little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

this is why i never post about the browser wars

I’ve gradually started surfing the web with Firebird instead of Internet Explorer. I just wish my intentions were more noble.

As a web developer, I’ve known about Mozilla for a while. “You should use Mozilla because it supports web standards,” they would say. “Also, it has an open-source development community. Microsoft is evil! Microsoft is the devil! Down to the mega-power uber-corporation!”

They say this, of course, while they drink a venti Caramel Macchiato.

Mozilla has its nice parts: in particular, the ability to block all pop-up windows and tabbed browsing (so you don’t have 15 web browser windows on your desktop) but what had turned me off the most from the browser was the speed. I could click on the Mozilla icon, walk outside, give birth to a couple of babies, come back and the browser would still be loading.

Subsequently, Mozilla Firebird was released, a slimmed-down version of Mozilla that addressed most of the previous speed issues and now runs faster than Internet Explorer, to me anyway. This, combined with the other features has gotten me to use Firebird as my default browser rather than IE, not the anti-Microsoft pro-open source rants I see on message boards and weblogs on a daily basis.

Because you gave a shit, right?

My god. What’s next? A switch to Mac?
Then you can add Safari to your list.

Actually, I care. I switched from IE to Firebird too, and although I really like Firebird one thing drives me nuts - and I have yet to fix it. The ability to use the space bar to scroll down a webpage. Mine stopped working, not sure why right now.

I care, as you’re the second person to rec this browser. I tend to wait around until a bunch of people start using something first. It’s that whole ‘you poke the lion first’ way of things. Currently using the advant shell around IE, but this sounds a bit better.

I’ve been using it since it was Phoenix. IT’s great. Fancy, download the latest nightly build - it should help.

Welcome to my world, Ernie. Welcome. To. My. World.

Fancy: It works for me. Maybe you have caret browsing on? that’s the ability to surf the page with a cursor and arrow keys. Try pressing F7.

I have no interest in web standards. I’ve yet to find a single website that consistently vallidates as W3C compatible in any way. (Meaning that it may vallidate as soon as it’s been created, but sites that are updated regularly, rarely vallidate all of the time).

However, the use of technologies such as CSS and XHTML to make it easier to code and also easier for search engine bots, is excellent.

* That is all.

I posted something about this on my blog. I don’t want to seem like an advertisement whore plugging my blog in Ernie’s comment sections, but it’s pretty long and I don’t want to spam the place up either (since nobody will probably read it anyway…) Ah, I guess I’ll just link it and hope nobody minds. Of course, I guess the comment could just be deleted if somebody does. Anyway, if you want, you can check out my opinion here: http://blog.tidalflame.net/index.php?p=view&id=17

Lynx all the way!

“They say this, of course, while they drink a venti Caramel Macchiato.” So true.

<rant>ok i admit, i’m a microsoft hating linux–and now macosx– user, and haven’t had to deal with ie’s bullsh*t for a while now (like taking down the whole os when the browser crashes), but, if you think about it, ms has really given us no choice. they say that the only way to get the new version of ie is to buy longhorn (i.e., the next version of windows.) no more free downloads. and when is longhorn going to come out? what the hell are we supposed to use until then? (and, of course, none of this matters anyway since i can’t run longhorn on my mac, and i’m stuck using ie 5 if i really want to use ie.) ie is unimprovable, at least without shelling out another $200 to fatten bill’s already bulging pockets (and, in my case, god knows how much to windows pc makers.) in contrast, mozilla and its offspring, by the very nature of being open source, will always continue to improve (and fork if it has to) as long as there are hackers, and will run on whatever platform you happen to be on.</rant>

I use IE at work for development, because of course almost every one of our users hits us with it. But I also have Firebird (and before that Phoenix) for browsing any other site (all strictly work-related, naturally!). For me, it’s the popup blocking, the selective cookie rejection, and above all, the best thing to happen to web browsing since Netscape was a baby, tabbed browser windows. I can’t begin to express how happy MDI makes me. It’s alleged to be a usability nightmare, but, um, I’m using it, and it’s dreamy.

