Computer newbies forum: Newbie's shouldn't jump to Firefox Browser

1) Contrary to your prologue, you haven't refuted anything. You've simply added your own opinion to the mix.

2) There's absolutely no need for such groundless insults as "Maybe Firefox is too advanced of a concept for someone who still runs a Commodore."

3) I don't see anything in _your_ user's creditionals that you are/were a sofware engineer either. [In case it is of interest, I have been designing and programming systems since the early 1960's, but that is hardly relevant.] I assume that "Skyace" and yourself have used Firefox, and are therefore entitled to an opinion as to its various qualities and faults.

4) Just like IE, FF has many nice features, and many deficiencies. More important, despite all the hype, FF is just as bug-ridden and flawed as IE. In fact, it shares a great deal of (flawed) code, which was "borrowed" from older versions of IE; and some of the security flaws which M$ has already fixed, are now being discovered in FF (which is inexcusable, since the problem and solution has been known for years).

5) This is all well documented in other forums, and I will not waste my time re-typing hundreds of pages for the edification of those whose minds are already made up. For those who are still open-minded, please do a search on "Firefox security flaws".

6) Your experience (or mine, for that matter) do NOT constitute "empirical results". Whether one's opinion is qualified or not depends on who's determining qualification. And EVERYONE's opinion is "potentially biased".

7) I find many components of Firefox's installation and design frustrating, and I have NEVER owned a Commodore computer (although I must confess that I still use MS-DOS for a great many things --- which it does far better than the latest and greatest state of the artless).

Just so you don't complain for [my] lack of details (as I'm sure you will not bother to research "empirical" evidence of flaws), these are a FEW of my gripes with FF:

* Over a modem connection, webpages load MUCH slower with FF than with IE. I have tested this repeatedly with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and a variety of webpages, and FF always loads significantly slower. This is empirical data. Others have reported FF loading pages faster over high-speed internet connections, so I'm willing to believe this flaw is limited to low-speed connections. But why?

* I have six webpages which contain an indentical table. They are consistently rendered by IE as I intended them to appear. However, FF renders them differently on each of the six pages, and (even more perplexing) differently each time the pages load! This is an obvious bug, probably the result of an uninitialized variable.

* FF has NEVER notified me that updates are available, despite this "option" being selected. Instead, I have to click "Tools/Options/Advanced/Software Update/Check Now". Furthermore, when I do so, it often tells me there are no updates available, even though there is in fact a new release available for download from the Mozilla site!

* Downloads from the Mozilla site are EXTREMELY SLOW. I suppose this could be attributed to Mozilla not having the capacity for all their [new] users, but it's pretty sad when downloads are slower than from M$ sites.

* Transmission errors in downloads from the Mozilla site (requiring restarting the download) occur frequently. This is inexcusable. Technology has long existed to perform error-checking (and re-transmission of error-blocks as necessary) during the download. Unless the connection between computers is severed, there is no excuse for a corrupted download! [Although, at least FF tells you the file is unusable, as opposed to M$ which will install corrupted files.]

* The download progress indicator bar has no scale or numeric representation. Thus there is no way of knowing whether the download is 1% or 90% done? Thus, the bar indicator is a useless piece of fluff. M$'s download box is not as pretty, but it provides considerably more essential information.

* While downloading the latest "update", one cannot access the Internet (with FF) while waiting! This makes sense during installation of the new modules, but not during a 30-minute download!

* Each FF patch requires downloading the entire FF installation package, not just the changed modules. This could be described as a feature (since you only have one downloaded file to save, rather than a series), but it certainly is less convenient for those with "slow" internet connectins. [DSL, cable, and satellite are NOT available in all parts of the world, and not always affordable even when available.]

* Supposedly, there is some way of restarting an interrupted download from where it left off (at least there was with earlier versions of Mozilla), but I have yet to see this work properly with FF.

* FF installation defaults allow web sites to install software (without the user being prompted for permission)! Some security! [And you expect a newbie to be aware of this, and search through all the settings to turn it off?]

* Personally, I see no advantage to Tabbed Browsing over simply opening the application in a new window. Too me, it's about as exciting a "feature" as "dancing monkeys" would be.

(These are just a few of the problems I've encountered. The full list would overload CNET's server capacity. But you get the general idea.)

