http://www.h3rald.com/ H3RALD - Tag 'firefox' (Atom Feed) 2008-06-17T02:46:00Z Fabio Cevasco http://www.h3rald.com tag:www.h3rald.com,2008-06-16:/articles/firefox3-revealed/ Firefox 3 Revealed 2008-06-17T02:46:00Z 2009-09-06T18:10:55Z When the SitePoint staff asked me to write an article summing up all the new features of Firefox 3, I gladly accepted: I wrote about Firefox before, and I thought it was just going to be a 2-3 hours job maximum.
After diving deeper into Firefox 3 development, reading dozens of different blogs and scouting Mozilla’s web sites, I realized I was wrong: Firefox 3 introduced a lot of new things, and keeping track of all of them, I admit, was quite a hard task.

Nevertheless, I wrote the article and delivered it to SitePoint in time fore the release, but my editor “complained” that 8,300+ words was about 3 times over the minimum requirements for a feature article!
“I don’t really think that people can read the whole thing online” —, he said, and I somehow agreed.

In the end, they decided to pack my “article” into a 30-pages PDF eBook which can be downloaded absolutely free of charge from SitePoint web site as well, so here it is:



Firefox 3 Revealed

If you prefer though, you can still read the article directly on SitePoint, here.

This guide aims to give you a comprehensive overview of virtually all the new features and improvements introduced by Firefox 3.



I would like to thank the whole SitePoint staff for giving me the opportunity to write this eBook, and in particular Matthew Magain for his help and support (and for creating the PDF on a Sunday evening!).
Additionally, I would also like to thank the Mozilla Development Team for their awesome job with Firefox 3 and everyone else who made this eBook possible.

Update: Feel free to digg this eBook!

]]> tag:www.h3rald.com,2008-06-12:/articles/thoughts-on-firefox3-and-opera95/ Thoughts on Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 2008-06-13T03:18:00Z 2009-09-06T18:10:54Z Opera 9.5 is out, Firefox 3 too (more or less), so, which browser are you going to use today?
This new generatio of browsers offers plenty of new, innovative features and improvements over the past, in both cases:

  • You can finally use Firefox because it finally doesn’t eat up all your RAM
  • You can finally use Opera because it is finally “understand” ajaxified web sites like Gmail

Amazingly, these two releases have a lot in common…

A fresh new look

Both browsers needed a new look, let’s be honest. Both didn’t really care that much in the past releases, but suddenly things changed: the new Opera theme, Sharp, looks truly awesome on any platform, and the Mozilla development team came up with FOUR different themes, aiming to camouflage Firefox as a native application for all the major OSes.

Personally, while I was really impressed by the new Opera theme, I was not too sure of the new direction taken for Firefox UI. Why a different theme for each different major operating system? In particular the XP theme could have been better, in my opinion.
Not a huge deal though, as both browsers are skinnable (although I’m not gonna alter the way Opera looks!).



The speed of light

My main complaint about Firefox 2 was its slow startup and generally slowness due to several memory leaks. This eventually led me to “switch to Opera” for my daily browsing a while ago.

Firefox 3, luckily, is much faster and more memory-efficient than its predecessor, as the development team squashed most of the memory-related bugs. The introduction of jemalloc as the new memory allocator and also the new cycle collectory improved things quite a bit.

Opera 9.5 still “feels” faster at startup and also the GUI is a bit more snappy than Firefox’s, but Firefox 3 is terribly fast at interpreting Javascript.
As a result, sites like Gmail or Google Reader are rendered almost instantaneously in Firefox 3, while Opera 9.5 is slightly slower.

Address Bar 2.0

Both browser struggled to add more features to the Address Bar: Opera now supports search-as-you-type history search and Firefox… well, let’s just say that Firefox Developers built something truly wonderful with the new “AwesomeBar”: it is now possible to search history items tagged pages and bookmarks.

But there’s more: you’ll notice that the AwesomeBar does an outstanding job in retrieving results ordered by relevance, frequency and access time, and it also allows the user to restrict search to specific page types.

As an Opera user, I must admit that Firefox is really way ahead with this. Unfortunately, Opera toolbar still is not that smart.

Sync’ing up

Opera offers the ability to sync your bookmarks, notes, custom toolbars and Quick Dial pages via the new Link service.
It looks awfully similar to Mozilla Weave, an experimental extension aiming to synchronize the whole Firefox profile.

Currently, Weave allows users to sync bookmarks, history and passwords in a very secure way: this truly preserve the “state” of your browser across multiple computers.

On the other hand, Opera is virtually on any device or platform, so Link can be handy if you use Opera as your mobile browser. Unfortunately, we’ll still have to wait a bit for a proper Mozilla competitor for mobile device, but it already looks very promising.

Be nice, be open

Firefox is THE (only?) open source browser. Opera has always been (and always will be?) a proprietary, freeware, closed source app.
Some people are really bothered by this, especially Linux users of course: it really comes down to how religious you are about the software running on your machine.

Being open source, Firefox is more hacker-friendly: this release, especially, also delivers an awful lot of useful APIs which can be used to develop extensions in a much easier way. This of course isn’t an option for Opera.

From a different point of view, Opera actually implements more ‘next generation’ open standards than Firefox, and it scores more than Firefox in the Acid 3 test.

Does this matter in the end? Well, yes and no: it’s nice that Opera struggles to be way ahead than others in this, but in the end, until Firefox 3 (and Internet Explorer too!) catch up, web developers won’t dare using any of the new features.

Do you have a web site optimized for Opera? No, probably not: you’re normally aiming at Firefox or IE (sigh!) when it comes to development, because they are still more widely used.

All this is very sad, but still terribly true. But at least, other browsers will feel more compelled to catch up.