I actually paid for Opera before I realized that there were Mozilla projects that didn’t suck. Better late than never.

It was a sad sad day when I switched from Netscape to IE cuz performance got so bad. Wah!

Damn. 320 calories in a caramel macchiato.

And after Browser Wars, The Return of Firebird, we are going to have The Blogging Wars: Blogger vs MT, and so on, and so forth.

Anyone know how to make Firebird show the entire alt/title text when you mouse over a image/link? I hate it way it truncates it. (For instance, over most of Ernie’s sideblog entries, he puts comments in the title field. In IE they show fine, in Firebird I get about 10 words then “…”

Drives me crazy.

What version of Mozilla are you using that takes so long to load? I’ve been using the slightly old version 1.3.1 for a few months and love it. It’s not slow at all. And Firebird’s great too.

How can anyone survive with no pop-up blocker or tabbed interface? You might as well live in a cave and eat raw mastodon.

I had the exact same problem with Mozilla, but think Firebird’s zippier, too. A little trick I discovered: using prefetch.

Prefetch is this little switch that Microsoft uses to make its own programs run faster, but you can use on some of your other software, too. Just add: /prefetch:1 to the end of the icon’s target (Right Click –> Properties –> Target). Like mine:

“C:\Program Files\Firebird\MozillaFirebird.exe” /prefetch:1

I’ve noticed on my computer when I reboot, Firebird opens slowly, but every time after that until I reboot again, Firebird’s much zippier.

Firebird/Mozilla also has a bunch of great web designer/developer tools, plugins, and bookmarks that don’t work for IE. The bookmarklets are at: squarefree.com/bookmarklets/. I don’t know how I lived without “ancestors” and “edit styles.”

I have been using Avant Browser for the last few weeks. It’s a shell that goes on top of IE that allows tabbed browsing and has a pop-up blocker. It seems to work pretty well for me so far, although there are a couple of frustrating things (not the least of which is the inability to manage favorites without going through IE directly).

Vincent, I believe there’s an experimental feature in the Tabbrowser Extensions that allows you to display the full image tooltip. http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/#Tabbrowser%20Extensions

Ernie, we all know the only reason to block pop-ups is when you are looking at porn, admit it.

Does it have tabbed browsing that doesn’t suck? I’ve been spoiled by Opera, which lets you move the tabs around after you open them, which is really handy for grouping a few related pages together in one window.

I’m an Opera user, but for pages that insist on IE, I use Avant, which is like a front-end for IE that adds some necessary features including pop-up blocking, and a flash blocker, both of which can be toggled right on the default toolbar. It can make even IE pleasant, though it has IE’s sluggishness.

http://www.avantbrowser.com, IIRC. For when you have to use IE.

I use mozilla on my linux box, and my windows machine at work. Tabbed browsing and complete lack of popups can not be beat. When I use IE on my parents computer and I get popups everwhere I go crazy, that reason alone should cause poeple to switch. I however am a Mac user now so I use Safari, which rocks. That sucker is so fast, has tabbed browsing, and blocks popups. As far as I am concerened, M$ being evil aside, there really are better browsers out there.

Microsoft bad… other things good!

Two things to comment on, since I’ve never used Firebird and I’m not qualified to make comments on that:

1. Since you can get a Venti Caramel Macchiato just past the seventh gate in the Forbidden City in China (A cultural treasure, in case you didn’t know, that’s several hundred years old), yes, I agree, Starbucks is an evil, evil Empire.

2. You can give birth to babies?!

I like MyIE2 better. It autohides the toolbar, so I get the most viewing area. It also has all the tab and popup stuff that should be standard in anything worth using.

Brandon:

Thanks, I got a new nightly build and trashed the old one. It appears one of my extensions had caused it to be disabled or gave it an alternate function I was unaware of — but we’re all better now.

Hey, ranting on Microsoft is one thing, but ranting on Starbucks is another. I’m pround to give my money to them. That’s until Wawa is national.

job for ernie?