FF and IE are both reasonably good products, with features and flaws. It appears from all empirical evidence that FF provides just as much of a security risk as IE, even if none of the flaws have been exploited by hackers (yet). This is probably due to there being more "glory" in shutting down thousands of installations, than one or two. As FF gains in popularity, you will see an increase in (successful) hacker attacks.

Thus, if you prefer FF to IE, more power to you. But your decision should not be based on the inaccurate hyperbole that FF is more secure than IE.

I personally believe that IE is much easier for a newbie to learn than FF, and thus agree with "Skyace"s opinion. So far, everyone I've heard "refute" this has been a experienced computer user, who claims that his mother/sister/grandmother/cocker spaniel/etc. had no trouble learning FF. He/she fails to mention that the learner has the more experienced user at hand to guide them through the process.

Quantum physics would also be "easy to learn" --- if Einstein were available to help you through the exercises. If you had to do it on your own (the situation of most "newbies"), it might be a bit more difficult.

I've used Firefox for 6 months and just love it but I haven't installed it on my wife's computer(a newbie)....

There are just too many webpages that don't work.

I have the plugin installed called "View page in IE" and find myself having to use it at least once per day. Sometimes buttons don't work or don't even display right in FireFox. Newbies tend to have a very low tolerance for stuff like this.

Download the Mozilla suite. I never had a problem with web sites with it, you can choose to install browser only by choosing the custom install during the installation if you do not want to use the email client that comes with it.

That is because all of the games on MSN requirer Active
X. and The problem with it lets site download and install
programs including spyware with out the users knowing it
that is why the programmers never included support for
it. After some mild comp laing about it on the boards
they came out with a a Active-X plug-in witch is is a lot
better than MS's. Just go to
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm

Ok ie is a user friendly browser with a fischer pykel interface. it swallows up spyware and get bogged down with cookies that are meant to improve the newbies experience but in fact direct you to bloatware of advertisements that usually are sourced from the new computers brand name lumped on the operating system. it is done this way by design welcome to big business advertising.
Then along comes Firefox , very easy to setup. the default settings take care of most problems with spyware.
When the user gets better aquainted with the browser they can tweak and add numerous addons. the most convenient is the Right click drop down menu with the option to open the current page in Ie ..,great for people who frequent gaming sites. For ease of use speed and setup Firefox wins hands down. I have only experienced one issue and that was compatability with Yahoo instant messenger . But i believe that problem has been resolved. Additionally i have mozilla's email program Thunderbird an excellent client as well.
my advice go for it and enjoy.

I did look in Task manager and my name is in there. I've never heard of that being a problem. Can you expand? I've looked there before and my name is always there. I thought I should worry if it WASNT.

I have always been an IE user. Back when the choice was IE or Netscape, I felt the faster loading times, lower memory usage and better rendering made IE the superior browser. Since then many different browsers have been created, 99% merely mozilla clones without any real differences from the original. As far as I am concerned now there are only two real contenders: FireFox and AvantBrowser( A plugin that increases security and capabilities of IE). Neither are fully CSS compliant, but they both render things the other doesn't. Personally I prefer IE rendering, as I like the way IE tables are displayed and FF has a nasty habit of destroying the layout of many pages, making them unusable. They both have higher security than IE with the ability to disable/enable all aspects of web pages and are rated equally by web security websites. I have found that FF does not handle java or other dynamic content as well as AB. They both have tabs and a popupblocker and an ad blocker which are fairly even. The only place where FF is better than AB is the about:config settings area where you can tweak performance. But I find overall that AB is the best and FF comes in a close second that I only use for websites that have mozilla only content (which are quite rare).

I just visited this link using Netscape 7.2 (which is a bit archaic anyway) AND the most up to date version of IE with all of the latest patches (security and otherwise) installed. Truly it is shocking to see how non-compliant the Microsoft browser is. To any non-beliver, just take a side by side tour with IE on one side and any mozilla-based browser on the other, and you will see for yourself. IE fails miserably to render properly coded pages time after time. In the past, I always blamed mozilla for web sites that didn't work. Now it looks like Microsoft has been the culprit all along, not surprising considering Microsoft' consistently anti-competitive stance approach to market manipulation.

I work on several computers and normally use Firefox. The basic reason is that FF has many more useful features than IE.... AND in my experience (which does not include on-line gaming,) FF wins the speed contest time after time. Heres a list of very useful FF features:

1) Tabbed browsing - far superior to opening multiple instances of a browser in that you can see details on each tab where separate instances quickly lose these details if you use toolbars on the taskbar.

