Web Development
Mozilla.org has posted the Firefox 1.0 Preview Release. Here's the free download:
http://downloads.builder.com/abstract.aspx?docid=97694
Would love to hear what people think once they've downloaded and tried it out.
by lonniehodges
by rexworld
I'll start by listing my favorite features in Firefox:
1. The Pop-up Blocker.
2. Tabbed browsing.
What else?
by rexworld
by lsw
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've found some of the extensions for Firefox really cool: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/
(some of them are a little buggy too)
My gripe with using alternative browsers, like Firefox, Opera and so on is that many sites are only designed for Internet Explorer.
Examples are a CMS I use often for one Web site won't work properly, my online banking doesn't work correctly and one of my favourite news sites breaks.
What do we do with these non-standards compliant "developers"?
by rrvillan
by noel
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.
by jacquelineth
by mrfxx
by robmcalister
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
by ezann
I think it's the ol' 80/20 rule in action. From a business perspective, do I want to expend 1x effort to reach 80% of my audience or 2x effort to get that last 20%. Unfortunately alternative browsers are in that last 20%. In these times of chronically over-budget, past due IT projects it may not be so much a developer decision as a business decision.
Plus, it seems a bit Orwellian to me that the browser that commands 80+% of the market is the "non-standard" browser vs. the "standard compliant" browsers which relatively few people use.
by perry.keller
I don't find that Firefox and Netscape are very compliant as far as CSS goes and have given up trying to develop anything that works for these browsers. It is the 80/20 rule and it just isn't worth the time trying to write pages that comply to all of these obscure browsers out there.
As a simple example, if you try to format three columns within a contining div Mozilla browsers don't seem to know how to add. The sum of the widths (even accounting for borders)will usually overflow the contining block even though logically they shouldn't. Add to this that if you include internal padding these browsers add it to the width and height of the block so it is nearly impossible to dynamically adjust the block elements properly. I give up!
by zkent
There is a (tiny) plugin for FireFox called IEView. (http://ieview.mozdev.org) It puts "View this page in IE" in the right-click popup menu. I use MSDN a lot and the code samples don't render correctly in FF due to a CSS problem I think. I was getting tired of cutting and pasting the URL into IE so this plug in saves me much time.
I have enjoyed FF overall and there are not many sites that I have to open in IE.
by jdkarns
by lsw
"How can a company update 100 websites under its belt every time a browser or the W3.org decides to make wild changes."
W3C changes improve our ability to work. There are many technologies that would allow a company to change 100 web sites. At least if those web sites are designed per standards..... if not, that is their own problem.
"I don't make websites with all the latest crazy CSS, Applets, bells and whistles"
What Crazy CSS, it like any other language improves with time. CSS 3 will improve CSS as 2 did over 1. I assume you do not build web sites with HTML 3.2..... you likely use HTML 4 or XHTML 1, why? Cause they are standards and improvements? Then why is a improved CSS any different.
CSS makes site maintenance easier and improves accessibility for the disabled, or do you still design with a table based layout? I will agree with Applets tho or any other toys that are not accessible.
Any professional company should be designing for standards, not a browser. It is not about catering to FF, it is about designing to standards which FF happens to support and M$ fails not to with IE. Catering to IE is the problem and as long as we do M$ will not change anything.
LSW
if I could get rid of my old browser (IE6) THEN I would gladly switch over to it, but as for now while in Windows all is entangled (is the word), there is no way that I will switch over...
sorry, MS is to blame...
by rrvillan
by michael
by seanmcoleman
by zkent
by ramhog69
So far I like it very much. I haven't had a chance to fully discover it's potential, but so far I think it is really good. Thanks for posting it.
Kalvin
by shaktq
by jonchris58
Hope I'm one of the unlucky few. Installer wouldn't work properly. Run as a custom istall it wouldn't accept any change. Then the program itself wouldnt run after startup. Got a blamk screen and no response to mouse clicks. 9.0, 9.1 and 9.3 worked well with very few gotchas.
This is progress?
Jon
by the-jetman
If it can't display www.hotsheet.com correctly ( all the links are not displayed) then why use it? What also is not being displayed on other web pages that I might need to see?
VR,
John
by dada_lala
eehm... i had no problem with hotsheet.com in firefox 0.9.1. all links on site are displayed.
...and i think it's very strange that of the browser gets blamed for the lack of knowledge of some website-developers ...very very strange. *ggg*
by zkent
by trevor
by adam
by jojo-1
I now develop my code for Firefox. When it works in Firefox, I then make sure it works in IE. Standards-compliant browsers are definitely the way to go but it's going to take a long time for the rest of the world to catch up.
I love the tabbed browing in Firefox - couldn't do without it. There's also so many fantastic extensions, such as drag and drop a url onto empty space to open it in a new tab, and the web developer toolbar. IE isn't so customisable, and I miss many of the extensions and features of Firefox when using IE.