Usability is the key

Personally, I prefer Opera’s philosophy of “everything in tabs” rather than having many dialog boxes floating around for downloads, history, bookmarks etc.

From this point of view, Firefox is arguably not as usable as Opera. Before Firefox GUI purists start screaming insults, I repeat that this is entirely up to your taste.

While Opera’s GUI didn’t undergo any major change, Firefox 3 definitely did:

  • A new Library now holds all your bookmarks, history and feeds
  • The new Downloads dialog supports (finally!) download resumes, even across different browsing sessions
  • It is very easy to access information on web site, especially with the new identity button (that’s where the web site favicon is displayed).

Another trend introduced by Firefox 3 is the ability to search-as-you-type in all these dialogs and in many others (like the Cookie Manager). This makes finding information much easier.

Opera didn’t need any major overhaul, but I would have liked to have cookies and preference in tabs, too (they are pretty much the only dialog boxes left).

To extend or not extend?

This is always the eternal dilemma when it comes to Firefox vs. other browsers.

The major strength of Firefox 3, like all its predecessors, lies in the hundreds of free extensions which can be installed by user to enhance browser’s functionality. You can turn Firefox into almost anything you like.

Because I’m trying to be browser-independent, I like to keep my Firefox extensions to a bare minimum:

  • Weave
  • Operator
  • Web Developer
  • Del.icio.us
  • Firebug
  • StumbleUpon
  • ColorZilla
  • Secure Login

Opera fans always boost that Opera can do pretty much everything you’d ever need out of the box, so you don’t need any extension at all. Part of this is true (does Firefox have an e-mail client? No. Does Firefox offer a Wand out-of-the-box? No., …read this for the details)

In the past release, Opera added widget to let developers unleash their creativity. And I must admit that they are quite cute and work well enough (a few of them at least).

One of the most frequently-missed feature was a Firebug equivalent for Opera. Luckily, this was fixed in this release with the introduction of DragonFly, which is already bundled with the browser itself.
I’m pretty sure this will make a lot of web developers very happy.

Personally, I still miss an equivalent of the del.icio.us extension in Opera, but I guess I can survive with just a bookmarklet, if needed.

Choose your winner

It is really up to you. I don’t have a true favorite as for now: Firefox 3 is very, very tempting because of three things:

  • The AwesomeBar: I feel I’m already becoming addicted to it
  • Some of its extensions, including Weave
  • The performance improvements, especially concerning memory management and the rendering of pages making extensive use of Javascript

Opera, on the other hand, charmes me for what it can do out-of-the-box: it’s fast, sleek, has almost everything I need with no configuration at all. It’s ideal if you use multiple systems, including mobile devices.

Definitely I will not abandon any of the two as for now: I’ll probaly use Firefox for a more enhanced browsing experience, but I’ll definitely use Opera when I’m in a hurry to look something up for example, and every time my fiancée is using Firefox on the same account.

There’s no absolute winner in the Browser Wars yet: just different browsers for different occasions!

]]> tag:www.h3rald.com,2007-12-28:/articles/firefox-lovers-guide-to-opera/ A Firefox Lover's Guide to Opera 2007-12-28T13:19:00Z 2010-09-23T11:56:36Z

Note: This article can be considered a sequel for An IE Lover’s Guide to Firefox, which described Firefox through the eyes of an Internet Explorer fan. Similarly, this article describes Opera’s features from the point of view of a user – myself – who has been using Firefox for years and is now considering another browser switch.

I am a Firefox fan. I’ve been using Firefox since it was named “Firebird” and calling it “stable” was a big overstatement. Firefox dragged me out of Internet Explorer, and that was definitely one of its biggest achievements.

Because I’m addicted to trying out new tools, however, I always kept testing new browsers I discovered here and there. K-Meleon, Flock, Sleipnir… When Safari came out for Windows I immediately installed it and used it for about 2 hours, only to realize that it wasn’t – and it still isn’t – usable at all, mainly due to sporadic crashes.

Similarly, I’ve been trying out Opera periodically, as new releases came out, but again it didn’t seem to work for me. The biggest complaint I had was its inability to render heavily-ajaxified web sites properly. However, now it seems that the Opera Development Team made a big effort to improve the browser, and I was pleased to notice that Opera 9.5b (“Kestrel”) doesn’t seem to have this sort of problems at all.h3. Planning the Switch

Firefox has extensions. Plenty of them actually. Some are useful, like the newish Del.icio.us one made by Yahoo, and also crappy ones you’ll never use unless you want to have a fancy button on one of your over-cluttered toolbars which enables you to interface more easily with X or Y web services you hardly ever use.

By contrast, Opera never attempted to add full-blown extension support to its venerable and yet very powerful browser. Instead, they kept building more and more features right into its core, being careful not to undermine the browser’s two proverbial qualities: speed and stability. What seemed a doomed philosophy at first turned out to be a good thingin the long run. More and more people are getting more and more worried about Firefox’s memory issues and begin to wander off to explore new things, exactly like I did.

The first step to switch from Firefox to Opera is to reduce the number of Firefox extensions to the bare minimum you need:

  • Colorzilla
  • Web Developer
  • MeasureIt
  • Search Status
  • Gmail Manager
  • Secure Login
  • Del.icio.us
How many extensions do you actually use? Here’s a short analysis for the ones above:
  • The first three are related to Web Development only, which means that I don’t need them unless I’m doing some web-development tests during which I’m always going to have more than one browser open anyway. UPDATE: there are a few Ruler widget which can be used instead of MeasureIt (thanks Ameer).
  • SearchStatus gives me Alexa Rank and Google Pagerank: I think I can survive without those for a while. UPDATE: if not, there’s always SEObar (thanks Ameer).
  • I use Gmail Manager because my girlfriend uses Gmail on the same computer. I’m switching to Opera and she’ll stick with Firefox, so no problem there…
  • Secure Login? It’s called Wand and it has been built-in into Opera for the last decade or so.
  • Del.icio.us – OK, I won’t be able to access my favorite tags as quickly, but someone already came out with a few handy buttons for a better integration with the popular social bookmarking service.

