firefox
Firefox v3.0 First Impressions
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 | Tech Help, Tech News | Comments Off
Browse Safe with Firefox 3
Firefox 3 was released yesterday to much fanfare. The first tallies are showing over 8 million downloads in 1 day. Of that total 269,901 were by Canadians.
Update June 19: Download total is now over 11 million, 320,000+ by Canada.
I’ve been using it for about a day, here are my initial impressions.
I don’t have any stats to back it up, but Firefox 3 seems faster. Pages come up fast, there is very little lag when switching tabs and so far the memory used by Firefox 3 is not growing by the second. Now I never had the memory issues some users of Firefox 2 have had, but, I regularly have 8-10 tabs open a time, often even more, and Firefox 3 so far seems to hang around 120-140K. Much like my old install of Firefox 2. This may be because I keep the amount of add-ons I use to a minimum, so I was never affected by the memory issues.
After installing Firefox 3 the first thing I noticed was the update interface. Thankfully Mozilla didn’t mess with the standard browser placement like Microsoft did in IE7. I also noticed that a new folder showed up on my toolbar. Firefox 3 adds a “Most Visited” folder. I’m not sure if i will use it yet, but could see how it could be useful.
I’m still learning & playing with all the new features in Firefox 3, and getting used to the new url bar, but, so far I like the new version. This is a required upgrade to all Firefox 2 users. I also strongly recommend IE users to take the plunge and give FF3 a try. I really think you will be impressed.
Firefox v2.0
Friday, October 27th, 2006 | Tech News | Comments Off
Firefox v2.0 was released earlier this week, just after IE7's release date. IE7 left me unimpressed with its interface and general look and feel. Firefox latest release is a much more polished product. Instead of changing mush of its buttons and interface, the developers left a good thing alone but gave the old interface a face lift. The only interface change I have noticed is the addition of close buttons to each tab. I still find myself mousing over to the right to close tabs but I'm sure Ill get used to this change quickly. The single greatest improvement in v2 is the addition of inline spell checking in web forms. I love this feature and its implementation was done perfectly. Good job people. You can read about more features here .
So can these improvements further take a bite out of IE's market share? Not without an inovative marketing plan or, better yet, a large PC builder installing it on all its PCs. Dell & Google have a deal to install the Google Toolbar and Desktop on Dell PCs. Mozilla should explore this type of deal. Firefox's ~15% market share would quickly improve if our grandma's and mom's had the browser installed and ready to go on their new PC.
Firefox & IE7
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 | Tech News | Comments Off
With the impending releases of Internet Explorer 7, I would like to remind my readers that there is another option. In fact there are two other options that would be a good choice as a primary browser, Firefox and Opera . Personally I prefer Firefox to Opera, the bias is purely subjective. I just like how Firefox does things and I like the the user interface. There is nothing wrong with Opera, its just not for me. With that being said, Firefox is set to release its latest version late this month. You don't have to wait for 2.0 to come out, the latest stable release 1.5.07 is available and I urge you to at least give it a spin. Check out TweakGuides.com to learn how to optimize you new copy of Firefox.
In related IE7 news, Microsoft will be pushing IE7 via Windows Update as a high priority update, but will be an optional update. There have already been a few concerns over possible exploits, but one thing is for sure, this update will be worth the time to download it. Until website developers stop designing sites to use activeX there will always be a need to keep a IE around. It may as well be a more secure version than the porous IE6.
Computer Fundamentals 100
Thursday, August 31st, 2006 | Tech Help | Comments Off
Welcome to the first of many guides to technology I will be writing. For my first guide, lets call it Computer Fundamentals 100, I will give you my top 5 tips for a new or prospective computer owner, specifically Windows users.
1. A computer is nothing to be afraid of. So, go ahead and explore the file system. Aside from deleting any files located in c:\windows, or c:\program files, there isn't to much that can go wrong by going into My Computer and taking a look around, Trial & error work for you as a small child, why not as an adult. › Continue reading