Dec 10, 2008 11:36 AM
4460 Views
(Updated Dec 10, 2008 01:04 PM)
From the very first day with computer, I am little bit more curious to taste the different software products. It is late 2000 when I was introduced with the internet and I engaged myself to download different type of browsers and use them. Basically I didn't like the IE from the very beginning only because it is used by all. So I use Netscape for my regular browsing at that time. But using the Netscape I was not fully satisfied because in most of time the web page looked different on my Netscape browser though it looked good in IE. It irritated me very much at that time. So I tried different unknown browser (when I used to tell my friend about those, my friends became surprise with those new names) and settled with them.Basically all these unknown browsers used the IE engine with a different look and feel.
I was happy thinking that I was not using IE so I was different from the masses, and I had the ability to use other browsers. After my college days with all this nonsense experience, I promoted to office life. Here every thing is under process and standard and IE is only available internet browser in office. So gradually I used to it. The version of the IE I use in my office is6 or 7. At that time I generally tried not to use IE in my home PC but my all these unknown browser gradually became incompatible with maximum web pages(mostly for Flash etc). As my home computer becomes older and older it seems like getting slower and slower and web pages become heavier and heavier. IE is itself a heavy s/w and my slow computer could not run in that heavy and fast world. So I was looking for a browser which has all the necessary plug ins, light weight and as well as compatible with the internet world.
At that time my search ended with Mozilla Firefox. Though I had used it earlier but at that time I used to change my browser now and then.
I have found that Firefox is superb. The most amazing part of it was the Tab browsing, a whole new experience. Almost all the necessary plug in can be easily found in their website. A good pop up blocker, Customizable look and feel and above all it is free. Basically every thing what you get from IE, are available in Firefox and there are lots of extra useful features that are not in IE. So I just blown away with amazing Firefox. Another feature that is indeed a useful is restoring option. If you suddenly close (or crash) your browser with more than one active tabs then you can restore all the previous web pages. A very beautiful and efficient search when you type your URL in the address bar. Anyway Microsoft copies (A master in this field) the tab browsing facilities and lunch IE 7. It is again a horrible. It becomes heavier, lots of problems with opening secured pages etc. There are some tweaks with Firefox which you can use favorably to your side. For example there are some websites where songs file are embedded and you can't download that file from your IE but you can listen. In Firefox you can extract all the file URL which are embedded and if you have that info the rest is easy. Basically if there is any problem with internet browser then it is easy to debug with Firefox. (I installed a Firefox in my office PC for this reason) Another small but better useful feature is search. In IE, search box is floating but in Firefox, it is at the bottom and with your type it starts the searching with color highlighting. Very useful. A regular update is available on the product.
From the security point of view I found in the different articles that it isn't at all venerable to the internet security and in some aspects it is better than IE. So I can do the transaction and other secured things without tension.
Now some problems with Firefox. There are lots of website (banking site, Online Newspaper, Some official Intranet) which works only on IE. In normal mode, Firefox can not work with all these sites. There is an alternate method. There are freely available IE Rendering add-on which will render the page to IE but you are still using the Firefox. So get the IE experience with Firefox. Basically there are numerous free add-ons which are extremely useful according to one's needs.
Currently while working on a testing tool, I find that this testing tool is not compatible with the Firefox though it is one of the market standardize testing tool. So till now there are some incompatibility issues with the Firefox. But as the Firefox is market's second best browser, so the issues with incompatibility will definitely reduce day by day.
Though it is very rare but still Firefox suddenly crashes and closes. But due to the restoring facility it is not creates any huge problem. As I don't use IE very often so I can't tell whether IE or Firefox leads in this issue.
Overall Firefox is very good (my opinion it is the best) browser (Google Chrome is lighter but again compatibility problem is huge with Chrome) in the current internet world. Every body who use IE, should experience Firefox once and I am sure you will not be disappointed at all; may be you change yourself from IE to Firefox.
