Mozilla Project Creeping Up On Microsoft
Dean
Microsoft's share of the web browser market is still titanic, but is very noticeably eroding. Which is all to the good: it's terrible when one company so dominates web technologies.
You can download this superior web browser right here, by the way.
Also, if you run a web site, even a small one, would you like to get involved and help spread Firefox? I have.
Happy now? :)
it's terrible when one company so dominates web technologies.
Yes, precisely. That's the main reason I'm eager to see alternative browsers grabbing a larger share of the market. (Well, that plus the fact that the letters in Bill Gates' name add up to 666...)
I agree that Firefox is a wonderful browser, and I'm more and more suspecting that Firefox is the browser destined to make significant inroads on Internet Explorer's market share. I mean, Firefox just works. It's clearly designed so that anyone who knows how to use a browser at all can sit down and just use it. It has all sorts of nifty features— again, clearly designed so that, etc. And it uses Gecko, which is frankly the best rendering engine out there.
I myself am sticking with Opera; and if I were still on Windows and not using Opera, I'd probably be using another Gecko-based browser called KMeleon. Oh, and as soon my fall schedule slows down a bit, I intend to get the SkipStone browser working on my computer at last.
There's an astonishing variety of alternative browsers out there, many of them excellent pieces of work.
Huh? Why? Why should it be "terrible" when a particular program is overwhelmingly popular?
Because things without competition grow stagnant.
Well, that may be, but that in and of itself is not terrible. I also disagree with the notion that IE is some bad, "stagnant" product, but that's beside the point. What I'm curious about is why having IE be popular is "terrible"? What terrible consequence comes of this? Stagnation isn't sufficiently terrible to qualify, imo.
Microsoft also came to dominate the browser market solely by including it on Windows. But not content to just do that, they added all kinds of web "features" that only worked right in Internet Explorer, actively discouraging anyone from using anything but their browser, and giving them much too much control over the web itself.
Then once they had that control, and crushed their competition, they allowed the product to stagnate. It's become an obviously inferior browser. And we've been living with its shortcomings for years because for so many people nothing better was available.
Now there is something better. Much better. Thank goodness.
It used to always be understood that if a company managed to create a monopoly, this would eventually result in inferior products. We see that in place everywhere else. Why not in browsers?
You know, like Apple, Linux, and us tech-heads... Heh.
A browser is a tool, not a lifestyle. All it has to do is the relatively simple task of parsing and displaying HTML and images. More recently we've asked it to become an application host, an idea I find highly questionable, but there it is. In any case, I don't see what's so "clunky" about IE, nor why Firefox is "obviously superior". Text has more letters? Images have more colors? What?
And yes, I tried it. It installed ok after some fiddling. I didn't like the interface, and, if "clunky" is to be applied, I found it far more clunky than IE. My overall impression was "typical open-source". All enthusiasm and no execution.
To top it off, it hung my machine repeatedly while trying to convert my bookmarks. Again, typical open-source. Why it even *needed* to convert my bookmarks instead of using the perfectly good .lnk files sitting there is a question for another day. Off it came.
Microsoft's "monopoly" reminds me of the Left's "oppressed speech".
Well, we did mention that Firefox is more secure. Several times, by my count. Not that you were paying attention, or anything.
I would assume you'd be the one buying door locks for their color and smoothness of key insertion, even if the deadbolt was made of tinfoil.
Personally, I wouldn't care what you preferred to run on your computer, except that when some spammer zombies your computer with last month's ActiveX crack that Microsoft hasn't bothered to fix yet, it's my inbox that suffers.
So you want to stick with IE. Cool. Just make sure that you don't get cracked, and I'll be happy. You do know how to set security zones, and run Windows Update once a day, and have antivirus and anti-adware software running, and update those once a day, right? You don't mind surfing without Flash or JavaScript, right?
If not, do the rest of the Net a favor and switch to Firefox.
I'm having some trouble getting images to show in the Firefox brower (no problems with Mozilla). Can you help? (XP operating system)
"Security" doesn't come out of a software box. The software is only as secure as the person using it. I've been online since 1984. In that time I've had fewer than 5 virus attacks - all of them years ago. And no, I don't jump through any particular hoops.
The simple fact of the matter is that Firefox is more secure than IE. This is an objective, undeniable fact. It is also faster than IE, and this is also an objective, undeniable fact.
You find the interface "clunky." Okay. I can only laugh when you say so, but okay. That's what you think. This from a guy who admits it crashed and didn't install right for him. IE has crashed many times on me, but whatever.
The facts are simple: Firefox is faster. Firefox is more secure. Firefox has a simpler interface. Do with those facts what you will. But the only person I see doing any sneering here is you. Which is kind of funny, since you admit that you had some minor installation problems and then stopped using the application.
the letters in Bill Gates' name add up to 666
Ah, here we are, it's true!
Take the letters in his name— "Bill Gates III"— and assign them their ASCII value, with "3" for the ordinal "Third":
B I L L
66 + 73 + 76 + 76 +
G A T E S 3
71 + 65 + 84 + 69 + 83 + 3 = 666
Uh, I think next comes Digital Rights Management, Longhorn, and an RFID tag implanted in your forehead or right hand. ;)
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.