Firefox is not ready for primetime

[Chaos Master]

Chaos happened and (e-mail address removed) said:

ff loads slower than ie6 for me (win9x,~800mhz,512mb)

maybe because patrs of ie are loaded when win loads.

some sites work better with ff (eg, lycos media search), various settings,
others work better with ie (diff sets of settings for the 'two zones')

For me, FF loads in about 25 seconds, IE too (I use the LiteStep shell, so
some stuff don't get loaded). (Win 98, 233MHz, 64MB). FF feels much faster on
a dial-up connection.


[]s

 

[GlintingHedgehog]

Thanks for that tip, editing is now possible. I posted awhile ago on the Firefox
forum, no one knew that.

Really? It just seemed common sense to me - FF puts the bookmark directly
above what you click on, so click directly below where you want it...took
me about a quarter-second to figure out!

I'm coming from Netscape 4.79. FF is a big improvement over Navigator, except for
bookmarks. But Thunderbird has a few problems IMO compared to the Messinger part
of Netscape.

I don't use Thunderbird - I tried it but I use as (ssshhh!) paid-for email
client (one of the few pieces of software I have paid for) and Thunderbird
couldn't compare.

 

[ms]

Chaos happened and (e-mail address removed) said:



For me, FF loads in about 25 seconds, IE too (I use the LiteStep shell, so
some stuff don't get loaded). (Win 98, 233MHz, 64MB). FF feels much faster on
a dial-up connection.

I have an even slower machine, P166, W98SE, 96 MB RAM, DUN, and FF loads in about
4 seconds. IE 5.01 loads about the same. I have only about 7 entries in Task
Manager when FF loads. The only browsers that were really slow on my machine were
Kmeleon and Mozilla 1.5

Mike Sa

 

[Dick C]

John Corliss wrote in alt.comp.freeware

2. ActiveX modules - that's the problem that you're talking about.
There are workarounds, but ActiveX is a security hazard and is part of
the reason why IE contains so many unpleasant security
vulnerabilities. If this is the reason that you can't access a
website, then it's probably better to not go there. However, if you
must, then what I do is to make an exception and to use IE to view it.
However, such exceptions are rare.

I rarely use IE, I don't even use browsers based on their engine,
such as Opera. I have in the past, and still do upon occaision, use
Netscape 4.x. And I moved to Mozilla quite a while ago, and now use
Firefox almost exclusively. The only time I use IE is to get updates
from MS for my XP.

--
Dick #1349
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin

Home Page: dickcr.iwarp.com
email: (e-mail address removed)

 

[J44xm]

["REM"; Tue, 03 Aug 2004 23:22:47 GMT]

Microsoft made Java Scripts that CAN write to disk, where other
browser activex apps cannot. This is the huge security hole. By just
viewing a page you can be exploited with dialers, trojans, exploit
number (large number), etc.

So ... what the hell were they thinking?

 

[J44xm]

["PB"; Wed, 04 Aug 2004 03:59:44 GMT]

Doesn't look like IE to me. Where's the menus, toolbars, etc?

Guess I forgot to mention that I use the MyIE2 shell on IE. But this
wouldn't make a difference in rendering pages, would it?

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

I rarely use IE, I don't even use browsers based on their engine,
such as Opera.

Opera is not based on the IE engine. It is a completely different
browser.

However, since it tries to be standards based, it does have the same
problems other Mozilla-based browsers do in handing IE-warped sites.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

About 1600 bookmarks. I have to click Bookmarks in the toolbar about 10 times
before I get the pulldown menu.

Ouch! I have THOUSANDS - maybe tens of thousands - of bookmarks.

Another blackmark for FireFox.

No matter how often I think of trying it, Opera always wins out.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

Does that means that Microsoft wins the game?

Since they have 95% of the browser market (by default since it comes
installed with the OS - it's not like they're competing directly, of
course), yes, it does.

Why can't the brilliant programmers at Firefox work around this?

This is the part that irritates me about Firefox and Opera. I know we
want them to adhere to Web standards. But in practice the standard is
IE, and if they want more market share against IE, then they should be
coding to handle IE crap sites as well as ones that adhere to the
standards. Render the pages correctly first, wrong or not according
to the standards - THEN try to compete with IE.

The facts are that there are millions of Web sites and millions of Web
designers who have no clue and never will about standards and IE's
lack of same. It's pointless to treat the issue as a political
program and try to convert everybody to use the standards and dump
IE-specific code. It's simply not going to happen - especially when
the Web designers look at the browser market share - all of Netscape,
Mozilla, Firefox, K-Meleon and Opera are less than 5% of the market.
Why are Web designers going to bother changing their code?