Here's a great tabbed browsing trick: If you have an organized list of bookmarks (i.e. create a folder and placed related links therein), you can open all links in separate tabs with a single mouse-click.

Though I've never checked, my bet is the hit on system resources is less for tab sessions that for separate individual instances of the program. I have had as many as thirty tabs open at the same time which researching various topics and absolutely no OS hiccups.

2) FF has Password management - You can password protect the password list; delete individual sites/password; reveal passwords associated with sites. None of this is possible with the current version of IE

3) FF has cookie management drilling down to individual cookies - more of the same - IE has some of these features but not all...

4) FF has pop-up blocker management capability

5) FF has web-site software installation management

6) Downloads start when you click the link/download, not when you name/save the file as is the case with IE. The net effect is that you save time with FF downloads. Often by the time I get the save to location and/or name listed for the download, the actual download is already completed.

7) FF has a download manager - IE does not.

8) Returning to the original point - IE has an archaic or deliberately non-compliant rendering engine. That web sites actually work with it is a testament to what is wrong in the world of computing. To those who have no bones to pick with Microsoft, think about how Microsoft bends and shapes your computing environment to suit their needs rather than the other way around. The admittedly "big tail" is wagging the dog.....

On my system, (which is overdue for a complete re-install of XP pro and all other programs), IE is so damaged that, if I click on a link in another browser which insists on calling IE, I get so much junk on my screen so fast, that I must use Task Manager to shut down every browser instance I can find, and re-start Avant or Firefox, depending on which I am using. It is very aggravating! I have scanned IE with every piece of software I can dig up, and have tried editing the registry line by line, manually, but I cannot clean enough out of IE to make it useable. The interesting thing is, I CAN use Avant Browser, which uses that same IE program, with no trouble at all, as long as I don't allow IE to be called. That is an indication to me of how well Avant is programmed; it can even use a damaged version of IE and prevent it from doing anything wrong!

I use both Avant Browser (which is very friendly and easy, especially when I "surf" a lot) and FireFox, depending on what I am doing. If I wish to, for example, "bounce around" on ebay, clicking on links to examine products, read messages, etc., I prefer FireFox because it seems to re-draw much faster when I use the "BACK" command to return to a page from which I followed a link; it also seems to receive and draw a page faster than AB does, overall. However, FF is more like using a clutch and stick transmission, whereas, AB is more like using an automatic transmission. Each has its place.

I am not sure if I could make a list of strengths, weaknesses, features, etc., which shows one to be better than the other, but, I would not wish to give up one of these two excellent browsers and use only one of them for everything. Since they are both "free", I don't need to worry about using them both. However, if I had to make that kind of choice, I believe I would go with FireFox. The superior performance ultimately would win out in my case; sometimes, FF will load and disply two or three pages by the time AB or IE can do just one page, in my non-scientific, non-controlled, non-standard, subjective testing experience.

I have been using the Internet since Mosaic first came out, so I am fairly competent. I am also an electrical engineer and sometimes programmer; using a computer is as easy for me as scratching my head when I don't know what is going on with my latest creation. My wife, on the other hand, was a complete "newbie" when I recently set her up on a laptop. She began using IE "because it was there", but, when (sometimes extremely offensive pornographic) junk started popping up on the screen so much that she could not use the Internet, I installed AB and FF on her system. She tends to use AB because it is more like IE, and she is familiar with that. She is not as demanding as I am, and does not care about the relatively small performance increase of FF which I find important; mostly, she just wants to use the computer for simple Internet access and does not "surf" much. Anything which allows her to get the job done without learning new skills or attitudes, etc., will be her preference every time; she is totally opposite to my way of doing things, thank goodness!

I don't believe it is necessary to have the available browsers "fight it out" until only the superior browser survives; that mentality, unfortunately, has been promoted so much by MSOFT's practices that we sometimes forget that it is good for us to have more than one program to choose from for a given application. I would hate to see ANY of the competing browsers so dominate the market that the others would be forced out, such as happened a few years ago between MS and Netscape! viva la difference (sp?)

As has already been mentioned, it is perhaps good to have IE out there as the main target for the nut cases who write virus programs to focus on; maybe it will keep them busy so they won't attack the other browsers with as much vigor as they have shown in their IE attacks so far.

Two browsers are better than one! (Or three or four or five are perhaps even better!) Any browser which is not good for an acceptable number of people simply won't get used, and it will "go away" if the authors of it do not change it until it suits the needs of their target audience. Isn't that the way it is supposed to work? Seems pretty good to me.

