Firefox / Opera vs IE

monomer

If you post on this forum a lot, IE users normally have an advantage with the formatting buttons working like they're supposed to. Help is at hand for Firefox users, who may be interested in the BBCode plugin, which makes formatting things before posting easier via context menus.

Here's a review of it:

Post in forums a lot? BBCode is for you

culpepper

re the bookmarks thing,if you grab the icon for the current page (the one on the tab) you can drag the bookmark to the sidebar.If you want to launch a page grab the bookmark from the sidebar and drag it to the window.
To get the new folder/divider/bookmark menu quickly,right click on the sidebar.
You get the sidebar by clicking view,sidebar
You can also add buttons to the toolbar by right clicking on the toolbar and choosing customize.

Opera is also a good browser I used to use it a lot but switched to firefox to see what it was like.You can have all these browsers on your system at the same time and even run more than 1 at once.
Opera has inbuilt email.

Chippy_Minton

Other excellent alternatives to Internet Explorer and Firefox are SlimBrowser and Avant Browser. They are direct replacements for IE and use its interface with the addition of tabbed browsing, site groups, pop-up blocker etc. For anyone used to IE, I think they are easier to learn than Firefox and don't have the plethora of extensions that can make upgrading Firefox a hassle.

LincsLad_3

... the plethora of extensions that can make upgrading Firefox a hassle.

I haven't tried either of the alternative browsers you mention Chippy, but I must take issue with the 'upgrade hassle' comment.

Firefox informs you, by means of a discreet icon on the title bar, when updates to the main program, or any installed extensions, are available. You click on the icon to review them and can then choose to install if desired.

To be honest, it is one of the slickest upgrade methods I have yet seen. 8)

Now is you want to talk about upgrade hassles, let's get back to Micro$oft products....

Chippy_Minton

Upgrading FF usually goes without a hitch and all installed extensions are compatible with the upgrade. However, I recently upgraded to 20041107 Firefox/1.0 and two of my extensions (SessionSaver and Tabbrowser Preferences) were incompatible and I had to search out the latest versions - not the first time I've had to do so. Perhaps the compatibility issues will improve as FF matures.

LincsLad_3

Yes, I take your point but as we both know, versions prior to that were effectively all Beta.

I hadn't seen the current method of advising of upgrading, etc, until v1.0 so as you say, hopefully it will only get better. I am still impressed by it as it stands though.

Chippy_Minton

Nope, I was actually running 1.0 PR (Preview Release I think that means) which was the first official non-beta release, available c. Sept 04 and had been running the extensions quite happily. Couple of days ago the 'Firefox updates' icon appeared and that's when I upgraded to 1.0 (no PR on this version) and the incompatibility problems occurred.

LincsLad_3

OK, I was still counting the PR as a 'beta' version (note the inverted commas), which is why I said "effectively all Beta".

But anyway, there possibly WILL be inconsistencies between extensions and the core program as the latter advances and the former take a little time to catch up. But catch up they will, and a lot faster than the MS equivalent.

Oh, sorry! There IS no MS equivalent. ;D ( wish I could find again the 'Farewell IE, I'm leaving you' article I read a few days ago. I can't at the moment, but I discovered this other little gem of Firefox's (and getting back to the thread topic too... )

Firefox resists "phishing" scams, in which con artists lure users into entering personal info on fake Web pages, by making it easier to tell good sites from bad. When you land on an encrypted page -- almost no phishing sites provide this protection -- Firefox advertises that status by highlighting the address bar in yellow. It also lists that page's domain name on the status bar; if that doesn't match what you see in the address bar, you're probably on a phishing site. ( think IE may do the status bar thing too, I had been wondering why the FF address bar turns yellow sometimes though! ::)

^{Edited to add: :-[ Found the link - earlier in this very thread. Bears repeating though: Link}

Chippy_Minton

Yeah, maybe 1.0 PR was a beta version.

I agree with you, FF blows IE out of the water in all respects. Now, as soon as Microsoft and others update their websites to conform to web standards (e.g. the flyout menus on http://www.microsoft.com/uk/ don't work), there will be no need for IE any more .

One very useful FF feature is the Find bar at the bottom of the screen - no more having to move the Find window which usually obscures what you're trying to read! Why hadn't anyone thought of it before? So simple.

Rex_Mundi

Press the "Prt Scrn" button (sends screen snapshot to clipboard)
open a new paint document
From the menu - "Edit" then "Paste"

Here's another easy way

Alt+Prt Scrn will copy whatever is on your screen. You can then paste this to where you like.