Could you elaborate on this? I have been a Windows Eudora user for years, so I would like to know what egregious gaps there would be if I were to go to Thunderbird.
Do you mean pdf downloads? If so, mine displays a progress bar.
I can’t come up with any downside to Firefox, other than the occasional BBC page that uses JavaScript and doesn’t work (and that’s the BBC’s fault). On a Mac, Safari is the default browser. But compared to any of Mozilla’s offerings and even those by third parties that keep the old OS 9 Mozilla version humming, Safari is prehistoric because of Firefox’s extensions.
If I had to choose only one extension, it would be SmoothWheel, even over Adblock. SmoothWheel is amazing; it makes reading a page on the web like reading a page in a book. I can’t understand why something like it isn’t built into every browser (Safari’s smooth-scroll option is nothing more than a placebo).
Just noticed that Firefox is set for a big, new release. I think I will wait for it and then make the switch.
I’ve noticed essentially no downside to Firefox. There are a few things I don’t like about it (bookmark management is a major one), but it’s been so long since I used IE (before Firefox, I used Opera) that I can’t really compare them.
Thunderbird… well. My opinion is that all email clients suck, but Thunderbird tends to suck less than the other ones. It has crappy built-in search, but then, so does Outlook. I tend to use gmail for my email now, except at work where I have to use something else. Thunderbird is that something else.
UPDATE: Firefox 1.5 has just been released.
There are a couple of glitches I’ve found in the 1.5 release that people should be aware of:
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If you use the AdBlock extension, it will kill the Flash plugin completely. Uninstall the extension and replace with Adblock Plus. However, I haven’t been able to get it to block Flash ads since.
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Some people are having problems getting onto Google Mail. http://www.gmail.com doesn’t work for me, either, though http://mail.google.com does, but not for other users. Which is strange, as I’d have thought they both redirect to the same page.
Still, all in all they’ve done a great job - blisteringly fast page rendering, and some really nice extras. Using IE for me now feels like having a bath with my socks on. Or something.
One thing that doesn’t work for me is the GMail extension. Can no longer log in through the extension, but now that I have Google Talk, I really don’t care anyway (I liked the extension mainly for the notifications of new mail).
Other than that, the only downside is, as has been mentioned, the odd page that just has to be loaded in IE. But I’d say I come across one of those maybe once a month or so, so for me it’s not a big deal.
Thank you so much for posting this. The jerky scrolling drives me batty and I hadn’t checked recently to see if there was help for it.
I’ve been a faithful Firefox user since I downloaded it. I even use tabs now, which I didn’t like at first. (I open a five-tabbed page as my homepage–I love that.)
You have to think in Russian.
This is fixed in the 1.5 - if a page fails to load, Firefox now brings up a page “this page could not be found, blah blah blah, press this button to try again.”
I was going to switch to 1.5, but then discovered that a few of my favorite extensions are not yet supported in the new version, so i’m going to wait until those extensions are updated.
I have absolutely no regrets about making the switch to Firefox/Thunderbird, which i did just over a year ago. I couldn’t live without tabbed browsing and mouse gestures anymore.
There is, for me, one small downside to Thunderbird. Unless someone has made an extension that i’m not aware of, it is impossible to strip attachments out of incoming emails, and just leave the email itself in place. Also, if the incoming email has an earlier email as an attachment, you can’t pull that earlier email out and put it into a different Thunderbird folder as a separate email. All of this is very easy to do with Outlook.
If there is, indeed, a way to do these things in Thunderbird, i’d be very happy to hear it.
By the way, now that Opera is completely free (i.e., no advertising bar), you might also think about using Opera for both your browsing and email. I have Opera installed, and i import my pop mail to both my Thunderbird and my Opera clients. I’m generally doing most of my stuff in Firefox and Thunderbird because i have fallen into the habit, but i think that if you are about to make the shift away from Microsoft, then Opera is definitely worth considering.