Firefox

Who knows what Firefox is?

Maybe one in every four of you raised your hands? That would seem about right.

Well, for those of you out there who see that blue ‘e’ as The Internet, I’ve got some unsettling news for you. There are others means to access the internet, and here’s the best part… those other means, they work better! It’s crazy isn’t it?

Firefox is an internet browsing software also known as a browser. Basically, Firefox is a program that you can install on your computer and use to access the internet in the exact same fashion that you are now, assuming that you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. So, maybe you’re asking yourself, “Why should I bother myself with downloading a software that does exactly what I can do with Internet Explorer?” And that’s where the rest of my speech comes in.

The Problem

First off, allow me to begin by explaining to you that Internet Explorer falls far below par for rendering web pages correctly. The problem with Internet Explorer is that it doesn’t display web pages, and web sites how it should. Internet Explorer is far behind the race with all of the other internet browsers. For a long time, Internet Explorer was the browser of choice for many, because it did exactly what it was suppose to do as a browser, however since that time Microsoft has become lazy and has allowed their team of programmers to allow Internet Explorer to become extremely outdated. Internet Explorer 6 was released August 27th, 2001^[1], over seven years ago. To this day, the market share for Internet Explorer 6 is well over 20%^[2]. Does anything sound wrong with that? In seven years, technology has evolved to such extremes that it isn’t even funny. It’s nearly impossible to design a web page using today’s technology that a browser made seven years ago can read and display correctly. The problem is that a web programmer or designer will create a wonderful, beautiful site, a site that took hours upon hours of diligent, tedious work, and after testing that site out in Internet Explorer 6, he or she may realize that the page is completely out of order. The long, tedious hours spent working on that beautiful site amount to nothing more than text thrown all over the page, completely out of order, and multiple things either not displaying or displaying on the opposite side of the page. The designer obviously can’t ignore that issue, especially when one in every five internet users use Internet Explorer 6.

A Hope

There is however a hope. Thank God. Microsoft has finally decided to jump back into the game, they have recently released their Beta 2 release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8. I am currently testing the browser with all of my sites, and am proud to say that Microsoft is back into the game of the internet. The problem however still persists. One in five people still use Internet Explorer 6, the epidemy of the internet as we know it. Here’s where my advising you comes into play. I strongly urge that you, as an internet user, take advantage of other browsers and use them instead of Internet Explorer. If you are extremely attached to Internet Explorer, then by all means you may continue to use it, however I beg that you download the latest stable release of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, if not for the latest release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 Beta.

Why Firefox is better

Now we’ve nearly reached the end of my spiel. If I’ve been able to get any point across within this ’speech’ of mine, then I would hope that that would be Internet Explorer is evil. Here’s why Firefox is better:

• Firefox is a smaller, more efficient program
• It renders, or displays, pages exactly as a proper browser should
• It is safer, and has updates often
• It browses the internet quicker
• Firefox is completely customizable, and there is the option of installing optional addons

Above all else Mozilla Firefox is simply amazing. Mozilla, the company that has created Firefox, is a not-for-profit organization, and their softwares are all free. Mozilla strives to make the web a better place, and is doing an amazing job of it! You might consider checking out these other Mozilla sponsored projects:

• Thunderbird
• Sunbird