UPDATE: For a list of the features provided by Firefox extensions which are included in Opera, see Rijk’s Top 150 Popular Firefox Extensions and Opera

Because I’m addicted to betas, I immediately downloaded Opera Kestrel, i.e. Opera 9.50 beta 1. I never actually liked Opera’s default theme, so I started looking around for new skins (yes, eye-candy matters sometimes) and came across the Ximple series by serafins. In particular, 2nd thought – Jimple quickly became my favorite.

Tabs

“Opera is the Web pioneer that delivered tabbed browsing in 2000 […]”

Opera tabs feel stable and mature. Why? Probably because tabs are used more consistently to open not only web pages but also:

  • Downloads (“Transfers”)
  • RSS feeds
  • Notes
  • Emails
  • Bookmarks
  • Widget Management
  • Contacts
  • History
  • Page Links

I think this is a great feature and Firefox should definitely consider it: v3.0 comes with new download and bookmark managers, but they’re still dialogs. Yes, I know, there’s probably some extension which allows you to display them in the sidebar, but that’s not the point: Opera brings more consistency to the overall browsing experience by using tabs wherever they should be used.

Additionally, Opera tabs…

  • Can be rearranged, exactly like Firefox tabs
  • Can be restored, if closed accidently, by re-opening them from the Trash can
  • Can be locked, meaning that they can’t be closed accidently
  • Can be duplicated
  • Can be saved in groups (sessions) and re-opened later on
  • Can be restored if Opera crashes

Speed Dial

When you open Opera for the first time, and whenever you open a new empty tab the Speed Dial is displayed. What I originally thought it was one of the most annoying things introduced by Opera 9 turned out to be actually useful and very addictive.

The idea behind it is simple:

  • Show a default page with 9 slots
  • Allow users to drag links to those slots
  • Display preview of each slot (which is cached and can be updated by refreshing the page)
  • Allow users to quickly access pages saved in the Speed Dial via CTRL+1 .. CTRL+9 or simply by clicking them.

Simple and effective. Once you get going with it, you’ll overcome the initial feeling of imposition and you’ll use it more and more: I literally can’t live without it now!

Right-click goodies

While I was testing Opera, my girlfriend came along and asked me to look something up on IMDB. I normally had IMDB as custom search engine in Firefox, but unfortunately Opera didn’t seem to allow users to customize their search engines…

Totally wrong. Not only Opera lets you add any search engine to the search bar, it also does it with style and in the easiest way possible:

  1. Go to your search engine or any website with a search form
  2. Right click the search field
  3. Click Create Search…
  4. Specify a name and a keyword for your search engine

Done. You’ll now be able to search that particular site directly from the search bar. As you can see, I added Wikipedia, IMDB and even the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages in this way.

Besides creating searches, Opera lets you do a lot by right-clicking anywhere on a page:

  • Block Content: Right-click an empty area of any webpage and select Block Content to select which ads, scripts and images will be blocked from now on.
  • Validate: Validate the HTML source code of the current page.
  • Translate: Translate the current page into a foreign language with just two clicks.
  • Open With: Open the current page in another browser installed on your system.
  • Edit Site Preferences…: Choose to block/allow cookies and popups, identify Opera as another browser, set a different encoding, enable/disable scripts, images, flash, etc. These setting apply to the current web site only.
  • View source, reload page every X seconds/minutes, send by email, etc.

Widgets

Opera Widgets must not be considered as Opera’s counterpart to Firefox extensions. Instead, Opera Widgets can be used as poor man’s Vista Gadgets on Windows XP, and they do their job most remarkably.

I’m personally very fond of these ones:

They all have a common trait: they all behave as standalone programs, as they should be. The Wikipedia one, for example, can display Wikipedia entries directly inside the widget, unlike some others which just take you to Wikipedia, which is rather pointless.

Although widgets live within Opera, they can be displayed “always behind”, which means they’ll be glued to your desktop and therefore will be visible whenever Opera and other applications are minimized.

Needless to say that anyone brave enough can make widgets for Opera by following a simple Widget Specification.

Everything you can do on the Internet

The term browser applied to Opera is somehow misleading. Personally I would have called it something like “Internet Suite”, because that would be a better choice due to the features it offers and the things it can do.

Traditionally speaking, a web browser can be used to browse web pages, read feeds (sometimes) and navigate through FTP directories. Here’s what Opera can handle:

  • Web Pages – No need of explanations here.
  • FTP – FTP directories are listed very clearly, overriding server’s settings with a more user-friendly layout.
  • Local Files – This was a surprise for me. Typing file:// will automatically load a list of the drives currently available on your machine. Similarly, auto-completion for directory and file names is supported! I almost started using Opera as my everyday’s file manager (almost).
  • Feeds – An embedded feed reader can be used to subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds and view them… in a tab, of course.
  • E-mails – Opera is also a pretty decent email client. As of version 9.5 full IMAP support has been added, which definitely makes the difference.
  • IRC – Opera can be used as an client, which works pretty well. Who needs ChatZilla anymore?
  • News – Opera can be used to signup and retrieve news from newsgroups.
  • Gopher/WAIS – Although not used everyday, Opera can handle these old protocols as well.
  • BitTorrent Files – By default, Opera can act as a BitTorrent client as well, so you can just open .torrent files through the program and then monitor the download progress in the Transfers window, like with any other normal download. While this feature is indeed useful, it is also possible to disable it and still use your favorite BitTorrent client.