I used to swear by Opera, but now I swear by Firefox...and I just swear at IE ;)
by kcollins
The whole point of the Internet is that it was designed to connect EVERYBODY to EVERYBODY ELSE. So 94% just doesn't come close to that requirement.
By everybody, I'm talking about absolutely everybody, including the disabled. So, just as offices and houses built nowadays have to support disabled access, so web sites have to support screen readers for the blind (and that is actually a legal requirement in the UK).
If your web site doesn't work with non-IE platforms/browsers, there is very little chance of it working with screen readers. That's one of the main reasons for using web standards - they have been designed with accessability in mind.
So just to design for one group of users is not just selfish beyond belief, it is probably illegal on many countries.
/david
by the-jetman
MSOFT has just declared that there will be no more security updates to IE on their earlier (< WXP) platforms. Combined w/ previous announcements that there will be no more updates to the stand-alone IE, what are the alternatives for those who don't want to or can't update their OS simply for IE improvements ?
All of this is tied to MSOFT's completely discredited proposal that the web browser is and/or must be an integral part of the OS.
by rick
by kcollins
I expected to incite some anger with my comments about IE being the standard. But at least the other replies had something constructive to say, even if they weren't always exactly correct.
But calling me an idiot doesn't add anything beneficial to the discussion. Besides, I am not in fact an idiot, I am simply being realistic.
I still stand by my original comment. The reason that so many websites are written for IE is exactly the same reason that so many desktop applications are written for the Windows platform. Because that is the platform that the VAST MAJORITY of users are running. Windows is the de facto standard for the desktop and IE is the de facto standard for the Internet. Like it or not, those are the facts. And if you are unwilling to face the facts, then you sir are the idiot.
by lsw
IE has dropped to something like 82% of the Market, FireFox/Mozilla has gone up to 12% and growing fast.
FireFox and Safari are the most used browsers under Mac, IE quite after IE5, Firefox is also one of the if not the top browser under Linux now. So in complete Browser use IE has far less than 80% of the whole world market.
This is just the typical line that only IE comes in question in a Windows world while the increasing market shares of other OS's are ignored. M$ is in fora rude awakening one day.
by hanekhw
I ran some simple tests of how each broswer handled a particularily nasty site, with no outside firewall software installed to keep things fair. The site I know from experience tries to install several pieces of malware and tracking software (no it's not an XXX site). IE 6.0 with all the latest patches failed miserably; everything got through.
Opera partially suceeded (I blocked spawning and pop-ups which helped some).
Firefox blocked all the malware.
That convinced me. I installed Firefox on all our PCs as the default browser. I still have to keep IE 6.0 to handle the upgrades and patches because MS blocks out all other browsers from the Windows Updates site. I wrote out a simple batch file to execute when I get an advisory from the Security Bulletins service.
by ibfreddy
Doesn't surprise me at all. :)
The other interesting thing in the future is to see how each browser adapts to future threats. Open source is always going to be able to change much more quickly and if the whole spyware problem becomes even more a serious problem, we could see a whole lot more people moving towards Firefox.
by ibfreddy
I must say I was quite skeptical of how successful this project be when I first fell upon it in 2000. I have to say that Mozilla/Firefox is the positioning itself to stand against the big boy. MS has all but stopped working on IE and with the new hot trend in web dev being accessibility/CSS-driven front ends, more and more people working on the web (both designer & programmer) are coming to love this browser. It's my default browser on my Mac and my PC.
Hopefully the general public will eventually be convinced as well... The only thing I can say about this is the general public is SLOWLY becoming more tech-savvy and while IE fails to have features that meet current needs (anti-pop-ups, anti-spyware, accessing RSS feeds, etc), people will look elsewhere.
by rdworshak
by fivemics
by ed391
by norgan.han
for me. I have used
IE, Opera, Mozilla and Phoenix. And all in terms of stability, speed and features say FireFox for me :-)
Nice little gadget, my compliments.
by peterowe
by ibfreddy
Well, from the little I know about it, SlimBrowser is an IE-based browser, it's not GNU licensed and it's most likely not even on the charts for percentage of users.
It's like having a Windows/Linux debate and asking why Debian wasn't brought up.
At least, in my opinion. :)
by ibfreddy
OK, before you all get on me, I'm a Firefox user and it's my default browser on all my computers...
While almost everyone here agrees with how great a browser Firefox is, it still doesn't change the fact that the majority of the world uses IE and most likely is not even aware of the Firefox browser. To say that doesn't matter is a bit ideological if not blind. At the end of the day, it's not what's better, it's what is used.
