Comments on: Sold On Firefox

By: MBM

MBM — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 21:08:07 +0000

After seeing your item about Firefox and all the
enthusiastic comments, I downloaded Firefox and started
trying it. In addition to enjoying the tabbed browsing
feature, it made a certain problem I was having go away.
Certain websites I frequently visit had mysteriously started
giving me javascript error messages when I tried to perform
certain routine operations using IE (only on my home PC, not
on the PC at work). When I try those same operations using
Firefox, they work, no javascript error.

I may never understand the cause of the errors using IE,
and maybe they’d have gone away if I re-installed IE, but
anyway, I guess I’ll be using Firefox from on.

Thanks for the tip.

By: pyotr

pyotr — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 02:20:38 +0000

On Extensions for Firefox

They let you “extend” the capacity of the Browser, sometimes in Important and Useful Ways. Like the extension I found (I do not recall where) which now has the current Department of Homeland Security Threat Level indicated in teh corner. With a mere glance, I can tell that it is still “Elevated”.

I’m sure there are some frivolous ones which report the time, weather, toays date according tot eh French Revolutionary calendar… what ever. Bugmenot is one such goodie.

By: Sarah Schreffler

Sarah Schreffler — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 18:38:35 +0000

People use IE 6?

I’ve been using Netscape (7 now. Tabbed browsing DOES rock) for ages.

Never gotten any spyware off of it.

Never had the crashing problem people complain about.

I have to open IE for:
BECU’s banking
Washington Post articles
Google mail

By: DarkStar

DarkStar — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 23:03:29 +0000

I use Opera and Mozilla and I.E.

I use I.E. for financial web sites just because they seem to write to I.E.

By: PurpleMD

PurpleMD — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 09:40:04 +0000

I also use Avant Browser. I keep trying Firefox, but the tabbed browsing isn’t nearly as easy or intuitive (at least without doing something special) as Avant. When I enter a URL into the address box and hit return…BINGO! A new tab. When I click on a Favorite bookmark….a new tab. About the only time there isn’t a new tab is “Home” and “Groups.” With Firefox, entering a url in the address box opened the page in the same window…no new tab…no joy! I had the various extensions installed but couldn’t figure out how to simply get urls to automatically open in new tabs.

Oh, well…that’s the wonderful thing about freeware and competition!

PurpleMD
…lone, conservative, Christian Black female physician in the San Francisco Bay Area

By: LawWife

LawWife — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 20:48:10 +0000

Andy, honestly, it’s where I spend the majority of my online time. I’m in a political buddy group, and we share a lot of articles. It’s really a huge headache to put all my tags in, paste, and move my text around. It’s definitely easier to use in IE. I guess that’s where I’ll stay unless I can find a way around it in FF.

By: Erbo

Erbo — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:53:47 +0000

FYI Doug: Got it straightened out. It was an invalid extension…to fix, I ran Firefox as root, let it fix the extensions database, closed it, changed the ownership of some files, and now it came right up.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:38:32 +0000

LawWife, LOL. If that’s your only problem, then maybe you need to change your writing approach.

I don’t know about the extension, but you could check the mozilla forum — http://forums.mozillazine.org/ — to see what others have said about it or post your question there.

Anyhoo, back to possible work arounds.
1) chose your tag as you type, IOW just step inside the tags and type your text and go on using your left/right arrows.
2) if your selection is still hightlighted, just drag it into the tag.

Yeah, I know, either way still requires additional actions beyond IE

But then again, if that’s what you’re already doing and it still aggravates you, what can I say? FF Rocks, any way!!!

I hated Netscape since 4.5 and those notorious crashes. I prefer to think of FF as what IE 6 should have been. Oh well.

By: LawWife

LawWife — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 22:18:58 +0000

Anyone have an answer for this one? It was something I didn’t like about Netscape, either, leading to my dropping it. In one online community I’m part of, there are tags you can use to change the text or whatever. In Netscape and in FF, if you highlight the text, the tags just automatically go to the end of the entry. In IE, the tags go around the highlighted text. This is a major Grrrrr! Is there an extension or something to fix this, or will I just need to stick with IE?

By: Kiki B.

Kiki B. — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:55:26 +0000

OOPS!! Above entry was actually from Kiki B.

By: Tom B.

Tom B. — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:54:57 +0000

I talked to my sister-in-law the day I read this blog entry, and she happened to mention that they had just installed Firefox on their computer, and they like it. I may just have to get around to giving it a try.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:00:33 +0000

Another cool thing about FF is that not only can it import your passwords to various websites. You can also with several clicks, drill down to see what the actual password is, as in instead of “****”, “aB3d”.

It’s also relatively (compared to next to impossible with IE) easy to transfer settings from one machine. To synchronize, my PC and Laptop with all the same settings, every once in a while, I copy over certain sub-folders for the bookmarks, passwords, history etc.

Better yet, someone needs to create an extension to synchronize settings with just one click to create some kind of file that can be carried around.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:34:00 +0000

Firefox rocks. I switched about a month ago, and now kick myself for not switching sooner.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:26:48 +0000

Eric,

Thank you for your assistance. I must admit, I went home last night and added Firefox to my home computer after loading it on my computer at work. I had an opportunity to play with it at home and figured
out the extensions.

So far I have been very pleased with Firefox.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 12:57:18 +0000

I’ve been using Avant browser for a couple of years and love it. Tabbed browsing and RoboForm for filling online forms. Doesn’t get any better than this! I downloaded Firefox, but just can’t seem to connect (hehe) with it.