Firefox: a new brand of internet fanboi-ism?

Ave

Anyone else noticed a disturbing trend in the last year, that of an increasingly angry/derogatory/virile "group" of firefox users, who DEMAND you switch, insult you for using an alternative, and insult you if you dont make the switch?

I've seen it on many boards - from mmorpg forums, to boards.ie, and its quite simply hypocritical, given the reasons a lot of them have for trying to "convert" you.

aidan_walsh

Töpher

doodle_sketch wrote:

D to the I to the ITO

Please kill me!

Optikus

well i use Firefox and recommend using it.. but i certainly don't insult them muppets who use IE. (joke)

aidan_walsh

Ave wrote:

Anyone else noticed a disturbing trend in the last year, that of an increasingly angry/derogatory/virile "group" of firefox users, who DEMAND you switch, insult you for using an alternative, and insult you if you dont make the switch?

I've seen it on many boards - from mmorpg forums, to boards.ie, and its quite simply hypocritical, given the reasons a lot of them have for trying to "convert" you.

Any chance you can tell us whats hypocritical about it?

SantaHoe

I'd reccomend switching from IE to just about anything else.
But tbh I'm not arsed what browser you want to use, it's your call.
I use Mozilla, now and then I end up having to use IE to view a site because I've disabled flash in mozilla (flash use on the web these days seems to be 90% adds), and for a while I actually forgot the web was infested with such pop-up crap.
People feel passionate about their alternate browser for a reason, but being agressive about it is just plain daft.

amp

I concur with the non-agressive vibe. I consider myself a Firefox enthusiast rather than a Firefox Warrior. Having said that Firefox Warrior does sound much cooler...

I switched from Netscape to IE when IE went to version 4 because IE4 did the job better than Netscape 3. I've switched to Firefox for the exact same reason. If Microsoft bring out a browser (which they may not do for a while givin that they seem to be tying new versions of it with new Windows versions) that I like more than Firefox I'll switch right back.

Ave

doodle_sketch wrote:

Any chance you can tell us whats hypocritical about it?

One of the reasons they commonly give is that IE/MS are strangling the browser market, and yet they are trying to force you to change to a browser they specify.

radiospan

No, I just use Firefox, not force it on other people.

Of course, I still have to use IE for some things. (Embedded videos don't seem to work properly for me in Firefox)

Creamy Goodness

i use it and think it's cool. if people are having certain problems with IE or any other browser i may suggest using firefox but never would i demand someone to use it

aidan_walsh

Actually, the main reason I give is that IE is simply an inferiour product, built on technologies that are proven to be dangerous (ActiveX), provide their own "standards" (JScript), offered little until recently to hinder annoyances (popup blocker, now in SP2), and slow to offer new features. Thats why I use Firefox.

I cannot understand the fanaticism about it. I agree IE is rubbish and alternatives should be sought. But until Firefox 1.0 comes out something like Opera is a much better recommendation.

I'm using it now and its good but well I don't know

Btw I'm disappointed with the themes available. Those on update.mozilla.org are average. I get the feeling that everyone is using an unofficial theme.

Is there a Safari/Apple/OSX theme available anywhere? Cheers

aidan_walsh

Deleted User wrote:

until Firefox 1.0 comes out something like Opera is a much better recommendation.

Thats the beauty of a good open source project, you don't need to wait for the official first release to use or recommend a program. Stable releases are every bit are reliable in the most part.

Amz

I use firefox (since reading about it in amp's journal) and find it great.

Although that's from an accessiblity point of view rather than anything else. I have a visual impairment and the fact that I can increase the font size as much as I want with Firefox and was unable to do so with IE was a real "selling point" for me. IE's "largest" font size simply wasn't large enough for me.

*shrug*

Peteer

http://browsehappy.com/

I have multiple browsers installed on my computer. The above url is what I have set as the homepage in IE.

Peter

the pop-ups, lack of tabbed browsing, lack of mouse gestures and non-existant security kind of turned me away from IE.

SantaHoe

Deleted User wrote:

the pop-ups, lack of tabbed browsing, lack of mouse gestures and non-existant security kind of turned me away from IE.

Mouse gestures, hmm I've heard of that... what's it all about?
Is it the same sort of thing as you'd find in the game "Black and White"?
Like shake it in a circle to navagate backwards or something?
I've got 8 buttons on my mouse and I'm fudged if I can find anything usefull to do with them in a browser.



o_0

e.g Hold down right mouse button and move mouse left to go back a page, or move it up to open a new tab or move it down and to the right to close the tab.

Winters

If your on firefox get the "All-In-One Guestures" from update.mozilla.org and suit it to your needs. With a simple hold down the right click and move the mouse in a certain direction/combo of directions you can make the browser do stuff .... I've mine all setup nicly and i find myself quite lost when I use the fox in DCU and my extensions are not installed.

I wouldnt really push Firefox on people THAT much. Now, admitiddly I have done it to a few people but only for their own good. And the RC 0.10.1 build that is out at the moment is very stable indeed.

Chicks also dig the xute fox over the big blue E aswell ...... or so I keep telling myself. I must order me a firefox t-shirt

garthv

the only reason i tell people to use firefox is because i find it a hell of a lot better than IE,
Tabbed browsing,has its own pop-up blocker and is not owned by microsoft,
what more do you want:)

Winters

GaRtH_V wrote:

what more do you want:)

Lets not forget its free....

Cabaal

I deal with so many users each time that have problems because they use IE, I won't push firefox unless they ask me what I use or do.