They will only change their code when IE is NOT the dominant browser.

So the only way to beat this situation is for the alternative browsers
to support the IE crap code and render the pages "properly" - THEN
compete with IE on the basis of better features, speed, etc. AS WELL
AS adhering to the standards.

Going the other way is a loser's game and just hands the whole ball of
wax to Microsoft.

It's not as if supporting the IE crap code is somehow going to damage
Web standards - that's ALREADY HAPPENED! The only way to reverse that
situation is to succeed in the market against IE, and then the Web
sites might begin to code to the standards when they see most of the
browsers hitting their sites are NOT IE.

This outcome is not too likely, admittedly, and in any event won't
happen for probably ten years - whereupon something else may replace
HTML altogether. But it's the only way I see to even begin to roll
back IE's dominance of the market.

 

[bassbag]

Since they have 95% of the browser market (by default since it comes
installed with the OS - it's not like they're competing directly, of
course), yes, it does.


This is the part that irritates me about Firefox and Opera. I know we
want them to adhere to Web standards. But in practice the standard is
IE, and if they want more market share against IE, then they should be
coding to handle IE crap sites as well as ones that adhere to the
standards. Render the pages correctly first, wrong or not according
to the standards - THEN try to compete with IE.

The facts are that there are millions of Web sites and millions of Web
designers who have no clue and never will about standards and IE's
lack of same. It's pointless to treat the issue as a political
program and try to convert everybody to use the standards and dump
IE-specific code. It's simply not going to happen - especially when
the Web designers look at the browser market share - all of Netscape,
Mozilla, Firefox, K-Meleon and Opera are less than 5% of the market.
Why are Web designers going to bother changing their code?

They will only change their code when IE is NOT the dominant browser.

So the only way to beat this situation is for the alternative browsers
to support the IE crap code and render the pages "properly" - THEN
compete with IE on the basis of better features, speed, etc. AS WELL
AS adhering to the standards.

Going the other way is a loser's game and just hands the whole ball of
wax to Microsoft.

It's not as if supporting the IE crap code is somehow going to damage
Web standards - that's ALREADY HAPPENED! The only way to reverse that
situation is to succeed in the market against IE, and then the Web
sites might begin to code to the standards when they see most of the
browsers hitting their sites are NOT IE.

This outcome is not too likely, admittedly, and in any event won't
happen for probably ten years - whereupon something else may replace
HTML altogether. But it's the only way I see to even begin to roll
back IE's dominance of the market.

My sentiments exactly.It wouldnt be so bad if other browsers alerted you to
the fact that the website is using activex or such like and offered
suggestions.Theres nothing worse than going to a site (opera in my case in
the past)and trying to work out why a page wont load i.e is it my isp
,server problems ,etc only to discover that the site uses activex.Personally
i dont care whther the site is written correctly or not,i just want to see
it in my browser.If IE can render good and badly written webpages ,why cant
the others too?All i want to see is the page on the screen and links that
work when i click them.
me

 

[Aaron]

Since they have 95% of the browser market (by default since it comes
installed with the OS - it's not like they're competing directly, of
course), yes, it does.


This is the part that irritates me about Firefox and Opera. I know we
want them to adhere to Web standards. But in practice the standard is
IE, and if they want more market share against IE, then they should be
coding to handle IE crap sites as well as ones that adhere to the
standards. Render the pages correctly first, wrong or not according
to the standards - THEN try to compete with IE.

It's not just a matter of politics but also of practicality. It's not
just a matter of implementing IE propertery tags but even the way IE
handles standard tags.

Because MS does not tell the world exactly how and under what rules their
browser renders html, it would be a nearly impossible task for others to
reverse engineer the quirky way IE renders webpages.

NSIE is a complete blackbox to the Opera and mozilla people, and without
written instructions (or yes "standards") released by IE, it's nearly
impossible to get exactly the same rendering of html.

 

[GlintingHedgehog]

Ouch! I have THOUSANDS - maybe tens of thousands - of bookmarks.

Another blackmark for FireFox.

No matter how often I think of trying it, Opera always wins out.

As I said earlier in the thread, I've over 9000. It's probably over 10,000
by now (I've added a lot recently due to a new project). I've no problems
working with bookmarks within Firefox, so it's obviously not an inherent
problem with FF.

Is Opera still ad-ware?

