Web Development

Sorry, just found another feature I love--if your page is coded correctly, Firefox can detect the RSS feed and gives you a "Live Bookmark" option in the status bar. Click on that and it adds the feed as a bookmark, but the clever part is that the bookmark displays the contents of the RSS feed.

So does Netscape, Mozilla, Camino.... Opera.... Enigma, Avant, Crazybrowser, SlimBrowser..... Pop-up blockers and tabbing are par for the course now.... accept of course IE.

The fact that Firefox and the rest of the Mozila family supports Standards always gets forgotton.

I have been developing web sites/applications for 8 years now. This browser my very well get the developers to adhear to the HTML standards if enough people start using it and complaining about the crappy way the site looks or performs.

I use FireFox for all my standard browsing, and for my web development. I build my pages using hand-code anyway, so it always works in most browsers without modification. I then test my pages in the other browsers.
I too, run across sites that won't work well in FireFox. I simply re-load the site in IE. I am quite happy with this arrangement, because the only sites that I use IE on are sites that I trust anyway.

In fact there is a plugin to automate this, by adding a context menu to open your page in IE (ieview).

I have written to every site which doesn't work properly with an alternative browser and tell them that while I may research product on that site, I will never shop on that site until it works with something other than IE - and point out that not only do many of us in the industry feel that way, even the Department of Homeland Security has recommended dumping IE as a browser because of the lack of security/ I have since gone back to a couple of the sites which which used to be "IE friendly" and which now work with other browsers. I have also made sure to let family & friends know that they have an alternative to IE - which is not only more secure, but faster, and several of them have switched as well, so I expect more complaint emails to fly.

Even though Firefox is great, you can't deny the reality that the technology lock-ins posed by the Microsoft monopoly make it nearly impossible to use an alternate browser as your only tool.

It's a shame. I use Firefox and Camino almost exclusively, but there are times when I can't because some sites just won't work without IE5.x+. And some sites still won't work on a Mac even with IE 5.23.

Standards compliance makes a big difference and web site developers are starting to embrace that, but corporations that are engaged to Microsoft, are slow to modify their sites to accommodate others, marginalizing other browsers and platforms by stating that you must use Windows with IE.

Oh well,
Rob