Portability and Synchronization

Let’s spend some words about portability. Sure, there are two “Portable Opera” apps out there, and they work well enough, but one thing I’d like about a web browser is the ability to synchronize my preferences, customizations, themes, passwords etc. etc. across multiple computers.
Firefox is getting there, although the technology is still at a very early stage.
Opera is doing something similar through Opera Link, which allows you to synchronize automatically your Bookmarks, your Personal Bar and your Speed Dial. All you need is to get a (free) Opera account, login to Opera Link and enable the synchronization feature from the File menu. From now on every time you’ll modify your Speed Dial or Bookmarks, the changes will be sent to your Opera Link page. Similarly, whenever you start using opera somewhere else, if you login to your Opera Account you should be able to synchronize your Bookmarks and Speed Dial.

Here are some thoughts on this type of technology:

  • It’s not totally private yet. While it’s great to be able to sync bookmarks and speed dial, the problems arise when you finish using your friend’s computer for example… what happens to the bookmarks you just sync’ed? The only way to delete them would be to have your friend to log in to his Opera account and re-sync them. Not enough privacy for my liking.
  • Your passwords, notes, widgets, etc. etc. cannot be synchronized yet, but that will hopefully be possible in near future.
  • Sync’ing bookmarks is pointless for me. Although Opera still hopes to compete with Del.icio.us & Co., that will be very hard to achieve. I stopped using in-browser bookmarks long ago.
  • Link seems and interesting feature considering that Opera is available on virtually any operating system and a lot of different devices (mobile phones, Nintendo DS & Wii, …).

At any rate, it is still possible to “carry around” your personal opera settings by following the instructions provided on this page which explains pretty much everything you need to know aboud Opera files and local storage.

Advanced Features

Opera looks more “polished up” than Firefox in most cases. The superb usage of tabs for nearly everything is one example, and another one is the possibility to apply skins (themes) on-the-fly, without having to restart the browser.
Firefox can do this via the Personas extension, but Opera had this built-in for a long time.

To apply a new skin:

  1. Go to the Skins Directory
  2. Download a skin you like
  3. Opera will download and apply the skin immediately, and it will ask you whether you want to keep it or not. If you choose not to, it won’t save it in your profile (very useful for quick previews). Neat.

Another quality opera always excelled to is accessibility. Besides using the interface in the traditional way, it is also possible to:

  • Use mouse gestures – I wasn’t a big fan of this until I bothered reading the excellent documentation Opera provided for them (which is significantly better than the Firefox’s equivalent). It can be quite useful at times.
  • Use keyboard shortcuts – Believe it or not, you can literally use Opera without a mouse.
  • Speak to it – Opera’s voice integration is getting better and better. Not only you can effectively tell your browser what to do, you can also use the built-in text-to-speech function (Windows only) to have it read entire pages for you. It actually works quite well and it can parse punctuation well enough to apply the right intonation. Just for fun, I had it read it an Italian page… and it actually worked as expected: it was like listening to an American reading an Italian text using US pronuntiation!

Finally, power users will be delighted of the way opera lets you hack the program settings, as you can:

  • Use Tools > Quick Preferences to block/unblock popups, cookies, Java applets, images, etc.
  • Use Tools > Advanced to access detailed information concerning cookies, cache (it lists every image/object cached!), plug-ins, Wand passwords, etc.
  • Use Tools > Appearence… to access and manage appearance-related settings, like skins, toolbars, buttons and panels
  • Use Tools > Preferences… to access general preferences (all the rest)
  • Type in opera:config to view and tweak Opera’s internal settings, somehow like Firefox’s about:config, but much cleaner and easier to use.
  • Download the Developer Console to have a simpler alternative to Firefox’s Web Developer Toolbar extension, to view DOM elements, CSS and Javascript information.

Annoyances

After using as main browser for a few weeks now, I can say that it’s great but not perfect yet. It’s very advanced, faster and more mature than any other browser, of course,but there are a few things which should be fixed or improved.

In particular:

  • It’s not open source – This may not matter to someone, but some people consider this an essential requirement for their browser, and that’s why Firefox is their most obvious choice. Although Opera is free, it is proprietary software after all, which means is definitely not as open as you may want it to be. Personally I’m not too bothered, as I’m starting to think that too much openness may lead to too many unuseful and bloated extensions and make the program somehow “unpredictable” and heavy.
  • No address bar search – Amazingly, only Firefox seems to have this feature built-in. I’m referring to the ability to type whatever in the address bar to be redirected to the site returned by a Google’s I’m feeling lucky search. It is possible to emulate this feature in Opera by creating a custom search for I’m Feeling Lucky and assign it a short keyword like “l”. In this way, for example, typing in l h3rald should lead you to this website. Not quite as immediate as in Firefox though.
  • No find as you type – Another big disappointment for who comes from Firefox or Safari: Opera still uses a dialog box to perform page searches.
  • No spell clecking – Again, both Firefox and Safari now offer text fields spell checking. Opera doesn’t yet.
  • No HTML mail composer – Opera’s built-in mail client can display HTML emails but doesn’t yet allow users to create them.
  • Auto-start widgets? – This is a feature enhancement Opera Dev Team should consider: allow users to configure certain widgets to start automatically when Opera starts.
  • Google Reader + Flash problems – Sometimes I experiences some scrolling problems when reading news which contain embedded flash movies on Google Reader.
  • Corporate Sites – Unfortunately some corporate web site do not support Opera or are not displayed correctly in Opera. Unfortunately there’s nothing much we can do about it but trying to “mask” Opera as another browser (via right-click > Edit Site Preferences…)
  • Default Browser Problems – Setting Opera as default browser on Windows doesn’t seem to set the file icons accordingly (or worse, it resets them to the default file icon).