As a developer, to ignore that and use the excuse that IE is a bad browser that renders CSS incorrectly just flat out won't fly. Firefox is a great browser and I'll continue to use it, but I really see Firefox's legacy as helping push browsers to be standards-compliant and to put another notch in the open-source movement. I DO NOT see it ever taking over IE in the browser wars however (of course, I could be wrong and I certainly hope so). I think KCollins is just stating the truth and we all need to temper our feelings with that.
If you use the right DOCTYPE on your site, IE will render standards pages with CSS with few issues, as long as you avoid some of the latest CSS developments. So...
a) There is no real excuse for writing pages that don't use W3C standards. Look at http://www.phoenity.com/firefox.html for a page with a really cool effect (watch the logo as you scroll down!) that works in both browsers.
b) If you want a better web experience, persuade Microsoft to improve IE to extend CSS support, as designers cannot use the latest features until Microsoft support them (or users abandon IE in frustration. But how would users know what they're missing, most of them look blank when you talk about tabbed browsing!).
As an aside - that seems to be the reason that so many people believe that Microsoft 'innovate' - they only get to see new technologies when Microsoft add them to Windows. But since the users never look to anyone apart from Microsoft to provide new features or products, they are in a loop of self-fulfilling expectations that is very difficult for any other copany to break into.
/david
by ibfreddy
OK, I always develop for PC/Mac - IE/Moz/Saf when working on a web project. I always try to keep the site as standards-compliant as possible. IE is relatively compliant, however, the two still render out code differently if you're not careful. I know about the DOCTYPE thing, but there are still differences.
I am pro standards. I am pro accessibility. However, I am also pro reality and that's all I was bringing up. Frankly, I dispise MS, but that doesn't change the fact that IE is the default browser and we can't ignore that.
Honestly though, I think we're on the same side here.
by peterowe
by ibfreddy
by lsw
It is based on the IE engine, never notice how your Internet options are the same as IE?
Slimbrowser is more secure then IE and has more bells and Whistles, but it is still at heart a IE clone and has the built in IE mistakes and failures like CSS2 support. I use it to test my sites rather than IE itself and the results are the same.
Same for Avant, Enigma, CrazyBrowser.....
by sim
Overall it's a great browser. However, certain sites that require Active-x support can't be displayed. Some works still to be done. Cheers, Mozilla team! Do keep up the good work.
Regards,
Sim.
by dgarvich
Choosing to write web applications for one platform is not equivalent to choosing to write desktop applications for two reasons:
Firstly, you're ignoring the history of the Internet (the whole reason it existing, if you like). It is designed for allowing everyone to interconnect. That is why the standards were created - so that anyone with software that complies with the standard will work. That is why the Internet has been so successful so quickly (it would have happened regardless of whether Microsoft had created IE or not).
So, to hijack the work that everyone has done for the last 30 years for the benefit of one particular group (purely because you apparently cannot be bothered to learn how to write a website properly), is either selfish or stupid. So, on that first count, yes, you are an idiot - don't use tools unless you know how they are supposed to work
(As an aside, because the web development/debug support that IE has is so much poorer than Firefox, you're making life much harder for yourself too.)
Secondly, you're failing yourself as a consumer. The only thing that keeps innovation and progress going is competition. Writing a website that only works with IE denies browser competition, and so ensures that little or no progress will be made by IE. So, it is your fault that IE has almost no development over the last few years!
Given that IE already fails to follow Internet standards when talking to Microsoft's IIS server, it seems very likely that the version of IE built into Longhorn will have a raft of extra consumer features (probably integration of existing products into IE) that use proprietary protocol that ONLY WORK with IIS! If that does happen then your choice as a consumer will be reduced yet again!
So, on balance, I have to agree with the guy who called you an idiot - you are not only working to undo 30 years of work on the Internet, you are working to reduce your own choice as a consumer, and deny that choice to other people.
/david
by kcollins
You state that the reason the Internet exists is to let everyone interconnect. This is a nice idea, and true in theory, however...
The practical truth is that most companies see the Internet as a marketing channel. So, from the perspective of any website that ends in a .com, the reason the Internet exists is to SELL PRODUCT.
It's great that you know how to write a website "properly". Good for you. But if you are developing a website for a .com that doesn't work in IE, then you are not writing that website properly. If 94% of the population can't view it, it's not going to move much product.
This applicability of this principle is not limited to .coms either. If you are developing a website for a not-for-profit that is distributing valuable health information, but write it in such a manner that 94% of the people will never see it, then you are writing it improperly.
For example, if someone discovered a cure for cancer and wanted to share that information freely to the public, would it be "proper" to intentionally exclude 94% of the population just because their choice of browser is not 100% standards compliant? (I realize this is an extreme example, but I think it makes my point.)
