Anyone taken a look at Firebird browser?

[JunkMonkey]

It is a sort of stripped down internet browser based on the Mozilla code.
It's really nice and fast. I have never been too impressed with either
Mozilla browser or the Netscape version. They have some neat features, but
neither one seems to be able to log into the my Netscape page or the
netscape mail page. I had to use IE6 for that!

Firebird works fine, it claims to be a beta version, but after 3 days of
intensive use, I haven't had ANY problems (I can't even say that about
IE6!). And I can use MyNetscape with it! I've tried OPERA as well, but
with it and every other browser I've tried, I felt like I was loading
features and stuff I would never use. There is a link to it (Firebird) on
the Mozilla site.

 

[Hoppy]

Yup ... been using it since v0.6.1 - now on 0.7. The more I use it, the
more I like it. From what I understand, the final versions are the stable
releases, while the "nightlies" are the betas. I love the tabs and
user-installed extensions.

It puts IE to shame. It's much faster and does a great job with cookies,
popups and ads. Nice support, help and forums, too.

The only minor drawback is with its inability to view IE-only pages.
There's an updated "IEView" extension which I haven't installed yet, but I
can't get the original version to work quite right.

Tom
~~~
:
It is a sort of stripped down internet browser based on the Mozilla code.
It's really nice and fast. I have never been too impressed with either
Mozilla browser or the Netscape version. They have some neat features, but
neither one seems to be able to log into the my Netscape page or the
netscape mail page. I had to use IE6 for that!

Firebird works fine, it claims to be a beta version, but after 3 days of
intensive use, I haven't had ANY problems (I can't even say that about
IE6!). And I can use MyNetscape with it! I've tried OPERA as well, but
with it and every other browser I've tried, I felt like I was loading
features and stuff I would never use. There is a link to it (Firebird) on
the Mozilla site.

 

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

Yup ... been using it since v0.6.1 - now on 0.7. The more I use
it, the more I like it. From what I understand, the final
versions are the stable releases, while the "nightlies" are the
betas.

It's all still beta for now, but the nightly builds are the latest.
Here's their official position on 0.7:

Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is a Technology Preview. While this
software works well in most cases, generally well enough to be
relied upon as your primary browser, we make no guarantees of
its performance or stability in its pre-1.0 state and it should
not be relied upon for mission-critical tasks.

I love the tabs and user-installed extensions.

The extension model is pretty sweet, I agree. The extensions could
have better documentation, but I guess that will come.

It puts IE to shame. It's much faster and does a great job with
cookies, popups and ads. Nice support, help and forums, too.

The options are soooo much more easily accessible than IE's. And
with the QuickPrefs and Preferential extensions, it's even better.

The only minor drawback is with its inability to view IE-only
pages. There's an updated "IEView" extension which I haven't
installed yet, but I can't get the original version to work quite
right.

The old one could not find my IE executable. The new one works fine
for me.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Are there that many IE only pages out there anymore? And then again, IE IS
Windows! Just ask Bill.

IE is ubiquitous. For those few pages, you can always use IE, it doesn't
look like you'll ever get completely away from IE asnyway.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Are there that many IE only pages out there anymore? And then again, IE IS
Windows! Just ask Bill.

I find few that I can't use with something else. Those rare times, I
simply go elsewhere.

IE is ubiquitous. For those few pages, you can always use IE, it doesn't
look like you'll ever get completely away from IE asnyway.

All you have to do is want to, and act on that.

 

[null]

IE is ubiquitous. For those few pages, you can always use IE, it doesn't
look like you'll ever get completely away from IE asnyway.

Never say never. I think Moz will win eventually and leave the old
malicious code honeypot mess from uncle Bill in the dust. And the
sooner the better.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[Yves Bellefeuille]

Are there that many IE only pages out there anymore? And then again, IE IS
Windows! Just ask Bill.

I've used Mozilla and Phoenix/Firebird for many months now, and I've
only seen one Web page that didn't seem to work properly. (For the
Montreal Better Business Bureau, if you're interested.)

And Microsoft itself often deliberately sabotages its Web pages so they
don't work with Mozilla, of course.

 

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

Are there that many IE only pages out there anymore? And then
