The subject line is too pithy to ruin it with my usual blather. I’ll simply give the specs of the machine I’m thinking of making the switch on.
The computer is a Toshiba laptop wth an Intel Pentium processor t4200, a 15.4" display, 3 gigs of ram, and 200 gigabytes of available hard drive space. Currently I’m using IE 8, mostly out of laziness.
Firefox has tons of free plug-ins. You want no ads? You can have no ads. You want to not use the internet to procrastinate? Leechblock will give you a time limit for sites. You want spellcheck? You got it. You want to be able to copy just plain text? You can get that. You have a bad habit of closing a tab then wishing you hadn’t? Tabsaver lets you undo it.
I’ve had an ASUS 1000 since January. I installed Firefox then and have never thought of going back to IE. FF is faster and has a huge and growing library of free add-ons. Adblock Plus and FF Google Toolbar are a couple I find very useful.
Easy to install and uninstall completely. Worth a try.
ETA: For further info see STG’s post above.
With Adblock plus you don’t get any adds. NoScript blocks a bunch of annoying scripts.
I have to use IE for a couple of specific web sites, including a few at work. Otherwise, I use Firefox with AdBlock Plus. That’s really the only reason I needed – all of my web browsing is done ad-free. I didn’t have a moral objection to ads, but when they started having movies and sound that auto-started when you hit the page, and those obnoxious things that expanded to cover the actual page content, I made the switch and couldn’t IMAGINE going back.
As others have said, there are tons and tons of other add-ins for Firefox, but I haven’t explored them.
One you might wish to consider is IE Tab. It lets you view a web page using the IE rendering engine from within a Firefox tab. No need to open your IE browser, you can switch the tab from Firefox to IE and back again within the FF browser. I successfully use it on Microsoft’s Windows update pages, so it should work for your needs.
I am and have been a loyal victim of Opera since around 2001.
Original (and still best) tabbed browsing
Ridiculously customizable interface, with tons of skins out there - you can pretty much move any button or field anywhere, or remove it altogether
Mouse gestures
Right-click options out the wazoo (including any search, dictionary, go to url, etc)
Built-in download manager
Built-in IRC
Built-in email
Built-in bittorrent
Built-in password manager (incredibly convenient)
Built-in notes system
Custom searches
Zoom any page up to 1000% or down to 1%
Fit To Width button
Supports Widgets
I’m sure I’m missing over half the features. Those are just the first few to pop into my head. Basically any “cool” feature that has showed up in the mainstream browsers in the last couple years is something Opera has been doing for nearly a decade.
Downsides:
-For me, at least - some users claim to not know wtf I’m talking about - Flash and Java work fine on some sites and not at all on others
-Some websites will flat-out tell you you can’t view their page in Opera; load another browser. This is very rare and getting rarer, and supposed to be pretty much non-existant once the new version comes out, which is supposed to be real soon.
I want to clarify something regarding Firefox and Adblock. Every time someone complains about some lame Internet ad, a million people come and say, “Use Firefox and Adblock, you won’t see ads.” Everyone has heard this. So I was thinking, why don’t more people switch over, so they won’t have to see ads? I can think of two reasons. 1, laziness. OK. But 2, people have past experience with lamer ad-blocking software and are concerned that the ad blocker is going to screw up their browsing experience, cause pages to load slowly, block scripts that you actually WANT to run, etc.
Adblock does not do any of the above. I browse the Web just as I would usually, except, blip, all the ads are gone. There’s not an annoying blank box where they used to be. They just aren’t there. It’s so incredibly nice.
That in and of itself is a reason to switch to Firefox, IMO, but as others have said, there are a skrillion other cool plug-ins and add-ons as well. One I’ve been using a lot lately is LeechBlock - you plug in any sites that you are likely to be surfing instead of working on something, and you say, don’t let me visit any of these sites for the time limit that I specify. Sounds silly, but it actually really works for me in staving off endless procrastination on the SDMB and other sites.
Anyway, Firefox is cool.
Adblock Plus also lets you block a full frame at once. Not only just one lone images. Also, adding a url like www.websiteofyourchoice.com/adds/* will block all images in that folder. It’s nice to have a wildcard for smaller websites that manage to get passed the Adblock Plus.
The best combo is Firefox with Adblock Plus.
You can fine tune the ads you see, and especialy block the swooping and spinning ones that make life miserable.
The best combo is Firefox with Adblock Plus.
You can fine tune the ads you see, and especialy block the swooping and spinning ones that make life miserable.
I found nothing is as great as K-Meleon.
It is based on the Mozilla engine as is Firefox, but I have never seen any browser so fast. It’s lightweight and if you’re a geek you can build your own macros for it.
I’m a geek, but not that sort of geek.
I went ahead and installed Firefox. It doesn’t suck.
Only utter dweebs and minions use Internet Explorer.
Real villains use Firefox. Stick with Firefox or else I’ll revoke your villain card.
At some point in the near future I am going to give Lunascape a whirl. Claims to do everything, which always works out well. A bit of a hijack, but what would compel someone (or some company) to make a new browser, these days? There’s a lot of competition and I still don’t see any revenue stream.
I’ve been using Chrome since it’s main release. I find it’s faster than Firefox but doesn’t have a lot of the bonuses (no ad block, bugmenot, et al). Part of me wants to switch to Firefox, but I’ve become a creature of habit.
Hey, I like it! Thanks very much.
Thanks … I don’t mind keeping the two windows separate. I do have the “view in IE” add-on if I need to switch mid-browse, but it does launch a separate window. If it’s IE, it’s work-related 99% of the time, so it’s actually helpful to have that distinction (for my purposes, anyway). Good to know about, though.
Did you even consider Opera?