Long before the official start of WWII (Web War II) – this spring, I had given up all hope for Internet Explorer.

What I had been using for about two years was Opera, advertised by its creators as “the fastest browser on earth”. Indeed, it was extremely fast, with very well-thought shortcuts – for instance “back” and “forward” needed only one keystroke, ergonomically placed; the tab brosing interfaced was mature and ergonomical as well; so were the other key-shortcuts that quickly tuned on/off safe browsing, image load/unload, and many other features, such as forms identity management. Besides, it worked (better or worse) with all the sites browsed; i had completely forgotten that internet explorer was still on my computer; only now and then would I use it, just to see a “better” layout of a given site.

The first times i heard about Firefox were back in the days when it was called “phoenix” and, later, “firebird”; as firebird, i even tried it, but its browsing experience seemed lower than that of opera.
I came to use firefox this spring and summer, when at the internship at the french company “AXLOG Ingénierie”, the machine was extremely lazy and crashed whenever using more than 4 instances of Internet Explorer.
Opera having become in the mean time an outdated browser, too bloated, shareware and not quite grasping the latest web standards ( for instance my livejournal.com web page looked blunt ugly under it), I downloaded Firefox, the smaller, free opensource, and more stable alternative.

Using Firefox daily, I learned to like it quite a lot. In fact, it is the browser I use daily; even my website was designed specifically for it, although (unsuccessful)efforts have been put to make it nice even with IE.
Simplistic interface that can be mastered by any user (unlike opera); nicer layout and rendering of web pages; lots of plugins and themes to enhance the tool.
In fact, it is also the main fault I find to it: the naked browser, as downloaded from www.mozilla.org, has such a limited set of functionalities and default settings that the newcommer is likely to be deceived; just as I was, back in the days of firebird.

There is actually a minimal set of extensions to be downloaded. Among them, I recommend:

• Download Manager Tweak
• All-in-One Gestures
• Disable Targets For Downloads
• FirefoxView
• IE View
• Duplicate Tab
• LastTab
• Single Window
• Flash Click to View

Other problems:

• several (important) websites have got to use an elitistic “IE – only” policy: even now, with the counteroffensive of the rebels – Firefox, I find myself forced to use often enough IE, just to be able to read some stupid articles on the net. But the battles have only begun.
• Accidental closing of the browser loses all opened pages; I’m waiting for extensions to solve this.

Although Microsoft has greatly enhanced IE, adding to it features like Mobile Favorites – the main feature I use for synchonizing web sites with my Pocket PC, I have a great hope that starting with Firefox 1.0, things are going to change more quickly. The public campaign, “spread firefox”, seems to promise this. Therefore, prepare, gents, for the revolution.

Reading:

• An interesting article about Firefox’s main developer and what the future may bring
• SpreadFireFox Campaign

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