firefox illusions
after using firefox heavily for the last couple of days, i’m dropping it to go back to IE. the hype for firefox has been far out of proportion to its abilities. even adjusting for new methods, i find that firefox slows me down.
the “find” function, seemingly a nifty feature, is a piece of shit. most of the time it ignores interior text windows — which are exactly what i need to search most of the time. it’s a classic bells-and-whistles deal in a program that’s supposed to not have such silly crap. i wonder what the firefox people who bitch about IE are talking about. i think they’re mostly doing the emperor’s clothes routine, based largely on not knowing how to use windows effectively.
text editing inside web pages is bad. it doesn’t have paragraph placeholders, and is inconsistent when pasting blocks. arrow keys for use with a mousewheel click are disabled. sucks!
i do like the look and topical feel of firefox very much. i love that when i’m using multiple child windows it displays the site icons on tabs and makes navigating by sight much easier than with IE (as long as you don’t have so many that the icons disappear). i dig how it prompts you before zapping all your tabs on an accidental parent-window close command. however, using alt-tab with multiple windows is still superior for power users, in which case why would i bother with firefox? when i’m jumping from window to window, i don’t want to reach for the mouse or have to hit 5 keys just because it’s that many tabs away. alt-tab reorders with every action; super fast and logical when you’re in the groove and trying to get work done while letting the piddly stuff happen automatically (subconsciously). firefox navigation makes me think too much, and not because i’m new to it; it will always be more steps. worst, it makes me use the mouse more than i should have to. unacceptable for twitch boy.
i also like the sorting of the address bar dropdown list by time last used. super tight. wish IE had that. there are a few things i wish IE had that firefox does. i love loading pages in the background without having to alt-tab back. the installation, as promised, was fast, small, and easy. page loading speed, however, is not noticeably faster. if anything, it’s slower. seems like people are talking themselves into believing anything, based on their microsoft hate.
it’s good that firefox is out there kicking microsoft’s ass, for whatever reason. i hope it fixes the glitches for the next release. i’d consider switching, especially if they fix the find function and allow re-sorting of the tab navigation based on the last ones hit (all via keyboard, as with alt-tab in windows). the “glory, firefox’ll do ya” chants are puzzling though.
[UPDATE: just prior to closing out firefox for the last normal use, i tested something i'd been suspecting but had written off to other reasons: even though firefox doesn't give me speed elsewhere that i've noticed (including dedicated testing), it is much faster than IE with blogger.com. i think i'll have to keep using firefox just for blogging. don't know why, but blogger has slowed down terribly in IE in the last few months. jamming in firefox though. should i get out my anti-MS conspiracy tinfoil hat, or just enjoy the speed?]
April 27th, 2005 at 02:05
I’ll admit that in many areas, I’m still computer illiterate. Part of the reason why you seem to like IE better than many is because you could probably write a book with all the tricks and whatnot for using it that the average web surfer simply doesn’t know.
The two things that I like most about Firefox are the tabbed browsing (I’m aware that it can be done in IE, but I haven’t bothered to figure it out) and the fact that upon starting it I don’t get bombarded with viruses and pop-ups followed by having my computer freeze. In other words, my computer is seriously fucked up and Firefox allows me to continue doing what I want to do until I have time to fix my computer once and for all.
I agree that I don’t see the difference between Firefox and IE in terms of speed, although I’ve heard that there are tricks out there that allow one to rapidly speed up Firefox.
I think much of the Firefox allure is based on the fact that it isn’t Microsoft and there are plenty of people who hate MS. Combine that with the fact that most people simply don’t know how to utilize IE the way some (like you) do, and I would think that the popularity of Firefox should be easy to figure out.
April 27th, 2005 at 02:06
Oh, and if blogger runs faster with Firefox, then I don’t even want to fathom how painfully slow it must be with IE!
April 27th, 2005 at 02:21
i laughed pretty hard when i read your “painfully slow” comment. jeez, it’s nice to know there are other blogger users out there who’ve been through this nonsense.
y’know, i really don’t understand this whole IE virus thing, and i should probably look into it more one day. so far, i’m virus free for years — a combination of luck and being very conservative with what i put on my computer. i’m a chickenshit when it comes to that.
i’ve talked with sunni about how MS was late figuring some things out. i think a lot of the anti-MS talk comes from people who haven’t used the latest from them. they are good with the pop-up blocking in XP, though i’m not sure why i never got that in my windows 2000. no big deal, since i have it locked down pretty hard except for trusted sites (something i didn’t notice in firefox, perhaps because they aren’t needed there?).
April 27th, 2005 at 05:00
plug-ins: One killer app is Adblock, particularly if you go and grab a filter here:
http://www.geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/
This probably won’t appeal to you because you go through and up all the security settings, disable javascript, etc. For normal people that don’t know javascript from active x, and get some kind of malware installed, slowing down their PC and turning it into a zombie, Firefox will be a godsend.
I see coworkers saddled down with pop-ups, even when IE isn’t being used, because if the default securety settings in IE
Firefox is -not- faster, particularly if you add a lot of plugins
another plug-in that I particularly like is Flashblock. It replaces flash animation with a button, click on it and it shows you whatever was originally there. Much nicer and faster to load those pages w/o the annoying flash banners
May 10th, 2005 at 12:54
“y’know, i really don’t understand this whole IE virus thing, and i should probably look into it more one day.” It’s actually more “IE -> trojan” (due to too-low security settings) and “OE -> virus” (due to brain-dead attachment/HTML handling). That said, a lot of it is PEBKAC; but I contend most of that PEBKAC was/is enabled by Microsoft’s own bad decisions. “so far, i’m virus free for years — a combination of luck and being very conservative with what i put on my computer.” As a Eudora user, and as one who doesn’t have either Internet Explorer or Outlook Express installed under Win95 (and never will have them installed under any Windows I ever buy), and as one who never opens unsolicited attachments, I feel equally immune. “i think a lot of the anti-MS talk comes from people who haven’t used the latest from them.” And for good reason (“fool me once,” etc.). Mark Odell
May 10th, 2005 at 22:01
i understand that it was for good reason, mark, but you don’t think the bitching is often overboard and ignorant? much of the excess anti-MS shit is because they’re successful. people hate that, and then they’ll be the first to stand in line to suck some politician’s dick. peculiar.