ERRATA:

  • It is possible to have Opera to redirect you to the right after typing a few words in thr address bar by setting Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” as default search engine (thanks EJ902).
  • Spell Checking is supported via GNU Aspell (thanks cvm) or by using Ospell for inline spell checking (thanks Dava).
  • Find as you type can be triggered by pressing . and typing (thanks cvm).
  • It is possible to auto-start widgets by saving a session with all your widget open and reloading it at every startup [CTRL+F12 > General > Startup > Continue saved sessions] (thanks Tamil & Ameer).
  • As of the latest snapshot, setting Opera as default browser and handler for HTML files doesn’t cause any problems thanks Ayush).

Conclusion

Despite the few annoyances listed in the previous section, Opera 9.5 beta 1 truly impressed me. I was waiting for Opera to get better before switching and now I’ve not been using Firefox for a few weeks.
Although Opera offers a lot of features, there’s still room for improvements, especially for what concerns integration with third party services: I would really like to see some sort of integration with del.icio.us, and that could be possible via widgets at least.
Regarding the new Opera Link feature, it looks very promising and a potential competitor for Mozilla Weave even though it will be used mainly to get more and more users to register to the Opera community (I did, at least), which is indeed very active any way.

To conclude this article, which still barely scratches the surface of this very powerful application, I’d like to praise two more things about Opera:



  • Their website network, and in particular their truly excellent documentation knowledge base, which is very comprehensive of references, tutorials and interesting articles. I am a full time technical writer myself, and I’ve hardly ever come across better documentation.
  • Their extensive support and compliance to web standards, which makes Opera the most advanced browser ever made.

If you’ve not tried Opera before, or if you’ve always dismissed it because “X browser is better”, you may want to give it another shot: for me it was definitely worthwhile!

]]> tag:www.h3rald.com,2005-11-25:/articles/ie-lovers-guide-to-firefox/ An IE Lover's Guide to Firefox 2005-11-25T17:47:00Z 2009-09-06T18:10:52Z My Point of View
After using Mozilla Firefox for at least 2 years, I must admit two things: I'm biased towards Firefox, and I just about forgot what IE is like. When you ask someone who's been using Firefox for a while why he likes it, he would probably say something like, "because Firefox is much better than IE." Then he would start boasting about Firefox's features, like tabbed browsing, security improvements, popup blocking, extensions and so on, without thinking that maybe an accustomed IE user would be overwhelmed by all these new things, and in the end, might become even more obstinate in using IE.

From here on, I'll play the part - for teaching purposes only, of course - of an Internet Explorer lover: IE is the only browser I've ever tried, and it is the only thing you need to surf the Net. I also talked with some IE users I know and I actually opened the browser myself (once again, for teaching purposes), and visited some sites.

Why not have a real IE Lover write this article? Well, I thought about it, actually, and the only answer I could come up with was: there's no such thing as an 'IE lover', only a lot of people who are too used to IE to want to switch to Firefox. So, I'd better write this all myself; after all, a long time ago, I was just like those people.


IE: I've used it for years and it does the job

When I bought my computer from my favourite retailer, I immediately asked him: "Can I go on the Internet with it? Do I need to buy any particular program to visit websites?" and I was told that I didn't need anything at all, because it was all included in Windows XP. I just had to click on the start button and choose "Internet" from the pop-up menu. "Straightforward," I thought. "Anybody can do that!"
I soon noticed that to browse the Internet, Windows used a program called Internet Explorer 6, which was actually part of the whole Windows infrastructure, somehow: it's the same thing, more or less, that I use to view directories on my hard drive, just online. This is the way it should be - so tightly integrated with the operating system that you hardly notice its presence!

After a while, I learned some more about Internet Explorer, and I noticed that a lot of other applications could be integrated into it, like download managers and PDF viewers. I also discovered that I could even listen to music and watch videos through my browser, directly from webpages.

Then I discovered toolbars - and I wasn't entirely happy about them. I installed Google Toolbar, and I really enjoyed its features, but I noticed that some other toolbars seemed to be installed, even if I didn't want to: I think some other program asked me to install them or something; I don't really know. All I do now is just set Internet Explorer not to display them, and change my starting page back to what I want, because sometimes, for some reason, IE starts with a different page than what I want.

All that aside, what I really like about IE is that I can use it for anything and everything, even updating Windows! Microsoft has another cool technology called ActiveX which allows me to download and install Windows security patches and upgrades automatically!

I really don't understand how people can run an operating system other than Windows: the Web was made for Internet Explorer! It's even available for Macintosh.

A friend of mine told me he started using another browser called "Firefox" or "Firebird" or something, and he really likes it! He said it can be used on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and Unix, but when I asked him why it was so good, he told me, "Because it's better, and IE sucks."

I don't understand how he can say that, especially because everyone I know uses Internet Explorer, Bill Gates made loads of money out of it, so it can't be that bad! Anyhow, I decided to give this Fire-thingie a shot.




Face to Face with a Fox
My friend told me to download this thing from a website, because it's free. So what? IE is free, too, because it came with my PC. Anyhow, I figured I'd just go and download it so he'd leave me alone about it. I read that Firefox - that's its name - is a free browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation which has received a lot of awards from various well-known computer-related websites and institutions. It also seem to have a promotional website that says it has been downloaded nearly seventy million times! All the geeks seem to use it, and they love it. Maybe it's really good, or maybe they just don't like Microsoft.

When I ran Firefox for the first time, Internet Explorer warned me that it couldn't verify the authenticity of the download, or something like that, but it says that all the time when I download stuff.
The first thing that happened was that I was prompted to import my favourites from Internet Explorer. Great! I didn't want to lose all the sites I have had bookmarked for years. So far, so good.