Finally, let me make it clear that I am not advocating abandoning w3c standards in favor of IE. I am simply pointing out that if you want to reach the maximum audience possible with your website, then you have to design it to work in IE. If it doesn't, then you are wasting your time and your client's money because the VAST MAJORITY of the population will never see it.
In that case it seems that we're arguing across each other. When I was arguing for sites aiming to reach 100% of their audience, I assumed that it was implicit that that included the 94% for IE!
By the way, be careful with those stats. I've looked that these quite a lot, and they vary RADICALLY from site to site - the technology news sites report that about 20% are using Firefox. Also it seems that technology mavens (influencers) are even more likely not to use IE.
I certainly was not arguing for excluding IE, I was just arguing against playing the percentage game. Which is when the 'Dodgy Builders' bit comes
in...
The other day, I was talking to a friend who is in the house building trade, and he told me that once a builder has got 75% of his money, he has covered his costs for the work, the rest is purely profit. Which means that from a purely financial point of view, they can afford to walk away from that irritating 25% of the work that involves correcting problems and generally getting it right.
Of course, from the point of view of the client, someone who walks away from a job leaving a host of issues because 'the main percentage is done' is unprofessional. But the dodgy builder doesn't care - he has his money and he's out of there - he's playing the percentage game.
So whereas writing specifically for IE is playing the percentage game, writing to web standards isn't. Get your DOCTYPE right and the only extra effort is testing against several browsers. Using CSS means that once you get it right for one page, the rest of the site will be a snip.
/david
PS: I note that in some cross-browser articles in builder.com, they don't state whether author is working with the browsers in 'quirks mode' or 'standards mode'. The lack of this information makes the article useless in many cases. Please include the DOCTYPE used in the article, otherwise the site might have to be renamed dodgybuilder.com!!
by john
downloaded and installed these products on to four of our test machines. Easily transferred settings from Opera, Netscape and IE. Has no faults so far. Outperforms Opera for speed and incompatability problems, Netscape for incompatibility problems and IE for speed.
Looking to install these onto main machines as default browsers this week.
A truly great product.
by jayfang
I've used Firefox for a while, and also Opera before.
In very few cases will I load IE to access an IE only site. More often I'll just leave and ignore that site.
I've occasionally written to the Web site provider informing them of the problem.
Good news is that the trend seems to be better cross browser support and less IE dependance.
If *we* (the web users) show a clear user demand the biz mandarins will follow.
by joeyridge
Opera was great due to it's multitabbed browsing and mouse gestures. IE was fast on load times. Firefox gives you tabbed browsing, very fast load times, and if you love the mouse gestures enough you can download an extension.
I've just found my new favorite browser.
by ebrown1927
I have made FireFox my browser of choice, only occasionally I find some sites are made so that you must use IE -- for instance microsoft download and other microsoft pages. It works for 95% of my web browsing. I like it. It has so many features and compared to several other browsers it is mean and lean. Good work and hats off to Mozilla.
Ed
But not quite.
Write your HTML to the W3c spec, test on Opera and Geko (Firefox/Mozilla), then just make sure IE doesn't kill it too badly.
I don't encourage anyone to use IE anymore. Patching the browser AND the OS (beause that's what you're doing) can lead to unexpected results. If Opera or the Gecko Browsers have an issue, they can be patched without introducing potential problems on the OS level.
by lsw
All the Mozilla browsers are the best with standards. That has been proven among many of the best CSS forums on the net. It is IE with its Box Model problems that cause the trouble and do not correctly add up margins and the like.
FF supports CSS2 to something like 92% compared to IE's 71%.
Sounds to me like you are suffering under the usualy misconception that FF & Co. break sites. Fact is FF shows you what you wrote and what you wrote wrong while IE shows you what you want to see. Mozilla browsers tell you you goofed up while IE hides it from you.
That is why all my CSS sites are built for FF, then I add the hacks to make it look good in IE. One day when IE finally supports standards all I need do is remove the hacks and all standards compiant browsers will show it correctly as always and the new standards IE will as well. Till then we have to play games to make IE happy.
LSW
by lsw
Just a note, if you visit the Firefox FAQ's you will read that Firefox when finall will replace Mozilla in the future.
Mozilla forces you to deal with all sorts of extra junk.E-mail, Chat....
With FireFox Mozilla is going Moduler. Firefox is the browser with whatever extensions you use. If you want e-mail then download Thunderbird, etc etc etc....
I think this is a good idea, Mozilla was to slow with all the extra weight.
Long Live Firefox.
by jomoweb
Firefox has found it's way to my default browser. It reminds me of when Netscape was good, and not some overdone AOL hunk o' jizz.
I would like to know more about Thunderbird-- does it have the features to replace Outlook (mainly, how does it inteface with an exchange server)?
IE still has my respect for two reasons:
1. Has the market share
2. Renders
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