But of course, it is also good to have forums such as this, and to have debate, and to have so many knowledgeable people share their experiences with the rest of us, so we can make more intelligent choices. Or at least, so we can avoid looming problems before they damage our data and do us in.

As many of us know, you cannot define newbies as computer illiterate or worse incapable.

I've been working almost 20 years with windows based computers, I used Macs and Linux and I tried so many software programs I can't even count it.

I have also been a computer tech around the same amount of time and build too many computers.

FIREFOX is just fine for anyone. Every browser has its pro and cons but when it comes to give my friends/customers a suggestion on which browser to use. IE comes always last ( and kept only because there still some websites that FORCE you to use IE ).

Netscape is heavy, Opera is my preferred since its first release but FIREFOX is veeery good too and I keep using it more day after day.

Conclusion ? IE had shown, shows and will always show bugs, defects, problems, weird flicks...and to fix them sometime is a real waste of time. IE is also the most used vector for all kind of crap from the internet ( viruses, bad scripts and so on ) and somewhat heavy.

Firefox is pretty fast when opening the webpages, good downloads handler and much lighter than IE ( almost half lighter ).

At the end, I have seen some of my computer "illiterate customers", enjoying the surf with Firefox, its easy of use and not too shabby GUI.

And more interest in learning it due to its easy of use than IE which is for them very confusing.

That's all for me now.

This is very bad advice. Since newbies are more likely to do the things and go to sites that cause problems they should be required to use Firefox not discouraged from using it. Fire Fox is immune to most of these problems.

I've read your posting more than once, and I'm still not entirely clear on what your objection to Firefox is, or why the use of Firefox necessarily precludes the use of IE (for those troublesome non-standards-compliant websites, for example).

I am a realtive "newbie" when it come to computer software, more into the nuts and bolts myself, but even I can tell when a program is good, and Firefox is good! Easy to use, easy to install, etc. The only thing I wish it could do is access the video on MSN. I bet there is a way, I just haven't spent the time to find out how.

And if you are like me and really need to, Internet Explorer can be left installed so that everything can be accessed with whatever is needed. I have some sites I go to regularly that only work with IE, so I keep it and then it jumps in when those sites require it. Very convenient.

My "newbie" husband was using IE and ran into nasty spyware and a bad virus. This was before I had had the time to apply my usual: Spybot, Ad-aware, MS Antispyware, Norton Firewall, Pop-up stopper pro. These things got, not only his desktop, but his networked laptop - to a certain extent - as well. At the cost of over $500, and after having lost a good portion of his data, we BOTH switched to Foxfire. I was absolutely amazed. Since switching, I have been able to completely disable my pop-up stopper, my spyware and antivirus software report all the computers as "clean" each time the are run (at this point, once a day on his system), and we have had, virtually, no problems whatsoever with Foxfire.

To those have posted how charmed your life is, or how lucky you must be, you are playing with fire. As things are right now, people using IE are taking a huge risk. It just isn't safe, no matter what you do. If you DON'T take the 10 minutes that it takes to download Firefox, you very well might pay for that with having your computer down for 2 or 3 days and paying through the nose to correct the problems. It's just not worth it.

As for newbies, sending them off on IE nearly guarantees that they will run into some sort of problem, whether it be learning how to use a pop-up stopper or learning how to navigate with the firewall warning, the spyware runs, etc, or they will do what most people do and end up plagued by spyware or worse, the first time they go to one of a million questionable sites that nearly all newbies check out.

I wouldn't send my 6 year old out to play in the middle of a busy intersection no matter how much protective clothing she was wearing. Neither would I send a newbie out onto the internet without Foxfire, no matter how much protection they set up. It's just not safe.

Since downloading Firefox, and recently upgrading to Firefox 10.1, I have had absolutely nothing but clear sailing, and although I have been working with computers since 1985, I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about -- but I am unafraid to try anything, and usually get the work done, because of a cool composure, something I lacked in the early 1990s.

Now, I really didn't learn anything from the Newbie's beware, and have no idea what bugzilla is all about. My 'puter works like a charm, with the only problem a run-in with avast antivirus, which caused the greatest of problems, until I just uninstalled it, and now, all is well. Been using Firefox for two months, and loving it. Tell me the Bugzilla thing, and maybe it's just some chatter that has been taken care of with the FF10.1 upgrade this am!

All the best!

JimT