Who wants Firefox?

breadmonkey

Is there any way to convince computing services to install firefox on the system? IE is just too bent for my liking!

Seifer

No there is not because for the vast, vast majority of students internet explorer does everything they need.
I'm one of those students and proud to say I am so just quiet down and conform. (And don't start whining about linux either)

rainbow kirby

IE = insecure, bloated pile of crap. TBH Computer Services would be far better off uninstalling IE from all the machines in college, and replacing it with Firefox.

BKtje

i love firefox, does everything ie does but better (and more).

irlrobins

B-K-DzR wrote:

i love firefox, does everything ie does but better (and more).

doesn't work with windows update and my online bank account.

rainbow kirby

Another fine example of Microsoft's monopolistic behaviour and banks having lazy programmers.

White Rabbit

Firefox is great, but alas is not 100% functional with National Irish Banks Online Banking.

IF you want to use firefox in college (as I do) then check out Firefox portable.
It's designed for USB disk keys but works fine on your H:\ drive (takes a while to start is all).

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/

Syth

I emailed computing services about this in May 2004. This is the responce I got:

Computing Services wrote:

The only way to install Firefox on a CS computer is
to distribute the software though nal. To do this you
must inform your faculty who will in turn contact their
CUAC member. The CUAC will propose this issue to the
Computing Services liason for the faculty. If there is
a valid academic reason for installing the software
computing services will consider the application.

Last week Mozilla became available for students - you
can find it though NAL under the internet and email
folder.

A CD Burning facility is available in the Daedalus
Building for all students to use there is also the
option of storing files on a USB key.

I will log a call to a member of our advisory team
regarding your issues with java and javac - they
will contact you in due course.

In the meantime I recommend you contact your tutor
who will discuss your issues with a member of the
CUAC.


Regards,

Linda Vines

In short sweet **** all.

Though you can install Firefox into C:\Firefox (the default is C:\Program Files\Firefox). They can't lock down their computers for ****.

Red Alert

I'm going to email them anyway. What was the point of installing a really old version of mozilla - are these people in touch with reality at all? NAL+Group Policy=No IE=Less Viruses and Broken machines

Harkev

I'm all for gettin firefox... does anyone else have problems accessing gmail with IE in UCD?

irlrobins

nope, works fine for me on my desktop or laptop. Don't use the computer labs though.

ghostchant

To be honest I don't see a whole lot of difference between the two, other than firefox has tabs, which is nice, but pictures can take ages to load on pages, which is not nice . (And I don't care if i'm brushing over the details) And since firefox is rapidly growing in popularity surely it won't be long before viruses become a problem - will it? (that's not a rhetorical question by the way:cool: )

PaddyofNine

You could point them in the direction of some reading material!

Like here, here, or even right here! (Or here. Hell, or even here!)

john^doyle

its actually possible to get tabbed browsing in IE, I have it but it's not as good as Firefox's

BKtje

doesn't work with windows update and my online bank account.

Nearly everything then

Red Alert

you don't need to go to the windows update site if you have set your computer to accept all auto-updates (which you seriously should).

penguincakes

Red Alert wrote:

you don't need to go to the windows update site if you have set your computer to accept all auto-updates (which you seriously should).

You're joking. I haven't had auto-update on for at least 2 years now. I've only had to install maybe 3 or 4 updates manually. Most of them will just bloat your system, feck with your media player (if you use it) or do completely undeterminable things.

irlrobins

penguincakes wrote:

You're joking. I haven't had auto-update on for at least 2 years now. I've only had to install maybe 3 or 4 updates manually. Most of them will just bloat your system, feck with your media player (if you use it) or do completely undeterminable things.

Nonsense. I've auto updated several machines over the years without a problem. Yes the occasional bad install happens. But thats generally due to an existing fault with system rather than update prog. If u've only installed 3 or 4 updates ur system must be vunerable as hell

Red Alert

most of them actually are security updates, you can also choose to review and accept/reject them. anyway most of this only matters if you use WMP as opposed to other more fully-featured players.

back on topic, it looks like mozilla isn't the only idiotic software choice on the network:

PuTTY is not present, the old version of teraterm is, along with a version of Exceed Telnet which they obviously have had to pay for.