again, IE IS Windows! Just ask Bill.

Only my bank's SSL-accessible account pages. Until a month ago, they
worked fine in any browser, under Windows or Linux, but they made some
change.

IE is ubiquitous. For those few pages, you can always use IE, it
doesn't look like you'll ever get completely away from IE asnyway.

I'm on the bank about this - they've got until the time I have to
reorder checks (a couple of months now) to get things fixed, or I'll
move my money elsewhere.

 

[Wayfarer]

Thus spake Hoppy:

Yup ... been using it since v0.6.1 - now on 0.7. The more I use it, the
more I like it. From what I understand, the final versions are the stable
releases, while the "nightlies" are the betas. I love the tabs and
user-installed extensions.

It puts IE to shame. It's much faster and does a great job with cookies,
popups and ads. Nice support, help and forums, too.

I am really favorably disposed to making Firebird 0.7 my primary browser because
it's fast (though not as fast as IE), it's standards compliant and it
has tons of great extensions for web developers, plus, it's not
Microsquash. I have a few problems though that have me returning to
MyIE2 as my primary browser.

1. Bookmark sorting and Favicon retention. I want to have the bookmarks
automatically sorted by directory, then by title. I don't want to have
to drag and drop in the order that I want it (I've got way too many) or
run a Java program. I'd like for the Favicons to be retained as well (I
use FavOrg). Without these two features it takes longer to find items
in my bookmarks, no matter how hard I try to keep them organized.

2. AI_RoboForm support. The password manager in FB just isn't as smart
as AI-RoboForm. I've tried installing RoboForm's Mozilla/Netscape
program, but it keeps blowing up on installation to FB.

3. Alternate download manager support. I've used Star Download for
quite a while now. It installs beautifully with FB and is even more
responsive and transparent than Star is with MyIE2. The only problem is
there is no way to configure Star with FB, it's behavior is pretty much
set in concrete. Without Star in FB, if I try to play a Windows Media
file, it plays. With Star installed, it tries to download it and no
amount of tweaking will make it otherwise.

4. Using Propel Internet Accelerator, FB keeps mistaking the
subdirectory of Propel as the web root with my local web server when
http proxy is on. When I'm developing, I have to keep going into FB
options and turning proxy off (and then having to remember to turn it
back on again).

 

[Aaron]

Yup ... been using it since v0.6.1 - now on 0.7. The more I use it,
the more I like it. From what I understand, the final versions are
the stable releases, while the "nightlies" are the betas. I love the
tabs and user-installed extensions.

No it's still beta or prebeta. 0.7 is a milestone build. Nightlies are
the really unstable ones.

From http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/

"Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is a Technology Preview. While this software works
well in most cases, generally well enough to be relied upon as your
primary browser, we make no guarantees of its performance or stability in
its pre-1.0 state and it should not be relied upon for mission-critical
tasks."

Still if it works for you........

It puts IE to shame. It's much faster and does a great job with
cookies, popups and ads. Nice support, help and forums, too.

It's great , but let me play's devil's advocate and point out the bad
points

1) No automatic way of uninstalling extensions
2) No proper installer and uninstaller, which leads to all the confusion
about whether it's okay to overwrite over older versions and/or losing of
extensions installed.
3) Extensions are difficult to search , you have to spend a lot of time
looking for what you need, and there is no guarantee if the extension
will work with your build or play well with other extensions.

The only minor drawback is with its inability to view IE-only pages.


There's an updated "IEView" extension which I haven't installed yet,
but I can't get the original version to work quite right.

Tom
~~~

Aaron (my email is not mungled!)

 

[Vic Dura]

I'm on the bank about this - they've got until the time I have to
reorder checks (a couple of months now) to get things fixed, or I'll
move my money elsewhere.

That's the spirit!

As more folks vote with their $$ there will be fewer IE-only sites out
there to plague us.

 

[John Corliss]

Yup ... been using it since v0.6.1 - now on 0.7. The more I use it, the
more I like it. From what I understand, the final versions are the stable
releases, while the "nightlies" are the betas.

Kinda, but not really. Betas are officially designated as such by
Mozilla.org. They are considered to be more stable than nightlies, but
not as stable as a final.

--
Regards from John Corliss
alt.comp.freeware F.A.Q.:
http://www.ccountry.net/~jcorliss/F.A.Q./FrameSet1.html
Note that I can't see any of Andy Mabbett's troll posts
because I have him killfiled.

