New Firefox Browser – Much Ado About Nothing?
© 2004 Reprint by permission only. All rights reserved.
by Matt Hyatt

Watch out Microsoft – there’s a new browser in town. Firefox, the brainchild of 19-year old Stanford student Blake Ross, is a web browser application aimed squarely at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Hoping to topple the most popular browser on the planet, Ross and thousands of fans have launched a Howard Dean-esque grassroots campaign that’s made news around the globe. Distributed by Mozilla for free, Firefox is generating more than just buzz. Mozilla claims the new browser was downloaded more than 5 million times within six weeks of its November 9th release!

So why all the fuss? Fans declare Firefox is faster, more secure, and easier to use than Internet Explorer. They argue that the program more closely adheres to published standards than its rival. Furthermore, supporters say that Microsoft has gotten lax about enhancing the overall usability of Internet Explorer, while features that have been released have left the doors wide open to security attacks.

While there may be merit to these claims, I suspect the Microsoft vs. underdog angle is as big a motivation for revolt as any. Being a little leery of free software and generally practicing a pro-Microsoft lifestyle myself, I’m usually not in any big hurry to install software written by 19-year-olds on my computers. But I have to admit that I found the Firefox argument compelling enough to download it and try it out. Here’s what I found:
Firefox can be downloaded free from www.getfirefox.com. After a quick download, the program took less than two minutes to install on my five year old test computer. The first time Firefox ran, I was prompted to import my Internet Explorer settings like favorites, cookies, usernames, and passwords. Again, this process was easy and took less than two minutes on my machine.

The first thing I noticed upon using Firefox was that it blocks most pop-ups by default. Although the latest version of Internet Explorer does that with Windows XP, users of older versions of Windows will probably appreciate this feature in Firefox. My impression was that Firefox is a little more strict than Internet Explorer about the pop-ups it blocks, so some die-hard pop-up haters may prefer Firefox whether they’re running Windows XP or not.

Next I noticed that the Firefox “find in page” feature appears at the bottom of the screen. This is an improvement over Internet Explorer, where the “Find” dialog box covers part of the page you want to search. Another nice feature is that Firefox searches as you type, saving keystrokes and making things easier to find.
Firefox comes with a Google search bar built into the toolbar at the top of the screen. This lets you start a Google search without having to go to www.google.com first. The idea isn’t bad, but I kept forgetting the feature was there. Besides, it’s not exactly a unique idea. Internet Explorer users can download the free Google toolbar (toolbar.google.com) for similar functionality.

Firefox comes with other features that some will find appealing. It can prevent certain kinds of in-page ads from displaying by blocking traffic from external ad servers you specify. Downloading files (and subsequently deleting them) is a little easier in Firefox than it is in Internet Explorer. And rearranging bookmarks in Firefox is more intuitive than managing Favorites in Internet Explorer.

Despite all of this, Firefox isn’t perfect. Or more precisely, the world may not be perfect enough for Firefox. Since Firefox was written to adhere to certain standards that Internet Explorer ignores, many web pages that work fine in Internet Explorer didn’t look quite right in Firefox. Perhaps not surprisingly, Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access was one such page. Certain shopping and financial pages won’t work at all. Walmart’s music download site, for example, requires Internet Explorer and won’t even open in Firefox.

The verdict? Unless you really enjoy the novelty of using Firefox, I think it boils down to the way you feel about the incumbent. If you have a problem with Internet Explorer (or Microsoft, or Bill Gates), Firefox may be just the browser for you. But if the idea of using Internet Explorer doesn’t offend you, I doubt you’ll find Firefox a compelling enough reason to make a permanent switch.

Matt Hyatt (mhyatt@rocketit.com) is a longtime Gwinnett County resident and founder of Rocket IT, an IT consulting firm in Lawrenceville. For technology help with your business, contact Rocket IT at 770-441-2520 or visit online at www.rocketit.com.

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