Has anybody been using the new web browser by Mozilla called Firefox? I've been using it for awhile rather than IE and have found a lot of features that I like. Just wondering what other peoples experiences have been using this or other browsers

It was mentioned in a thread last fall. You know how this is going....

good grief...

I use FireFox for everyday use, but switch to IE when I have to go to a secure site. Now that I've read that on screen, that really doesn't make any sense, but I'm not sure if Firefox is 128 bit encrypted?

Anyhow, some other browsers are the original Netscape browser, Mozilla, and Opera. If you're a Linux user, there's Galeon, Konqueror and Epiphany.

Piller, they will both provide encyption on SSL sites.

If you are a Windows user and you UPDATE your computer regularly or are behind a firewall, there is no reason to use FireFox (unless you like tabbed browsing, which I admit, is pretty cool). IE and FF both have the same level of security (in fact FireFox was recently patched for 17 different holes that could allow a malicious user to take control of your computer). FireFox also loads much slower than IE on Windows machines and follows w3c guidelines much more stricly than IE (which can be a good or a bad thing depending on who you are. Personally I think its bad; it means if you go to a site that was coded poorly, it may not look correct or load at all with FF. IE doesn't have problems with a bad tag or poor formatting). When it comes down to borwsing the web, it really doesn't make much of a difference which one you use. I do get riled up, however, when someone lays down the "open source is better, so use FF", "IE doens't have security, you life will be ruined if you use it", or the classic "Microsoft (spelled incorrectly) is bad, they make you pay for something they spend billions of dollars developing" lines.

What I do fear is that, as usual, the press is not giving the whole story or the correct guidence for Windows users switching to FF. FireFox cannot use WindowsUpdate, that is an extremely important service for Windows users and when people install FireFox they generally click the "make this my default browser" button. From that point on, when the user clicks the 'windowsupdate' icon on the start menu, it will use FireFox to head to the website, which won't work. Unless the users are switched to automatic updating (where WindowsUpdate is accessed for you and then asks to install downloaded items) I think they will be updating less than ever, which is very bad.

So the moral of the story: Both are funcational on the web, remember to UPDATE every week with IE, for the sake of people like me that work at a Help Desk.

I had alot of problems with IE, and have been using Firefox for about 8 months now and love it.

Demon...thanks for that post. That is all new and useful info for me. FF is my default browser, as I simply like its layout better than IE. I'll have to boot IE separatly in order to update the computer.

Has anyone used Opera or some of the other browsers around?

I was using IE since I got this compuer. After about 6 months of using it the pop-ups were so bad it was taking forever to load up. So I downloaded Netscape 7.1 and now 7.2 and haven't had a problem since.

I also noticed when i run my ad-aware i have less things put on the computer.

Rasucs: Spyware is definately a problem for Windows users. Much less now the Windows XP has had service pack 2 released and there are tighter security restricions on Active X controls and such. Spyware can still be installed through other programs and many of them do not function with FF yet. I higly reccomend the following tools in combination with Ad-Aware to get rid of spyware problems.

This is a tool called SpyBot Search and Destroy, its a bit more agressive than Ad-Aware; both programs will catch stuff that the other one doesn't.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Microsoft now has a tool that can clean spyware and browser hijacks (stuff that ad-aware and spybot won't catch). I have found this tool to be very useful when cleaing systems that are having homepage and search page problems.
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

I reccomend having all three installed and scanning with them about once aweek, even if you aren't using IE. Spyware is very common in file sharing programs, games that you download off the web and weather (such as weather bug) and 'helper' programs what are suppose to keep your systems time in check (all windows OS update through the Windows Time Server, and do not need this), etc. If you are running Windows XP and do not have service pack 2 installed, go do it! This will take care of spyware problems with IE and will protect your system against viruses.

Thanks for the extra info Demon.

I download the service pack the other day and just downloaded Spy-Bot as well. been wanting to find another adware removal tool incase the other one missed something.

I have been using FF for about six months and love it. If I run spybot or adware it picks up 99 percent less spyware than with IE.

Been on Firefox since last fall, loving it. I still keep IE around for updates, and when the rare situation arises that a site doesn't support FF.

Since it seems on topic, here is an interesting article about some new pieces of spyware that can infect IE from FireFox.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/11/alternative_slimeware/

I'm old school and still use IE 8. I have no problems with spyware, but I do use a few anti-spyware utilities and WinPatrol which catches a lot of unscrupulous activity.

quote:

Originally posted by Digital_Demon:
Rasucs: Spyware is definately a problem for Windows users. Much less now the Windows XP has had service pack 2 released and there are tighter security restricions on Active X controls and such. Spyware can still be installed through other programs and many of them do not function with FF yet. I higly reccomend the following tools in combination with Ad-Aware to get rid of spyware problems.

This is a tool called SpyBot Search and Destroy, its a bit more agressive than Ad-Aware; both programs will catch stuff that the other one doesn't.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

I finally loaded this on and it's caused nothing buy problems for me. I ended up having to delete it from the system. I kept getting all these errors when I run it. My computer almost didn't start up one day because of a "WildTangent" file . Now since I deleted it everytime I start the computer up it keeps looking for it. The file was in the directory for this software.

Ah Wild Tangent is fun stuff. You should be able to remove it from your add/remove programs menu. After that hop into your start menu, goto run, and then type msconfig, hit enter. There will be a tab in this box for 'startup' head over there and look for anything that was wild tangent in it. If you find something uncheck it, if you see anything else in there worth turning off, go ahead and do it; nothing in the startup area will hurt your machine. Onece your done, restart the computer. when you come back into Windows there will be a pop up telling you, you are using selective startup, just check the 'don't show this to me again' box and hit ok.

Also, you can try getting rid of it in safe mode, as your computer is booting up hit F5 continually. This will eventually put you in Safe Mode, which looks weird. But you can run programs like spybot, etc. from there without creating other system problems; just a little trick.

I didn't see anything with WildTangent but i did see a "spamsubstract" that i turned off.

Sounds good to me

ummmm, DD, I have been using FF on both win2k and an xp<now SP2> box and the windows update works just fine, it still uses IE to do it. You might have a configuration issue.

Alan

Well, do you have it set for auto update? If you have FF installed you can always use IE to do the update, you just can't go to the Window's Update site with FF. IF you visit for an on-site update with FF you'll get this message
http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/thanks.asp