 

[Chaos Master]

Chaos happened and ms said:

I have an even slower machine, P166, W98SE, 96 MB RAM, DUN, and FF loads in about
4 seconds. IE 5.01 loads about the same. I have only about 7 entries in Task
Manager when FF loads. The only browsers that were really slow on my machine were
Kmeleon and Mozilla 1.5

Mozilla (latest 1.8) takes about 40 seconds to load here. :/

[]s

 

[J44xm]

["Richard Steven Hack"; Fri, 06 Aug 2004 06:04:27 GMT]

The only way to reverse that situation is to succeed in the market
against IE, and then the Web sites might begin to code to the
standards when they see most of the browsers hitting their sites are
NOT IE.

Why would they change? If every browser could render IE-only data, and
it's what everybody already used, why suddenly change back to the
standards?

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

["Richard Steven Hack"; Fri, 06 Aug 2004 06:04:27 GMT]

The only way to reverse that situation is to succeed in the
market against IE, and then the Web sites might begin to code to
the standards when they see most of the browsers hitting their
sites are NOT IE.

Why would they change? If every browser could render IE-only data,
and it's what everybody already used, why suddenly change back to
the standards?

In addition to taking market share, they hope to move standards
forward in such a way that web authors can write new stuff to
standards without locking out IE users. And it seems that the new
development going on with IE places a higher value on correctly
displaying standards-compliant stuff. (Sorry, that stuff is in IE
blogs and forums at the MSDN site, and I don't have handy links.)

Moving toward interoperability is tricky, and I don't know that
anyone has a great plan for it. FWIW, Brendan Eich recently had
this to say about it:
<http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/005632.html>

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

Is Opera still ad-ware?

Oh, yeah, definitely. I just ignore the banner space at the top of
the screen.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

NSIE is a complete blackbox to the Opera and mozilla people, and without
written instructions (or yes "standards") released by IE, it's nearly
impossible to get exactly the same rendering of html.

Nope, can't be true. All you have to do is go to a site that renders
badly in Opera, look at the tags, run IE to see what it does, and
duplicate the behavior in Opera. Time-consuming, yes, but the Opera
people could do this and handle the tags the same way. There can't be
thousands of non-standard renderings in IE or nobody's site would work
in Opera and Mozilla. It's probably no more than a couple dozen tags.

You're basically saying that IE is representing standard tags in a
non-standard way. That's irrelevant. If a site is designed with
standard tags, it will render correctly - that is, displayably - on
Opera. It may render DIFFERENTLY on IE, but that's irrelevant -
unless the site is designed to make use of the fact that IE renders
standard tags SO differently that the site essentially cannot be
rendered correctly in another browser. In that case, my first
paragraph above applies.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

["Richard Steven Hack"; Fri, 06 Aug 2004 06:04:27 GMT]

The only way to reverse that situation is to succeed in the market
against IE, and then the Web sites might begin to code to the
standards when they see most of the browsers hitting their sites are
NOT IE.

Why would they change? If every browser could render IE-only data, and
it's what everybody already used, why suddenly change back to the
standards?

Reread my post. If everybody can render IE sites, then the browser
wars depend on features, speed, etc. And Mozilla and Opera are
continuing to advance, whereas MS has given up development of IE. Once
the alternative browsers gain market share, Web site designers will
notice that most browsers are not IE and will start coding to
standards - including IE extensions.

In a sense, you are correct - when everybody can render the standard
tags AND IE extensions, then IE extensions will essentially BE
standards. Except now the standards can move forward with the
assurance of a level playing field.

Of course, this doesn't stop MS from using its monopoly to break the
standards again. But this time they'll be starting from a level
playing field (depending on when they actually start breaking them
again.)

Otherwise, everybody might as well give up and start using IE again
because the Web designers are NOT going to go back to the standards
because IE IS the de facto "standard".

Trying to convince Web designers to code to standards instead of IE
when IE controls 95% of the market and does not render standard tags
properly is a hopeless lost cause.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

Moving toward interoperability is tricky, and I don't know that
anyone has a great plan for it. FWIW, Brendan Eich recently had
this to say about it:
<http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/005632.html>

Some of those posts at mozillazine were interesting, especially the
last one which basically says if the OSS community doesn't push XUL,
then MS will win by default with XAML and the rest of the posts then
won't matter.

He could be right. I don't know, I haven't kept up with what is going
on in Web content delivery. But it does look like the issues of using
the Web as an applications delivery platform may eventually entirely
override issues of how browsers and the Web work now.

If that's true, then only the rise of Linux on the desktop and OSS Web
applications delivery tools will be able to break MS dominance of the
desktop and the Web.

Until, of course, my AI work breaks Microsoft for good...

 

[GlintingHedgehog]

Oh, yeah, definitely. I just ignore the banner space at the top of
the screen.

I use a very small laptop, so I'm very possessive about my screen space