 

[John Corliss]

I've used Mozilla and Phoenix/Firebird for many months now, and I've
only seen one Web page that didn't seem to work properly. (For the
Montreal Better Business Bureau, if you're interested.)

And Microsoft itself often deliberately sabotages its Web pages so they
don't work with Mozilla, of course.

My OS (ME) has on at least one occasion, refused to let me update
Windows if I access the MS site using Mozilla. Actually told me that I
had to use IE.

This ain't right.

--
Regards from John Corliss
alt.comp.freeware F.A.Q.:
http://www.ccountry.net/~jcorliss/F.A.Q./FrameSet1.html
Note that I can't see any of Andy Mabbett's troll posts
because I have him killfiled.

 

[Roger RamJet]

My OS (ME) has on at least one occasion, refused to let me update
Windows if I access the MS site using Mozilla. Actually told me that I
had to use IE.

This ain't right.

Heh. That's why I renamed the Internet Explorer icon to Windows
update. ;-)

 

[Kram]

The only time I use IE is for windows updates.

I've been an Opera fan for quite a few years, but I might going the way of
Firebird. Firebird .7 just is plain faster on my XP Home machine the Opera
7.21.

Mark

 

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

I am really favorably disposed to making Firebird 0.7 my primary
browser because it's fast (though not as fast as IE), it's
standards compliant and it has tons of great extensions for web
developers, plus, it's not Microsquash. I have a few problems
though that have me returning to MyIE2 as my primary browser.

1. Bookmark sorting and Favicon retention. I want to have the
bookmarks automatically sorted by directory, then by title. I
don't want to have to drag and drop in the order that I want it
(I've got way too many) or run a Java program. I'd like for the
Favicons to be retained as well (I use FavOrg). Without these two
features it takes longer to find items in my bookmarks, no matter
how hard I try to keep them organized.

This is very annoying, I agree. Keep an eye on

2. AI_RoboForm support. The password manager in FB just isn't as
smart as AI-RoboForm. I've tried installing RoboForm's
Mozilla/Netscape program, but it keeps blowing up on installation
to FB.

They don't claim to support Firebird. I hope they will develop
something for you, but I don't use form managers.

3. Alternate download manager support. I've used Star Download
for quite a while now. It installs beautifully with FB and is
even more responsive and transparent than Star is with MyIE2. The
only problem is there is no way to configure Star with FB, it's
behavior is pretty much set in concrete. Without Star in FB, if I
try to play a Windows Media file, it plays. With Star installed,
it tries to download it and no amount of tweaking will make it
otherwise.

Yeah. What I want is for Firebird to pass alt-clicked URIs to SD,
and nothing else.

4. Using Propel Internet Accelerator, FB keeps mistaking the
subdirectory of Propel as the web root with my local web server
when http proxy is on. When I'm developing, I have to keep going
into FB options and turning proxy off (and then having to remember
to turn it back on again).

That does sound annoying too. QuickPrefs will make it slightly
easier to toggle your proxy setting, but that's hardly the ideal
solution. <http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/#QuickPrefs>

 

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

Heh. That's why I renamed the Internet Explorer icon to Windows
update. ;-)

I use a button I added to Firebird to launch wupdmgr.exe. Other than
typing in the path or drilling down to its directory, that is the only
way to launch IE on my machine.

 

[BoB]

Might makes right, John!

Heh. That's why I renamed the Internet Explorer icon to Windows
update. ;-)

I haven't installed an MS update since '99. I had IE 5.0 sp1 for
4 years with nary a problem. I don't use IE/OE, thanks to Agent and
Firebird 4,5,6,7. I buy a new computer every four years, use Safehex
and effective FW, AVs, etc, etc.

BoB
For the duration of Swen, my address is inoperative.

 

[DC]

Never say never. I think Moz will win eventually and leave the old
malicious code honeypot mess from uncle Bill in the dust. And the
sooner the better.

Amen, brother.

 

[DC]

I'm on the bank about this - they've got until the time I have to
reorder checks (a couple of months now) to get things fixed, or I'll
move my money elsewhere.

Plenty of room, here:

Toronto Dominion Bank
Acct# 054321
Branch# 0123

};O)