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000944.html

it is times like these that I am glad I am a Mac user, with the overwhelmingly wonderful Safari to whisk my browsing woes away.

http://www.apple.com/switch

just installed firebird last night and tried using it. u r right ernie, it’s faster than IE. but will have to surf more in order to see the other benefits.

I’m using Firebird right now.

I love the tabbed browsing, the status bar, and the popup blocker. However, everyone else seemed to forget about one of my other favorite things: it’s skinnable. I use a different skin than what it comes with, and I haven’t felt the need to switch from that. Also, the built-in search is nice, even if it doesn’t support my favorite engine (Alltheweb). rock on open source.

Perhaps of interest to web developers:

http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/mozilla-webdev/

Dammit Ernie. I could not care less about browsers, really, so I won’t weigh in on it, except to say I likes my Opera.

But! Now that I know about the nutrition crap in Starbucks drinks, I can’t pretend they’re not unhealthy. Damn you, sir. Damn you.

A little OT, but: Does Venti actually mean something in Italian (or other language), or did Starbucks just invent the word to *sound* Italian (etc.)? The latter might explain the (R) symbol.

That’s been bothering me for ages.

I have used Mozilla for quite some time; for some reason I can’t ever get IE to do anything at a pace faster than effin’ slow.

However, my latest baby is Konqueror for KDE 9Slackware Linux). It’s pretty slick, from what I’ve seen of it so far.

Yes, I am a geek and I have no life.

i used to use safari on my mac until i got fed up with the fact that i couldn’t reject specific cookies. plus safari and konquerer don’t allow css to change things like buttons and text-input boxes. back to firebird for me.

I thought Firebird was a sports car made by Pontiac?

I just switched to Firebird for the same reason. It still drives me crazy when I go to IE only sites though :\

A note to anyone who is unaware, nightly builds are for techie types, they’re like a box of chocolates, you never know when you’re gonna get a gooey mess all over your hands.

Ernie, you can set Mozilla for fast startup, it’s one of the preferences. I heart Mozilla. Would use Firebird but there are a couple features that are Mozilla-only that I use a lot.

If you have IE only issues you can try to a user agent switcher,

http://uabar.mozdev.org/

http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work/firebird/useragentswitcher/

1. You can block popups really well in IE with the Google Tool bar beta 2.

2, You can set IE to reject cookies on a per site basis. Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Advanced, Check “Override…”, set to prompt level.

3. Tabbed browsing clears the toolbar, but creates the need for and then clutters the tab bar, so are you really gaining any screen? OK, sure, when it’s minimized.

Frankly I think Image Blocking is the best thing Mozilla has going for it.

When you’re on a page that takes forever to load due to lots of banner ads and such, just right click on the image and select “Block Images From This Server”. Reload, and no ads.

Just make sure the ads are on a different server/domain or every image on the site will be gone. Most banner ads are located on servers owned by the advertiser.

Of course, site owners hate this because they’re using the ads to make money. But has anyone ever made money on the internet?

Venti– derived from the word 20 in italian, for 20 ounces.

You know what’s the biggest rip-off of all? Take a tall cup of coffee and get a venti cup filled with ice. Pour the tall cup of hot coffee into the venti cup of ice and see how much you use.

‘Venti’ is not derived from the Italian word for ‘20,’ it is the Italian word for ‘20.’ Starbucks registering that is like a south-american restaurant tradmarking ‘uno.’ Can you imagine?

No, but this is the kicker: it’s actually 24 ounces. Isn’t that stupid? grr.

Opera.

That’s all I have to say.

Starbucks is not an evil empire. A huge empire, yes. But they are actually very beneficial to local communities, free trade, and even to competing local coffee shops. There’s a great post on it here:

http://www.someblogs.com/youwho/archives/000408.html#000408

Mozilla loads up damn fast if you use the autostart thingy.

Just taking a quick coffee break and wanted to post a hello

I’m just browsing around your site for the first time, interesting read