Club CDFreaks - Knowledge is Power - View Single Post

*code65536* · 11-10-2004

The story of a former IE-loyalist...

In the beginning, there was Netscape 1, and code65536 loved it.

And then came Netscape 2 and 3, and code65536 loved it.

Then came IE 4 and it swept code65536 off his feet. Slick interface, fast browsing, and, unlike Netscape 4, it actually knew how to render pages.

Time passed, and code65536 became more and more of a die-hard IE fan. Eventually, he went from using IE 4 and Netscape 3 side-by-side to eliminating Netscape 3 all together. He found himself writing rants against Netscape 4's poor rendering.

And then came Mozilla 0.7 in 2001. And it was... interesting. The popup blocking and tabbed browsing was nice, but the interface was poor, uncustomizable, unattractive, and it was slow--very slow. And so code65536 remained a IE fan, firing up Mozilla only once every month or two. A year later, came Mozilla 1.0, and it was still bad. code65536 was beginning to lose faith in Mozilla and remained a strong IE loyalist.

And then came, another year later, Firebird 0.6. code65536 was skeptical, having been dug into a deep, deep habit of using IE for over half a decade, and also having been dismayed by Mozilla. But despite all that, code65536 was impressed by what this little-known makeshift browser had to offer. And so Firebird began to live on code65536's machine, as a secondary browser. IE was still the primary default browser.

Time passed, and code65536 found himself using Firebird more and more often. The popup blocking was nice. But it was the tabbed browsing that he eventually succumbed to. Having discovered the handy "middle-click" shortcut (click your middle mouse button--i.e., the scroll wheel--on a link to open it in a new tab, and middle-click on an open tab to close it without having to reach over to the "X" button), he found himself inadvertently trying to middle-click the links in IE. It became increasingly frustrating to use IE's back and forward buttons when exploring Google search results instead of opening the results in separate tabs. And so one fateful day, when Firebird 0.7 spread its wings, IE, after so many years of loyal service, lost its default browser status.

Now, code65536 cringes at the thought of IE. My, how far we've come.

Moral of the story: Give Firefox a chance. It'll take some getting used to at first, but it'll grow on you.

And soon, you'll find it hard to live without it.

As for speed, the early versions like 0.6 were fairly slow, but I'm finding the newer versions to be on par with IE's speed, and on certain pages that IE takes an inexplicably long time to render, FF is faster.

11-10-2004	#45 (permalink)
code65536 CDFreaks Resident Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: .us Posts: 5,931	Re: Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer The story of a former IE-loyalist... In the beginning, there was Netscape 1, and code65536 loved it. And then came Netscape 2 and 3, and code65536 loved it. Then came IE 4 and it swept code65536 off his feet. Slick interface, fast browsing, and, unlike Netscape 4, it actually knew how to render pages. Time passed, and code65536 became more and more of a die-hard IE fan. Eventually, he went from using IE 4 and Netscape 3 side-by-side to eliminating Netscape 3 all together. He found himself writing rants against Netscape 4's poor rendering. And then came Mozilla 0.7 in 2001. And it was... interesting. The popup blocking and tabbed browsing was nice, but the interface was poor, uncustomizable, unattractive, and it was slow--very slow. And so code65536 remained a IE fan, firing up Mozilla only once every month or two. A year later, came Mozilla 1.0, and it was still bad. code65536 was beginning to lose faith in Mozilla and remained a strong IE loyalist. And then came, another year later, Firebird 0.6. code65536 was skeptical, having been dug into a deep, deep habit of using IE for over half a decade, and also having been dismayed by Mozilla. But despite all that, code65536 was impressed by what this little-known makeshift browser had to offer. And so Firebird began to live on code65536's machine, as a secondary browser. IE was still the primary default browser. Time passed, and code65536 found himself using Firebird more and more often. The popup blocking was nice. But it was the tabbed browsing that he eventually succumbed to. Having discovered the handy "middle-click" shortcut (click your middle mouse button--i.e., the scroll wheel--on a link to open it in a new tab, and middle-click on an open tab to close it without having to reach over to the "X" button), he found himself inadvertently trying to middle-click the links in IE. It became increasingly frustrating to use IE's back and forward buttons when exploring Google search results instead of opening the results in separate tabs. And so one fateful day, when Firebird 0.7 spread its wings, IE, after so many years of loyal service, lost its default browser status. Now, code65536 cringes at the thought of IE. My, how far we've come. Moral of the story: Give Firefox a chance. It'll take some getting used to at first, but it'll grow on you. And soon, you'll find it hard to live without it. As for speed, the early versions like 0.6 were fairly slow, but I'm finding the newer versions to be on par with IE's speed, and on certain pages that IE takes an inexplicably long time to render, FF is faster.