Filezilla is not present, neither is WinSCP, again an old version of Exceed FTP is which is unnecessairly costly and is not the best solution available.

Openoffice is installed, but bets will be taken on how long it will take to update it to version 2.0 which really does look a lot better than 1.3.

A really old version of Borland-C is installed (and the permissions on the network share are wrong which is why you get those red boxes when you backspace), when in fact Bloodshed Dev-c++ is free and is of exceptional quality. The debugger alone is reason to use it, although in fairness Borland's one isn't bad in that regard.

What's weird is that Firefox is installed locally on all the machines in Blackrock (as opposed to distributed in NAL). Seems a little odd that they'd maintain boot images for stuff that could just go in ZENWorks/NAL.

humbert

I'm all for auto updates, windows is buggy enough and when some evil hacker or virus writer finds another vulnerability microsoft needs to update, but have to admit on my dell 9300 laptop with xp pro sp2 the amount of serious problems the updates have causes requiring me to have to uninstall them from the recovery console makes me sweat a little every time I let them install now:(

Red Alert

i've never had any issues at all with auto updates. usually it's a sign that some system files have been corrupted and auto update expects to find them. enough to warrant a re-install me thinks.

Hanginthere

If you install firefox to your H drive you can get it to work by going to tools.Options/general/Connection settings
You then put in the manual proxy for all protocolls as proxy1.ucd.ie the port is 8484, The only problem is that you have to do this whenever you log on. But in my opinion it saves me a lot of hastle

Seifer

hanginthere wrote:

If you install firefox to your H drive you can get it to work by going to tools.Options/general/Connection settings
You then put in the manual proxy for all protocolls as proxy1.ucd.ie the port is 8484, The only problem is that you have to do this whenever you log on. But in my opinion it saves me a lot of hastle

How is that less hassle than just using internet explorer?

Hanginthere

because internet explorer is a pain in the ass and has crashed an on a crazy amount of sites. also it takes like 20 seconds to do that

BKtje

while i love firefox i couldnt be arsed doing all that to get it working on every new machine. IE hasn't crashed once for me yet (tho im sure it will eventually ),

Red Alert

Look, computer services offer Netscape, Mozilla and IE. Loads of people want IE, fact, fine. Nobody uses the other two, as the version of Mozilla is so old that it's slow and useless. Time taken to do an application on NAL is so short it's unbelieveable:

1) Clean machine using Imaging (5 mins)
2) Install app as normal using Y:\ not C:\ (2 mins)
3) Take Registry Snapshot (1 min) [to make the stuff that you see the red NAL graph doing]
4) Put app in to NAL (10 mins) [assign it to a folder and tell it where you put it]

Can't be that difficult - i'd practically offer to do it for them for free!

IE crashed for me during an online MCQ, and my lecturer said "That's a terrible excuse".


(Seriously )

White Rabbit

Hanginthere wrote:

If you install firefox to your H drive you can get it to work by going to tools.Options/general/Connection settings

This is all completely unnecessary of you use Firefox Portable as I suggested before...


as for the advantages of auto form filling, tabbed browsing and security, well, just try it and then see if you go back to IE

ghostchant

White Rabbit wrote:

This is all completely unnecessary of you use Firefox Portable as I suggested before...


as for the advantages of auto form filling, tabbed browsing and security, well, just try it and then see if you go back to IE

I've tried it. I'm back using IE.

penguincakes

irlrobins wrote:

Nonsense. I've auto updated several machines over the years without a problem. Yes the occasional bad install happens. But thats generally due to an existing fault with system rather than update prog. If u've only installed 3 or 4 updates ur system must be vunerable as hell

Hmm well I don't know, I suppose I'm just biased against windows telling me to install software I "need". I've never got a virus, and it seems none of the updates have dealt with spyware problems (which have disappeared after moving to Firefox) by the amount of it still around, only got a worm once after turning off firewall for a few minutes trying to figure something out (bad idea, stupid me), etc. I don't know, maybe I'm just good at keeping my computer healthy

penguincakes

ghostchant wrote:

I've tried it. I'm back using IE.

What made you go back to IE?