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20041110 Wednesday November 10, 2004

Take back the web I've started a small revolution among my friends and family. I'm on a mission to take back the web. If they own a computer and they don't have Firefox installed, it will be soon. I'm recommending it to everyone, b/c people often ask me for advice for their computer's problems. Here's how our conversation usually goes:

Them: I'm having an issue with viruses, spyware, AOL, etc.
Me: You should use Firefox.
Them: Oh really, what's that?
Me: An internet browser. It's a lot better than Internet Explorer.
Them: OK, how much does it cost?
Me: It's free, download it from firefox.com.
Them: Cool, thanks for the tip.

This happens if their computer isn't nearby. If it is, I'll download and install it for them. I did this on Holly's machine last night. After showing her the tabbed browsing and she was pumped. Of course, hooking her up to a wireless network for the first time probably had something to do with her enthusiasm.

Even if IE adds tabbed browsing, I don't think there's any hope for it now. The web feel so much more solid when using Firefox. When I use IE, it feels brittle and ready to break. Have you started taking back the web with your family and friends?

Get Firefox

Posted in The Web at Nov 10 2004, 02:38:31 PM MST 7 Comments

Comments:

Matt, I'm all for encouraging Firefox as the right thing. However, we've had the issue that average joe has no idea about popup blocking and Firefox's options relating to it. Unfortunately, with our users, one can't assume they've seen a warning message flash up on the screen :)

Posted by Damian Murphy on November 10, 2004 at 05:45 PM MST #

Ya know, I've been afraid to admit it, I don't like Firefox. I much prefer Mozilla.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska on November 10, 2004 at 06:03 PM MST #

Of course, maybe MS thinks borwser are not important in the future for new apps, what with RiA and all.

.V

Posted by Vic on November 10, 2004 at 08:29 PM MST #

I'm right there with ya Matt. I installed Firefox on my wife's(who isn't technical) laptop, showed her tabbed browsing and my "technical support" calls throughout the day have been reduced by 99%!

Posted by Scott Williams on November 11, 2004 at 07:52 AM MST #

I've been using FireFox since it was called Phenoix (I sound like somebody's dad now) and it's been a great experience. If you are a website/web app developer, check out the Web Developer plug in. Lots of cool features that you can use to help debug and improve your pages. Noticed an interesting thing this morning though, when I upgraded from 1.0RC to 1.0, it didn't render my client's homepage correctly (text was pushed down on one of the divs). Had to be the home page, right? :-( It's probably something minor, maybe the CSS isn't valid or something, even though I don't remember making any changes lately. If you do websites or web apps, go ahead and double check your client's pages in the lastest version just to be sure.

Posted by Keller on November 11, 2004 at 12:37 PM MST #

You took the words right out of my mouth Matt. Ditto over here.

Posted by Dan Allen on November 11, 2004 at 02:19 PM MST #

FireFox is truely awesome. And for those who prefer Mozilla, cudos to them too! Now the major problem is that several sites are still written to require IE. The upsetting part to me about this is IE is now the last app that is stopping me from wiping my wife's system and installing a Linux. sigh

Posted by Nathan Anderson on November 16, 2004 at 01:43 PM MST #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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