In the end people can continue using IE but I just hope sites don't continue to be IE only like this site http://www.springhillcourt.com/
Competition is a good thing and when it comes to software and in this case browsers its even better

leeroybrown

I use Firefox almost full time and have done since Phoenix 0.4 (two name changes ago) was first released.

I avoid IE as a rule:

Firstly, security wise it's so bad that CERT one of the major Computer Security Agencies classified it as a major security risk and started advising users to move. It takes a pretty bad situation before they would say something like that. There are security problems in IE that allow AdWare, MalWare, SpamWare and every other kind of *Ware possible to be installed on your PC. These bugs are known issues and just don't get fixed by Microsoft. It's also a component of Windows meaning any security flaw in it is instantly coupled to your OS.

Secondly, as a web developer I find that IE causes hours of work for me. To create a standards compliant and accessible site you need to jump through so many IE only hoops it's untrue. No browser implements standards perfectly but IE mis-implements most of them. Having created a fully xHTML Strict site with a complex design (unlike the normal simplistis strict ones) I'd love to burn IE and get those hours back.

Thirdly, from a usability point of view it's horiffic. It's bloated, slow and by default lacks modern features like tabs.

Why I use Firefox:

As I mentioned above I've been using it from the early alpha's on, and even then I found it excellent and it's improved significantly since. You get tabbed browsing, tabbed bookmarks, excellent extensions (if you use them), a mini download manager, low memory usage (compared to IE) and a very small download size and install size.

Ultimately, I avoid IE as a rule, and I use Firefox by choice as it's replacemnt, but I never force anyone to change.

dahamsta

I just quit using Firefox again last week, after a two-week trial of PR1. That's the longest I've lasted with it for quite some time, but it's still not up to the job imho and I've switched back to Avant (tabbed IE) again. I find the customisability of Firefox excellent and the ease of which I can create extensions myself absolutely wonderful, but it's still a little bit too unstable for my liking, and I've never, ever seen proof of the common assertion that it's faster than IE.

I'm disappointed by this, because not only would I prefer to support an open source product, I would very much like to use Firefox (and Thunderbird) as my default browser on the path to switching permanantly to Linux. But it's not happening.

BTW, I agree 100% with the accusation of fanboism. I used to be the mod here and I had to ban this kinf of behaviour specifically from the forum because it was getting out of hand. I have to say that the preaching that goes on about Firefox is really rather pathetic. I feel just a little bit sad for these people.

adam

parsi

When I got my new PC I decided to go for Thunderbird and Firefox as my mail/news & web clients. I'm still on Thunderbird - find it a bit clunky compared to OE - but will probably stick with it for another while.

As for Firefox I know I should use it (just like Fairtrade goods) but I find it a bit slower than IE , eBay doesn't like it that much and it seems to me that I can see it rendering the images - this is on broadband and I thought my days of seeing text loading first and then the images one by one were over...so now I only seem to use it when I bring up a link from a message I'm reading in Thunderbird...

dubhthach

I've three issues with IE
(1) lack of standards compliance
(2) lack of development, last major release of IE was in 2001/2002
(3) It only works on Windows Platform, on the other hand Firefox is available on Windows, IRIX and Linux the three platforms i use regulary

dahamsta

dahamsta wrote:

I've switched back to Avant (tabbed IE) again.
adam

Funny you should mention Avant because I was using Maxthon heavily. I like it because I can customise it, zip it up and put on a floppy. Then when I go to another PC I have all my bookmarks, quicksearches, gestures etc

Only problem is the security aspect. I got hammered by spyware recently when using it on a crack site

fragile

Firefox is my browser of choice.

The one problem I have with Firefox is that if I have a load of extensions installed and configured exactly the way I want them, and I have used the password manager to remember all my logon details, and I then upgrade to a newer version of Firefox and discover that my old profile is unuseable because of incompatability issues (this has happened to me at least twice) I have lost all my configuration and password data

I know I can root around in my profile folder and find the necessary files that contain this data but this is hardly a reliable method of upgrading.

It is getting better with the new extensions manager and check-for-update feature.

What I would really like is an account export feature that enables me to export my account details to an XML file on a server somewhere where I have an account, then when I use Firefox on a different computer I can tell it to look up my profile. Firefox would then use the data in the XML file to download any extensions that I use, configure them the way I like and download my password manager data...hey presto, Firefox the way I like it!

dahamsta

Deleted User wrote:

Only problem is the security aspect. I got hammered by spyware recently when using it on a crack site

Never have that problem with either Avant or vanilla IE. Don't run a firewall or a virus scanner. It's just a matter of patching and using the noggin.

adam

Raskolnikov

I tend to alternate between the two, I like some of the extensions you get with Firefox like the google search bar and BugMeNot, the ad blocker is absolutely wonderful too, places like Tomshardware are like brand new sites.

However, IE is still my main browser for a few reasons.

1. I find Firefox to be the resource hog, even on different computers, it takes longer to start up and consumes more resources.
2. I'm familar with the layout and shortcuts of IE, I really can't be bothered mucking around with Firefox to 'learn' another browser.

With IE, I've disabled ActiveX, Javascript and other cack; along with tightening up the security settings. Running Ad-Aware or Spybot now, I rarely get anything along the lines of spyware.

I do agree though, there's a lot of fanboi-ism, generated mostly by the extreme anti-Microsoft types.

Cabaal

Deleted User wrote:

Funny you should mention Avant because I was using Maxthon heavily. I like it because I can customise it, zip it up and put on a floppy. Then when I go to another PC I have all my bookmarks, quicksearches, gestures etc

The very same can be done with Firefox