Well, I Prefer Firefox

Some weeks ago, I started using Firefox 3.0 which is still in beta.  After a while, i asked myself why exactly do I prefer this browser. I’ve been using it almost since Mozilla released the first version. Initially, I adopted Firefox because I liked Netscape of the early days, say begin of the 90’s. Of all the browsers I’ve used, Firefox is by far the easier to use.

Tabs are one of the features of Firefox I like most. They are very clear and easy to use when I compare them to Internet Explorer, for example. Now, most of the time, I have one Firefox window open with different tabs per activity. For example, I may have one blogging window, one database development window, one news window and so on. In the news window, I may have two tabs for cameroonian news sites, one tab for bbcworld.com, one for reuters.com, one for lemonde.com, one for bloomberg.com and one for techcrunch.com. This enables me to quickly and easily move from one news site to the other. It’s also very helpful when I need to compare news from two different sources.

The possibility to zoom in and out is also very useful. In version 3.0 (i repeat, still in beta), zooming in works for text and images, including videos. In version 2.0, it works only for text. For those of you who wear glasses, zooming in in text is certainly very helpful. But, being able to zoom in with videos is what I like most. It simply enrich the experience so much. This is how I watch the music videos that I like on Youtube. Now, this feature sometimes does not work and I have had to report a couple of bugs to Mozilla about it. Still I really like it and hope in the release version it will work properly and almost all the time.

Another interesting feature of Firefox is that your sessions can be restored after a crash. Now, when you have five Firefox windows opened each with six or more tabs, you certainly don’t want to restart all of them after a crash. You may even have forgotten the web page of a specific tab when the crash occured. So, this feature is quite handy.

Note however that some sites do not work with Firefox. In which case, I switch to Internet Explorer. With Firefox controlling some 15% of the browser market, organizations should develop their online applications with W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards. This will ensure that their sites work properly on all browsers.

Now, I am aware of Firefox add-ons and have tried a couple of them. I wasn’t quite impressed. That’s why i simply use the standard browser.

So, ask yourself why you’re using your preferred browser. If you’re not already a Firefox fan, try it and share your experience with us.

~ by Christian Essombè Kuoh on May 29, 2008.