There were no XP-related icons at all, just some weird ones I didn't like, especially the "Home Page" icon. It sucks compared to the one in IE. It doesn't integrate with Windows; it's just another application for browsing websites, like that Netscape thing my friend made me try a few years ago. That at least had an email client and other things included with it.

Firefox isn't worth the hassle: my favourite websites look "broken" and the thing is continuously complaining about plugins to view some pages. Some websites even tell me off now because I'm not using IE, in particular Microsoft, which doesn't let me update anymore. I switched back to IE after a few minutes of pointless struggle.


Here's What You Get
Firefox and IE are two very different things, and I didn't like that, but I admit I had some prejudices, maybe because of the fact that my friend told me to download something and said it was better, and it really wasn't. So I decided to give both him and Firefox a second chance, and I asked him to explain to me why Firefox is better than Internet Explorer.
The first thing he mentioned was the different terminology used by the two browsers, which can be summarized as follows:

| Internet Explorer | Firefox |
| Internet Options | Options |
| Temporary Internet Files | Cache |
| Favorites | Bookmarks |
| Address Bar | Location Bar |
| Refresh | Reload |
| Links Bar | Bookmarks Toolbar |
| Explorer Bar | Sidebar |
| Copy Shortcut | Copy Link Location |
| Save Target As | Save Link As |

and that once you get used to the new terms, finding what you're looking for is easier than in Internet Explorer.

My friend also said a new feature implemented by Firefox is popup blocking. So I told him that as of Service Pack 2, even Internet Explorer blocks popups (and before that, so did my Google Toolbar) but apparently Firefox had this feature long before Microsoft did. Good to know, but not really impressive.
What was more interesting was that Firefox lets you type in whatever you want in the Location bar, even if it's not a Web address, and you will still get the most relevant page available: for example, typing "firefox" takes me to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. This is accomplished through Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature. IE doesn't do this: it gives me a search page for what I typed, or it tries to 'guess' the domain by adding a .com or .net after the word.

Firefox still didn't really impress me: some nice tricks, but nothing that would make me want to switch. What started to make the difference was the Tabbed Browsing feature: I knew about it already, because IE started implementing that through the MSN toolbar, but it's a bitbuggy, so I didn't even try it. Firefox has had this feature since its very first release, so I guess it they represents a fully-functional, stable, and key feature of the browser. Tabbed browsing introduces a new philosophy for browsing the web: there is only one browser window, but it can have multiple tabs, each displaying a different page. You can switch from one tab to another by clicking on the title (tab titles appear horizontally under the location bar), "Open Link in New Tab" by right-clicking on a link, and open empty tabs with either CTRL+T or from the File menu. It takes a while to get used to it, but after a while I couldn't really live without it!

I then asked my friend why Firefox doesn't allow me to play music or videos or read pdf files, etc., and he said that I needed to install all the necessary plugins. This is the most annoying thing about Firefox: you have to "feed" it and "teach" it things - a lot like a baby, really. If the analogy is truly valid, in the end it should be worth it, and I have the feeling that my Firefox will grow up well, if I'm careful.

After learning about plugins, and teaching my little Firefox what to do with movies, songs and other types of files, I learnt that it had another really smart feature: outstanding, built-in search capabilities.
I had already noticed the small search bar on the top right, next to the location bar: it's basically a shortcut to Google Search. Cool, but I already had this in IE. One thing I didn't like about IE though, was that if I wanted to use a different search engine, like Yahoo or MSN, I had to install another toolbar, and I ended up with something like three different toolbars under the address bar, so I could hardly see the webpages I was browsing!

Firefox apparently knows that people might need to use more than one search engine, so you can select other search engines by clicking on the little icon on the left of the aforementioned search bar. Yahoo, MSN, Wikipedia, and others are available, and others can be installed easily. If you need a plugin for a search engine, and it doesn't exist yet, you can even make it yourself quite easily.

But let's come back a bit to when I ran Firefox for the first time: where did my IE Favourites go? Under the Bookmarks menu, obviously, and they even kept their folder structure. They can be organized through the Manage Bookmarks option, and indeed Firefox's Bookmarks Manager's interface looks much cleaner and is easier to use than IE's. However, since all the imported bookmarks get dumped in a subfolder, it takes a little time to get them all up to the top level.

Firefox also implements Live Bookmarks: some sites, especially news-related ones like Yahoo News and BBC News, and Slashdot offer RSS feeds which are updated several times a day. With Firefox, you can subscribe to a particular site's RSS by clicking on the little square orange icon which appears on the status bar, and a Live Bookmark will be saved. They appear under the Bookmarks menu, in a specific folder, and also on your Bookmarks Toolbar which is under the location bar: clicking on one of them will show the corresponding site's current headlines. You can click on any of the headlines to read the full story/article.

Even if my friend realised he just created another Firefox fan, he insisted on telling me a few words about Downloads and Options. Regarding Downloads, there's not much to say: Firefox incorporates a Download Manager that saves all files downloaded from the Net in a specific (selectable) folder, and keeps a history of all downloads. The download manager is opened automatically whenever a file is downloaded, and it also can be opened manually by selecting Tools-Downloads. The really handy part is that you can easily open a downloaded file or the folder it's in, or clear your download history all in one place. The drawback is that it stays open until you close it, and you have to click a button to clear the already downloaded files from the queue.

Options is more complex to deal with, as Firefox does not rely on Windows' Internet Options. Firefox's Options (under the Tools menu) are more complete and better organized, as they are clearly divided into 5 main categories:

General
In this panel you can set up your starting page, fonts, colors, language, character encodings, whether or not Firefox is the default browser, and your connection settings.

