OK, then. I’ll ask a stupid question…
I converted over to Mozilla and then Firefox. The only problem I have is that when I click on an email-link it attempts to open the internal email client when I would be more comfortable in Outlook. Can you guys advise me how to convince it that my default mail client should be outlook?
If you’re using Firefox to open mail links, I suspect the trouble is Windows’ default email client; it’s not a browser setting. I’d first try running Outlook to see if it asks you to make it default; if not, there’s probably something in the Outlook prefs to do that.
The page in question is a mess and poorly coded. Who knows what the designer intended, but it’s not Firefox’s fault that their messy HTML happens to fluke an ok appearance on IE.
This what happens if you put non-standard propriety widgets in your web pages. Basically you are telling all surfers who don’t use IE that you are not interested in them being able to read your web site.
I used someone else’s computer not so long ago, one without Firefox. I was shocked to see the number of popups. I had almost forgotten what they were like. What, with the constant dread of viruses, trojans and hijacks, the web must really suck if you’re an IE user. I feel an almost patronising and smug pity for them. 
People have asked this question before on the board. Most seem to prefer Firefox. I’m big on Opera because it feels tighter and maybe a bit faster, and the mouse gestures seem to work better.
Try out both. I have to switch to Firefox sometimes to open a page that doesn’t work properly in Opera (such as Gmail), but having both browsers installed means I very rarely have to resort to Explorer to open a page.
XP’s taskbar grouping is inadequate for serious web browsing. Typically, I will have a couple Firefox windows open at once - one for the SD, one for Slashdot, another for blogs that I read, and one for webcomics, and so on, each window with several tabs open within; usually I have 100 or so web pages open at once, yet I can find any specific page very quickly. Doing so with IE & taskbar grouping would be a pain.
Could somebody explain what these “mouse gestures” are? I’m having visions of this kind of thing…
How is what you describe different from right-clicking to go back in IE? Not trying to defend IE, just curious.
What do you do, just wander from thread to thread and call people trolls if they acknowledge the security flaws in Microsoft’s products?
If Twoflower had been attempting to start a flamewar with that comment, it could have been considered a troll. But it’s not. It’s just a statement of his conclusion based on a lot of readily-available data.
Well, not really but they’re probably more right than they know.
Ya see, in 1998 Netscape released the source code to their browser to the world. They did this to prevent Microsoft from owning the Web utterly and mutating it into something only MSIE would be able to use. A bunch of volunteers sprung up around this source code to build an open-source browser. They called it Mozilla, after the name of one of the early prececessors to Netscape. (As it turns out, the Mozilla Project had to toss out all of the Netscape code and start from scratch, because the code they got was badly-written. But there are definite links between Mozilla and Netscape.)
Netscape won this gambit: They prevented Microsoft from locking up the Web and ensured a market for Netscape server software, their real moneymaker. Meanwhile, they pretty much got out of the business of designing their own browser: Later versions of the Netscape browser would be rebranded versions of Mozilla. So for a while, you could reasonably say that Netscape version n was really Mozilla version y.
Netscape was bought out by AOL and the Netscape browser formed the basis of the AOL browser for a while, until AOL decided to go with a rebranded MSIE instead. Meanwhile, the Mozilla Project was attracting some detractors: Mozilla had become a rather heavyweight piece of code, and it still wasn’t considered `finished’. Plus, it was designed as a full Web development tool, including its own HTML editor and email client in addition to the Web browser. People wanted something smaller, simpler, and better-behaved.
Enter Firefox. It was designed as a simple Web browser built up around the Gecko rendering engine (later to serve as the basis for a lot of other browsers, Safari among them IIRC) and supporting a simple way to write extensions in a portable, high-level language called XUL (pronounced Zuul, as in “There is no Dana, only XUL.”). This wasn’t a complete break with the Mozilla Project – after all, the browser calls itself ‘Mozilla Firefox’ in its titlebar – but it was a new development in the codebase. And it would cause a sea change in how people saw non-MSIE browsers. In a relatively short while, it would be seriously eating into MSIE’s marketshare and getting the attention of people who would otherwise never have considered jumping the All-Microsoft ship.
I do the same thing. Slashdot loads correctly in Konq, and the KDE toolbar RSS crawler only opens pages in Konq.
