After two weeks or so, I’m still using Mozilla Firefox as my primary browser. I haven’t yet completely dumped MSIE, but I have only fired it up two or three times thus far. Primarily to check and see if the problems I was having in Firefox were browser-related or not (they were not).
One huge benefit to Firefox: EditCSS. This extension to the browser means you can open the CSS on any web page, tinker with it, and see your results live. Very helpful for debugging problems with funky web pages that just don’t want to display correctly when you think they should. Theoretically, you could also steal CSS very easily. Don’t do that.
One very cool feature of Firefox: Recognition of alternate stylesheets. If a page has multiple stylesheets defined by using the “alternate stylesheet” tag, there is a little box in the lower left corner of the window that allows you to quickly and easily change which stylesheet you are currently using. Nice.
Two very helpful additions to Firefox: Googlebar, an open-source rendering of the Google Toolbar for IE and Clone Window, which allows the contents of the current window (or tab) to be copied to the new window (or tab), including browsing position (back/forward links intact), which is the default behavior of IE.
One minor annoyance of Firefox: The buttons in the Movable Type edit entry window were not available. Luckily, helpful readers pointed me to the solution, which you can find in the comments of the earlier link.
One nagging annoyance of Firefox: When you are on a lengthy page of links (for instance, the A-Section of the local paper), and you click a link to read it, then come back to the initial page, you are at the top of the page again. In IE, when you scrolled halfway down the page, then clicked a link and came back, you were positioned halfway down the page. The strange thing is that I could swear this has worked on some sites. Perhaps I’m missing something simple, but it would be nice if this could work as IE did (did I really say that?).
One seemingly, slightly over-hyped facet of Firefox: Tabbed browsing. Don’t get me wrong. Tabbed browsing is fine and all that. But I don’t see it as being as good as everyone thinks it is. Perhaps for some, I could see the utility. But in Windows XP, the operating system I must use, multiple IE windows simply stack upon one another in one button in the taskbar and a quick alt-tab can switch easily between them (or any open window). While ctrl-tab works to jump between tabs in Firefox, I don’t find it as intuitive.
The verdict: Firefox all the way. A minor annoyance in exchange for more stability, user expandibility, increased performance and better compliance? No contest. Even the wife is okay with it, as she hadn’t noticed that we had a different browser installed.
Comments
10 responses to “Revisiting the Browser”
Just picked up a couple of new extensions and am giving them a spin. Figured I’d add the links here so that I’ve got them all in one place.
The first addition was to update to Flashblock (formerly Flash Click to View). I don’t think there are any new additions, but I wanted to reflect the current state of development.
I also installed LastTab, which makes CTRL-TAB (and CTRL-SHIFT-TAB) work like ALT-TAB (and ALT-SHIFT-TAB) in Windows. I like this behavior better than the default handling, as it allows me to easily jump back and forth between tabs.
One of my favorite extensions is TabWarning, which brings up a confirmation/error message when you try to close the window and you have more than one tab open. Very useful. On more than one occasion, I’ve closed a window full of tabs. This should help.
I’m also interested in trying to catch any external links that open new windows and open them in a new tab. I’ve tried Tabbrowser Preferences but it doesn’t seem to work. Sometimes those links open in existing tabs, sometimes they still open new windows (notably the “get new extensions” link inside options). Anyone know of an extension that will do this?
It should be fixed now. I also created a new entry with the details of what I did to make it work, in case anyone else is seeing the same problem. Thanks for the note!
Hey Chad. Just wanted to let you know that your blog is pretty much unreadable in Opera 7.23. Here’s a screenshot. :-/
Okay, I like tabbed browsing better. Mostly I was hung up on tabs in some places and windows in other places. But it seems that when you right-click to open in a new tab, everything works well. So I went to try and figure out how to make everything do that.
Turns out that if you have a mouse (or trackball) with a scroll wheel that clicks – I’m not sure if all of them do – then you can use that click to open a link in a new tab. Without changing a thing! Very cool feature indeed. So now I just need to get in the habit of wheel-clicking when I want to open a link in a new tab. I think I can figure that out.
Nice list. 🙂
I especially like Flashblock (formerly Flash Click to View) and IEView. I hate it when I can’t skip the flash, and I like being able to easily open an IE window with the current URL.
I’ve also installed Focus Last Selected Tab, which takes me back to the previously selected tab when I close another – I hate ending up on another tab I haven’t been using! For my own habits, it works well – though I can see how others might like to reorder tabs to achieve the same affect.
Because I ues the Googlebar, I have link navigation options on the current page, though they don’t sound as extensive as the ones you get through the Link Toolbar. I’ll keep that in mind if mine don’t seem to be doing the job.
What is up with gestures? I’m sorry, I just don’t get them. I’ve had a trackball for a couple years with extra buttons for back and forward, and that’s way faster than gestures. Sure, if you can’t afford a new pointing device, I can see it – but I don’t think I could get my mind around doing it with gestures instead of the extra buttons. Sounds like too much work… 🙂
You might enjoy the list of helpful resources I wrote in a blog entry the other night – Firefox Extensions. 🙂
Ah – resources didn’t occur to me. I have problems from time to time myself, but it’s more often from having ten different apps open as opposed to ten browsing windows. 🙂
It seems I also don’t just browse often. I read the paper, and read my Bloglines stuff, but that’s about it. I’ll take a look at the opening of multiple tabs and see if it might help. Thanks for the suggestion!
I also found another little annoyance, though it’s not new. As I reported a while back, Mozilla browsers don’t seem to handle empty anchor tags well (or at all). And I haven’t had a chance to change all my tags to use the ID method mentioned. So I can’t jump to the comments section, for instance. Drat!
I haven’t had the page popping back to the top problem myself.
I run XP on an old resource-strapped PC. The resource drain of ten Firefox tabs instead of 10 IEs has a life saver. And I like the ability to launch multiple tabs at once. That is how I handle the MT support forums. Saves my RSI weakened fingers a few important clicks.
I actually saw it the other day over on Richard’s blog. Which coincidentally also has a link to EditCSS in the comments – but I didn’t see that until just now when I went to find the link!
Have you seen the web dev extension? It’s an absolutely fantastic extension, I use it constantly… going to look at that editcss thing too, between the two I’ll bet set for this stuff for a long time. =)