Privacy
Here - and this is really much better than in IE, I must admit - you can clear and manage history items, saved form information, saved passwords, download manager history, cookies and the browser cache. You can clear everything with a single click, but you'll lose all your saved passwords and your history lists.

Web Features
This panel is for setting your preferences regarding popup blocking, software installation, images, Java and JavaScript.

Downloads
Here you can choose your download destinatination folder as well as set other download-related preferences, like setting particular file types to save to a particular folder.

Advanced
This panel is for - as the name implies - advanced preferences regarding accessibility, browsing, security, validation and certificates. You don't need to change anything here unless you've been told to or you know what you're doing.

Is That All?
That's what I thought, and although I was really impressed with Firefox, I was still missing some features that IE had, such as third party toolbars. My friend was about to go, but he quickly opened a pre-defined firefox bookmark: Mozilla Update. "Now you know how Firefox works: I'm sure you can work this out by yourself," he said, and left me with a door to another vast world to explore. The journey was far from over.


Extensions and Themes
One aspect of Firefox that was a bit discouraging was the fact that once you install the browser you need to install this, download that, and configure the other thing. For any IE user (like me), this is a major hassle: before, I just wanted to browse the Net, and I didn't care what I was using or how I was using it. Now, I have to be aware of certain things, and more or less create the browser I need! On the other hand, this is sort of exciting, in the sense that unlike IE, Firefox can became whatever you want it to be.

Even after using Firefox for a while, and even after my friend had explained all its nice features, I still felt that it was somehow incomplete. Luckily, Firefox has extensions and themes. The numerous Extensions enhance Firefox by adding new features which - honestly - I never thought were even conceivable to be included in a browser. Furthermore, Firefox also has Themes, so you can change the browser into something completely different, with different icons, shapes and colors!

It's worth it to mention some Extensions which really impressed me by the functionality or behaviours they added to Firefox:

Adblock
This extension blocks ads - if you don't want to see a banner on a certain site anymore, just right-click on it, select AdBlock, and it's gone! It also remembers your preferences for every URL or site. It's easily customizeable and useful.

Tabbrowser Preferences
This adds a new category in your Options called Tabbed Browsing, where you can customize particular behaviours concerning tabs, like opening all addresses typed in the location bar in a new tab (focused or unfocused), forcing links to open in new tabs instead of new windows, and so on.

FlashGot
I complained before that my download manager wasn't integrated with Firefox: this extension does that, and supports nearly every possible download manager and accelerators. It also has a built-in gallery to quickly see what file types you are downloading.

CustomizeGoogle
This personalises Google-related sites and services, such as using Google Suggest in every search, filtering content and ads, anonymizing data transmitted to Google, and much more.

ForeCastFox
Get weather forecasts from all over the world displayed directly on your status bar or anywhere you want.

Developer Tools
This is THE ultimate solution if you are a web developer or interested in knowing more about webpages. With this extension you can:
- Disable anything with a single click (images, JavaScript, cookies, colors, animations, etc.)
- Get CSS information or modify a page's CSS
- Have fun with Forms (convert POSTs to GETs, show hidden fields, and so on)
- Perform image-related operations: show paths, attributes, outline particular images, etc.
- Get infos about various elements on a page
- Clear history, cookies, open java console, view document's source
- Outline particular elements (images, tables, etc.)
- Resize your browser to a custom or predefined resolution
- Validate a page (HTML, CSS, WAI accessibility, speed reports)

Googlebar
Clone of the IE Google Toolbar.

Yahoo Companion
Clone of the IE Yahoo toolbar.

FoxyTunes
Control your favourite media player (several programs supported) directly from Firefox!

ChatZilla
A complete, fully functional, easy-to-use IRC client which runs from Firefox.

FireFTP
Fully integrated FTP client.

There are actually many more extensions available from either the Firefox website or other portals which can be very useful, depending on your needs, but there are also Themes which can change Firefox's look and feel completely, such as:

Qute
This theme inspired Firefox default theme: "Icons designed to be modern, dynamic and fresh, with attention paid to usability and comfort over extended use".

Silverskin
"Your favourite browser with a silver skin (With the Qute icons by Arvid Axelsson)"

Saferfox Xpanded
"A full skin theme with a modern aqua design"

Plastikfox Crystal SVG
"Plastik style from KDE with Crystal SVG icons"

Noia (eXtreme)
"This theme is based on the Noia2.0 icon set by Carlitus."

Brushed
"A Brushed and Polished Browser Interface."

Again, many more themes are available. There's something for everyone, really!


To switch or not to switch?

Yes, OK, it's not one of those questions which will keep you up at night, but for sure it can be a quandary. Personally, I decided to switch to Firefox gradually, while still viewing some sites in IE, because I think this can be a good compromise. The biggest problem is that even if Firefox supports Web standards (my friend said IE doesn't) some sites do not. Especially before Firefox, web developers apparently had to create their sites to be viewed correctly with Microsoft's browser. That's why some sites still have things like "This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 6", or even, in some cases, they'll suggest you download the latest IE version, because your browser is incompatible when actually it's the site which is not compatible with Web Standards.
Furthermore, ActiveX is a non-standardized proprietary technology which Microsoft uses to make software components communicate and also provide complex functionalities necessary for things like Windows Update. Firefox doesn't support ActiveX, which has been exploited many times in the past (and still now): tough luck. Nowadays, Microsoft wants you to have Automatic Updates turned on, so you don't need to visit the Windows Update site anymore. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not too bothered by that, but if someday I need ActiveX technology, there's already a Mozilla Project on it. Final note: If you need to switch back to IE for some reason, the IE View extension can quickly give you the opportunity to do so, opening IE to view the page you're visiting.

