions (XPI’s) that I love:
    – AdBlock at http://adblock.mozdev.org/
    – DeepestSender, the LiveJournal plugin at http://deepestsender.mozdev.org/
    – DictionarySearch at http://dictionarysearch.mozdev.org/
    – FlashBlock at http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

  30. “Why is it so good over other browsers, and will pages still look the same?”
    The one biggest advantage of Firefox is that it’s VERY standard’s compliant. Pages in Firefox will almost always look how they’re supposed to look.
    That’s the biggest problem with IE (aside from the spyware) is it’s incomplete and downright incorrect rendering of certain parts of HTML, XHTML, and CSS (1 and 2).
    Plus, as probably the only modern browser that’s truly cross platform, that alone is pretty nifty.
    I don’t use it personally, but I like the automagical spellchecking that Safari does (which is actually part of Cocoa, but I digress)

  31. Wil,
    Since this website has pretty much been responsible for most of your real work (lately) ie. you get most of your book material from the posts and responses from WWDN, it surprises me when you kind of treat the website like it’s on the back burner when REAL WORK comes along. Don’t forget your bread and butter. 😉
    Ignatz

  33. Nobody has mentioned it so I will. I love my Opera browser. I’ve been using it for years. I don’t know what I’d do without it. I rarely run across pages that don’t support it, but otherwise I’m in love.

  34. I second the Opera vote, Wil. I’ve found it works even better on my Powerbook than Firefox (including making sense of some pages that had Firefox perplexed!). The latest version of Opera is really leaps and bounds beyond anything they’d released before (for Mac).

  35. Hello! Since we are on the subject of web browsers and the like. i just installed red hat linux on my other pc. (red hat 8 i think) I currently have a windows xp server at home. its okay but costly. anyhoo. I wanted to play with linux a little before i nuke all of my pc’s and go full on open source.
    i guess my question is… who ere is on linux and are there any good web sites that highlight linux web browsing, programming, ect? i know thi isnt exactly a board, (sorry uncle willy) but im not sure where to turn.
    thanks in advance!
    joe

  37. The current Firefox causes problems.
    An older version – 0.92 – was much more stable and was able to avoid registration screens and go straight to the page.
    This one can’t even “remember” saved passwords.

  39. I’m so glad you like Firefox, since I’ve tried it I haven’t touched Explorer at all. It’s just so amazing, like a breath of fresh air. And the themes… Coolness.
    I’ve been bugging friends far and wide, approaching strangers on the street. . . Just a truly amazing browser.

  40. Firefox is indeed a wonder to behold. Bugmenot is one of my favorite things in the whole world, not just in cyberspace. Other good extensions are “View page in IE” for those screwy pages that don’t render properly in FF, Gmail notifier is supremely great too, but my overall favorite feature has to be Live Bookmarks – great for keeping track of blogs or other oft-updated sites.

  43. “Firefox++ but who is the ASSHAT who decided CTRL-U would be “View Source”? CTRL-U is “clear the text box”, in every other browser in Linux. By messing with that, they make it so you have to go END DEL DEL DELDELDELDELDEL (etc) if you want to avoid overwriting the url you have in the clipboard and were about to paste in the address box with a quick CTRL-U CTRL-V as one is used to.”
    Just hit CTRL-L.. It should select the URL so you can paste over it.

  44. Few good Firefox extentions that I love:
    Adblock – You can setup filters (wildcards included) to block pretty much anything on a webpage. Great for blocking ads (setup filters for */ads/* */banners/* etc.)
    IEview – Incase a page is looking weird in Firefox, you can right click and Choose “View in IE.”
    WebMailCompose – When you click an e-mail link (mailto:) this will open your webmail page (gmail, yahoo, etc) ready to compose an email.
    Linkification – this will put anchor tags around plain text urls. so if a webpage says “http://www.blah.com” but wasn’t setup so you can just click that and go to that site, linkification will allow you to click on it.
    Firesomething – just for fun. each time you open firefox, it is assigned a random name (such as Mozilla Supergoat, or Mozilla Spacewhale).
    Also, if you use Firefox type about:config in the address bar and and type “xul” in the filter box. change browser.xul.error_pages.enabled to true to get IE style error pages instead of a dialog box to popup.
    as for more alternatives to main stream products, check gaim for your aim/icq/etc needs, and filezilla for ftp!

  45. I’m gonna back you up on Firefox.
    I’ve been a long time fan of Safari (has it existed long enough for me to say that?) but I’ve become frustrated with it’s rendering oddities and pokey speed. For my OS X systems I’ve been using Safari and Firefox’s cousin, Camino about 30/70. On other platforms I use Firefox exclusively (Camino is OS X only).

  46. My much-loved PC is running on WinME and its umpteen critical updates and patches. I am *still* on WinME because the prohibitive price of WinXP in my country keeps me from upgrading to a legitimate copy — especially since I had white hairs enough from upgrading to ME from 98SE!!
    Just so everyone knows what platform I’m using. ^__^
    I experimented using Firefox since version 0.8-something because frankly, despite having a 700mhz Celeron processor and 128MB of RAM *and* a cable internet connection, IE would load pages like refrigerated molasses. Imagine my shock when, the first time I used Firefox, I had pages — multiple pages, even! — coming down the pike in half the time! So it’s been Firefox ever since; flirted with Opera, but came back to Firefox and Thunderbird, the e-mail client. Never looked back at anything Microsoft in that department since. (I also use OpenOffice, and love it.)
    Right now, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and my operating config appear to adore each other, and it’s a beautiful thing. Since Microsoft is discontinuing free critical upgrade support for everything pre-Longhorn by 2006 (or so the industry buzz goes), my next machine will either have Linux pre-installed, or be a Mac.

  47. I’ve been using Firefox for quite a while now, and I’ve yet to be disappointed.
    I seem to be having a little trouble with Thunderbird, though…but I’m working on it 😉

  48. Don’t worry about reports that some pages haven’t rendered correctly in the past. I’ve been using firefox since the very early days and I can’t remember the last time I had a problem like that.
    Download the latest and just give it a go.

  49. Anyone who has experienced problems with sites using Firefox in the past or is worried about their favourite sites not working with Firefox should post the addresses here so us “brave” Firefox users can confirm if they work or not.

  50. I’m more of a Mozilla fan myself, but I do have Firefox running on my Windows machine. God, I hate IE!
    Everything *does* count in large amounts.

Comments are closed.

Related Posts

Recent Posts