I am not the most tech savvy blogger on the internet, but I do spend a fair amount of time on the web. So I have been waiting for my beloved Firefox’s latest upgrade. I also had the chance over the last week to work a bit with Microsoft’s latest entry, Internet Explorer 7. So what are my first impressions?
Microsoft in the first significant overhaul of Explorer has made a pretty good effort. Tabbed browsing is finally available and it is far more web savvy than previously. Firefox however still maintains its lead. Fans of Opera will have to look elsewhere, I have little to no experience with it. For those still using Internet Explorer it is time to make the switch.
Firefox is still leaner and faster than IE. My first negative impression was in comparing the installation. Like everything from Microsoft it took well over a half hour just to install and reboot. In my case I had to reboot several times, but that seems to not be most peoples experience. The time however was excessive when I was up and running on Firefox within three or four minutes and I didn’t have to reboot. Luckily I was not greatly inconvenienced, but be aware, if you are going to upgrade to IE 7 don’t do it when you will need the computer. I think it would be a sign of progress if software providers gave users an estimated time for installation, especially if it is going to take more than five minutes.
So what is new in Firefox 2.0. The tabbed browsing capabilities have been improved. You can open as many tabs as you wish arrange them in any sequence you wish and reopen tabs you have closed using hot keys (Ctrl-Shift-T.) One of my favorite time savers is the ability to save an entire set of open tabs as a bookmark which can then be reopened as a group. As a blogger you can also save active tabs as a bookmark so that you can open the entire set of tabs at a later time. As a blogger and web surfer who often will follow or research a large number of posts or websites it is an invaluable feature. I find it very frustrating to have twenty tabs open and have my wife ask for the computer, accidentally close my window and leave me trying to remember where I was. In addition I can save all my favorites to open with one click and create packages depending on what I want to do. All real timesavers.
What if the browser crashes or the entire system? Session restore which allows you to restore your previous session. There also scroll buttons at the end of the browser window, allowing you to scroll through your tabs no matter how many are open and the tabs stay large enough to be recognizable. I sometimes have as many as 50 or 60 open, and it was annoying not being able to see what each one was. There is also a button at the right hand side which will display them in a drop down list.
There are improved searching capabilities, Firefox 2 will suggest search terms from the search engine itself; as you type the search box will begin providing likely search terms and combinations thereof. There are several built-in search engines, with the option to add more.
Identifying and subscribing to RSS feeds is also much improved. When clicking a feed link, rather than code, you are given a summary or full text page along with several options for subscribing.
One major advance is the Live Titles feature. According to Firefox, “Live Titles are regularly updated summaries of the most important information on a Web page. As the information on the page gets updated, so does your Live Title.” When you use a Live Titles bookmark, you are given a summary of the headlines in the bookmark menu.
Firefox also brings improved security with a reasonably effective anti-phishing program. It even warns you that if you wish to use Google’s version of the program that it will send surfing information to Google. I chose the built in option. It also has an improved defense against spyware by only allowing sites to run, download or install programs with your consent.
Another advantage? Firefox 2.0 is available across platforms, a definite advantage for someone like me who uses different platforms. IE 7 is only an option for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and the upcoming Vista operating systems.
My favorite feature? Built in and smoothly integrated spell checking. Now when I blog or leave long winded comments on one of McQ’s posts I will be far less likely to make a typo.
The real key for Firefox however is its customizeability. Through add-ons it can be configured and given almost limitless tools. For bloggers one of my favorites is Performancing for Firefox which allows me to blog directly from my browser window, switching between various tabs, dragging and dropping text at my leisure. A few extensions I have used in the past were not yet compatible, but most were, and that gets to the real advantage of Firefox 2.0. Its open source architecture allows for an army of programmers to work on extending its capabilities, an advantage Microsoft cannot or will not have. For that reason the gap is bound to widen over time and IE 7 is unlikely to be nearly as functional as Firefox in a matter of months.
For ease of use, powerful features and extendability Firefox is still out in front and pulling away by the day.
[tags] Firefox, blogging, Performancing, Internet Explorer [/tags]
FF 2.0 is definitely a cut above the rest. I just downloaded the Performancing tool and will be using it later.
Very cool.
You mentioned in an e-mail Flock. I am checking it out now. Not as much is built in as I would want at first glance, but it does have a nice list of extensions. It is a smart approach to use the Firefox engine. That makes building extensions easy as you just need to modify them a bit, in fact I see they claim most should work without modification, though they give no guarantees.
Their built in blogging tool looks nice as does the way it handles photos with a function similar to net snippets. I am going to give it a test run and maybe do a comparison later on.
I actually had plugins that provided most of the new features of FF2.0, so it’s not a huge change for me. Not quite sure how I feel about them adding the features. I always liked FF because it was just a lean barebones browser that allowed you to customize it with extensions to make it how you want it.
I think now they need to keep focusing on the memory problems and improving speed and performance.
Chris,
True, but it seems to me that the extensions for the most common elements are inefficient from a speed and memory standpoint. More importantly, for the new user (who I am really focusing on in this) there is no need to go and search through the extensions to find them. Out of the box it has a tremendous advantage.
Hey Lance … more long-winded comments please … and I don’t care which browser you use.