Monday, October 10, 2005
Why I'm about to leave Firefox to go back to Internet Explorer
I like Firefox and all, and sure, Firefox introduced me to tabbed browsing and greasemonkey, but it also made me realize what Internet Explorer did well and how I miss it.
For starters, on my system (and any other system I've loaded Firefox on and attempted to use) Firefox just "seems" heavy. It takes longer to load, about 15-25 seconds on average. I also had some issues with the memory leaks but they were fixed with more recent builds. I also don't like how the download window take for friggin ever to popup when I attempt to download something. I know it can be turned off, but I liked that window so it would have been nice for it to work without locking up all instances of the Firefox browser I have running. What I think it all basically comes down to is me wanting to have my cake and eat it too. I want the tabbed browsing experience, I like the way downloading files work and the whole password management system. I like the browser itself notifing me of just released uprgades. I also want the application to be as snappy as Internet Explorer is.
Now granted, Internet Explorer is probably more ingrained into the OS (Windows OSs, from XP to Win 2k3 server) than Firefox could hope to be, but when I'm browsing the net I don't want to have to wait to get to where I need to go. Internet Explorer is just quick, consistantly. I open it up and I'm off and running. One thing I don't think is as big an issue as everyone makes it out to be is security. As long as your up to date on hotfixes and patches, ,you'll be ok. I'm not saying that you'll never get hit, it's just that your odds look better if you stay on top of things. Come to think of it, this is something IE does pretty badly. I wouldn't know if there is an IE related hotfix out there unless I had automatic updates turned on and even then, it's the operating system telling me I need all of these other hotfixes too.
There's a reason I titled this article "Why I'm about to leave Firefox..." and not "I'm leaving Firefox...". I still dig the lil go getter of a browser. They're bringing the browser battle to Microsoft and have done so with new, innovative features and way better CSS Standards support. At this point I don't dislike Firefox enough to leave it so I'll stay the course just to keep away from the rigidity and staleness that has come to be Internet Explorer [end rant]. ¶ 7:19 AM
For starters, on my system (and any other system I've loaded Firefox on and attempted to use) Firefox just "seems" heavy. It takes longer to load, about 15-25 seconds on average. I also had some issues with the memory leaks but they were fixed with more recent builds. I also don't like how the download window take for friggin ever to popup when I attempt to download something. I know it can be turned off, but I liked that window so it would have been nice for it to work without locking up all instances of the Firefox browser I have running. What I think it all basically comes down to is me wanting to have my cake and eat it too. I want the tabbed browsing experience, I like the way downloading files work and the whole password management system. I like the browser itself notifing me of just released uprgades. I also want the application to be as snappy as Internet Explorer is.
Now granted, Internet Explorer is probably more ingrained into the OS (Windows OSs, from XP to Win 2k3 server) than Firefox could hope to be, but when I'm browsing the net I don't want to have to wait to get to where I need to go. Internet Explorer is just quick, consistantly. I open it up and I'm off and running. One thing I don't think is as big an issue as everyone makes it out to be is security. As long as your up to date on hotfixes and patches, ,you'll be ok. I'm not saying that you'll never get hit, it's just that your odds look better if you stay on top of things. Come to think of it, this is something IE does pretty badly. I wouldn't know if there is an IE related hotfix out there unless I had automatic updates turned on and even then, it's the operating system telling me I need all of these other hotfixes too.
There's a reason I titled this article "Why I'm about to leave Firefox..." and not "I'm leaving Firefox...". I still dig the lil go getter of a browser. They're bringing the browser battle to Microsoft and have done so with new, innovative features and way better CSS Standards support. At this point I don't dislike Firefox enough to leave it so I'll stay the course just to keep away from the rigidity and staleness that has come to be Internet Explorer [end rant]. ¶ 7:19 AM