Plus, FF and Konq handle tabs a bit differently: FF makes them all visible at once, eventually making it impossible to read the text. Konq scrolls the tab bar so each tab maintains a constant size.
However, FF is a lot more configurable than Konq, and it’s more willing to open tabs in the background.
Opera is nice enough, but it doesn’t have near as many extensions and it really isn’t different enough from Konq or FF to make me switch back now. Being able to finely control page rendering is nice, though.
Mouse gestures are basically a combination of mouse clicks and mouse movement. Like I said, hold down the right mouse button, move the mouse to the left, release the button and voila - you go back one page. It doesn’t sound too amazing, but once you get the hang of it I think you’d find that it saves quite a bit of time over a multi-click system. Mouse gestures are the default in Opera, but I think you have to download an extension to use them in Firefox.
Another thing I like in Opera is the ability to search quickly from the address bar. Type in “g straight dope” and you’ll get the Google results for the query “straight dope.” You can do this in Firefox, too, except replace “g” with “google.”
While I definitely enjoy this feature in Firefox, there is an add-on for IE that lets you do the same thing.
My complaint with FireFox was that it wouldn’t properly behave as a tabbed interface. Sometimes, new tabs. Sometimes, new windows. Especially when clicking links from outside the application (like Outlook). I found that hugely frustrating. Still sticking with Opera for now, I didn’t see anything better about FF.
Has anyone made a module that acts like Opera’s address bar for customized searching? (Opera users probably know what I mean.)
Thank you. I clearly labelled it as my personal opinion. It’s possible Outlook has improved, but I still won’t allow it on *my *computer. I’ve been very happy with T-bird, and I know there are plenty of people who like Outlook. Their choice.
Me too. Can one still toggle between windows in Firefox using it?
BTW thanks everyone for all the replies to the OP. I’ll be installing the browser shortly.
Yes it may well contain dodgy non-standard HTML. But if IE renders it correctly while Firefox does not I think I would rather stick with IE. Especially since the page in question is just one of many, many dodgy pages on the web.
Nope. This is “General Questions”. Most of the time, people are required to actually back up their assertions with data. However, there are a few topics in GQ for which this rigorous process is not required:
That George W. Bush is “evil” and kills innocent kitties every time someone thinks with their own mind.
That Christianity is stupid.
That MS products are coded by drunken monkeys that have no idea what they’re doing.
Since I’m not qualified to fully take on #1 or #2, I’ve decided to take on the anti-MS FUD that seems to permeate this forum.
Honestly, how can you NOT call “[running Outlook is] the most dangerous thing you can do with your computer” FUD?? Opening your case while the computer is still powered on and pissing on the interior contents is dangerous. Slapping a large rare-earth magnet on your hard drive is dangerous. Sending an email to the head of the NSA that contains only the words “Allu Akbar!!!” is dangerous.
Using an email client that’s on its eleventh revision, which has been tested by millions of corporate and home desktops, whose had more R&D and QA on its installation routine than most email apps have on their entire applications… is not dangerous.
I really cannot think of more than half-a-dozen pages I’ve ever had to resort to IE with, in two years of Mozilla-based browsing. Plus, with commerical sites, a failure to provide coding which is compatible with agreed standards is a red flag as to the general competence of a company to maintain other standards (like customer service…).
Compare those half-dozen sites with the hundreds which have tried to install unwelcome software, and thousands which have tried to bombard me with popups. At work, I have to use IE, and I hate hate hate hate it. It imposes one method of browsing the internet on you, no matter what you’d personally prefer. Dreadful software - which given that it’s barely changed in a decade, is hardly surprising.
Yes, just like any other application. But I think you’re asking about moving from tab to tab. You use ctl-tab for that, the same as many other applications.
I think the OP has been answered to the satisfaction of the OP.
Before this one degenerates any further, I’m locking it.
If anyone here has more to add, take it to your choice of the PIT or IMHO.
Twoflower. This was a General Questions thread. Your post was just a little too opinionated and short on facts for the forum. It didn’t ask for your opinion of Bill Gates.
Rex. If you think someone is posting something that is trollish, you’ve been around long enough to know that you hit the “report this post” button. I understand that this is a hot-button topic for you, and I have sympathy for your position. But you just have to remember what forum you’re in.
samclem GQ moderator