It looks like the Browser Wars have started again, and as a matter of fact, Firefox is becoming known for its features, innovations and community support. Switching can be scary, and people can try forcing you to do it, but you shouldn't listen to them: don't start using Firefox just because "it's cool" or "everybody uses it"; try it first, understand how it works, and spend time learning it, because it just might be worth it.

One thing is certain: The existence of IE lovers is debatable, but there are over 170 million Firefox lovers. Go get it!]]> tag:www.h3rald.com,2005-11-20:/articles/from-firefox-to-deer-park/ From Firefox to... Deer Park? 2005-11-20T18:05:30Z 2009-09-06T18:10:51Z roadmap, and we're already in July). Anyhow, this developer-oriented preview release can be downloaded and installed on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X systems plus eventually, Solaris and others. The decision of using the codename Deer Park instead of naming the release Firefox 1.1 alpha 1 or something of the like was made to avoid the havoc which occurred before the official release of Firefox 1.0 (which was codenamed "Phoenix" by the way,) when some websites offered a late preview release as the actual new version to download.
This time when you install and run the program the Firefox name has been substituted with Deer Park Alpha 1, so for example Deer Park is used in the browser's title bar and in the "About Deer Park Alpha 1" menu under "Help". The icon they used for this testing release is not even the usual firefox icon - it represents a plain blueish globe with no fox whatsoever. They have definitely put in effort this time to avoid confusion.

Furthermore, when the browser is installed it does not overwrite your existing firefox installation, simply because (on windows) it's installed under a directory named "Deer Park Alpha 1". As a side note, the process is "firefox.exe", so you cannot run Firefox and Deer Park at the same time: you'll just open another window of the browser which is already running. Having said this, let us now examine what is new in this developer's release.

Fixed bugs
Like any other Firefox Release, Deer Park comes with several Bug Fixes. On the official changelog there are many bugs reported to be fixed, sometimes they are hardly noticeable but I experienced some of them when browsing some websites and also when creating applications myself:

- 103638 - Targets with same name in different windows open in wrong window with javascript.
- 97283 - Mouse wheel scrolling does not work for elements such as div using overflow - auto or scroll.
- 251986 - Keyboard scrolling does not work for elements such as div using overflow - auto or scroll.
- 245829 - Download manager progress and title do not update correctly, wrong number of files and percentage after finishing or cancelling a download.

These are in my opinion the most notable of the notable bugs which have been fixed in this release. I was particularly relieved when I noticed that all the issues regarding scrolling divs or similar elements had been resolved. Also, it must be noted that Deer Park seems overall slightly faster than Firefox 1.0.4 (Note: I also have a Pentium II, that is why I could notice that probably). The speed increase is most probably caused by the base for Deer Park being the Mozilla 1.8 Beta 2 code, which is almost 1 year newer than what used for Firefox 1.0.


New Features
Although announced as a non-feature complete release, it comes with some new and useful features. The new feature list includes nothing too extraordinary for now and they are all somehow minor changes but they really do represent some improvements. Perhaps the two most obvious features introduced with this release are the Sanitize Deer Park and the Report Broken Sites functions. The first one is accessible through the Tools menu and basically allows you to delete the Browsing History, Saved Form Information, Saved Passwords, Download History, Cookies and Cache. Actually you can accomplish the same feat via Options->privacy, but with Sanitize you need just one click. Convenience I suppose?

The Report Broken Sites feature is reachable via the Help menu and basically starts a short wizard that you can use when you notice something wrong with a website. You just have to provide the url of the website, the problem you experienced (Browser not supported, cannot login, plugin not installed, other content missing, odd behaviou, odd appearence, etc.) and an optional description and email and then the report will be submitted to the Mozilla Deleopers.

Additional features included are also Image thumbnails as Tab icons, used when viewing a single image with firefox, not a shocking feature really but it's just a little (tiny) bit of eyecandy I guess. Furthermore, when you try accessing an FTP server anonymously and that server doesn't allow anonymous access, you are prompted to provide appropriate credentials (before it just didn't let you in)... another little improvement, which probably will not change your life, but it's nice to know that it's there.

Another more notable feature only for linux and mac users though allows changes made in the Preferences menu to be applied immediately without restarting your system. Using Windows on the other hand, they improved the option interface with a more extensive use of tabbed interfaces, and also additional options concerning tabbed browsing (BUT in my opinion the tabbrowser preferences extension is still necessary to achieve certain behaviours).

Regarding something more technical, among the so-called developers features there are various improvements regarding CSS support, in particular CSS2's quotes nesting and even some new CSS3 (!) features, like Multi-column layouts the :only-child selector, overflow-x and overflow-y properties and even various new cursors names.
Even more news from Mozilla suggests that Deer Park already supports some functions for resolution-independent scalable vector graphics (SVG 1.1), but it's obviously just experimental, and even scriptable bitmap drawing surface (). Last but not least, even support for Xforms is already possible in Deer Park through a related project/extension.


Final Thoughs
Again the Mozilla Foundation - with this fully functional but yet incomplete preview release,- seem to be always improving their foundations, and always offering support for new technologies and features before others. This release has certainly seen some great improvements, on the other hand hardly anything changes for website developers with this release. It is without a doube that websites are viewed better with Deer Park than with Firefox 1.0.4 or IE or any other browser for that matter. But it is impossible to even start planning at this stage for the development of a publicly accessible site using for example SVG graphics and Xforms, as visitors using other browsers will not be able to see any "magic" in them, or perhaps even view them at all.

It's always the same paradox of web-development: where on one side of the coin there are new and better products are available, a website/online application should be accessible by at least 90-95% of visitors. Unfortunately, for now though 90-95% of all internet users seem to use some other product instead of Firefox or Deer Park... But that's another story!]]>