Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Test Drive, Part Two

Well, not exactly like Part One of "Test Drive"...  I've bought this puppy, said puppy bein' Firefox 4.0, which has all the features of IE9 and a VERY slightly different layout.  Witness:

Click to embiggen, as always

FF 4.0 is off to the races...
After a slow start, Firefox 4 picked up its download pace considerably late yesterday and throughout the night: It scored about 7 million downloads in its first 24 hours after launch. By 9 am PST today, the download count blew past 8 million and there are no signs of a slowdown. Previews of Firefox 4.2 are already available.
And, appropriate for a racehorse, the browser is fast... much faster than 3.6.15.  I like the new layout, too, which is much like IE9 in that it gives ya more content space (without having to figger out how to hide your menu bars).  Muscle-memory is killing me, tho... I have to make two moves with the mouse to change tabs.  A lil more familiarity with the new interface and this, too, shall pass.

We all have out favorite browsers... I've downloaded and dabbled with both Chrome and the latest incarnations of IE... but I always come back to Firefox.  If you're one of those undecided but objective types when it comes to browsers, PC Mag has a good three-way comparison between FF, IE, and Chrome.  Spoiler:  PC Mag rates Chrome as the Editors' Choice.

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm a Firefox fanboy, and will give 'er a rip tonight when I get in from work.

    I really hate learning new things, but I'm pretty sure it's time to move on.

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  2. Shoot -- I can't even get videos tp play! How could I figure out a new OS?

    (P.S. -- The Son swears by Firefox)

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  3. Kewl.

    NOT a nerd by nature, but I been playin with browsers since '96 or 7, started with Mosaic on a less-than-26k modem, taught the first class(es) in Netscape to the City and County of SF, went to IE when I realized it was what most clients were using anyway...

    Took a well-deserved break from the whole deal for about 5 years and started back up with FF/Thunderbird on the advice of my new (local) ISP, Sonic.

    I've never had a glitch, both programs update automatically, and they still look like they did 3 years ago. After lots of screwing around with IE and Outlook, there was practically no learning curve, and it's all essentially bulletproof - and damn near spam-and popup-free.

    Like'em.

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  4. Andy: It's an easy upgrade, painless as all get out.

    Moogie: FF ain't an OS, it's just a different browser... with a built-in spell check!

    Rob: Yes to ALL of the above! I moved to Firefox around release 2.0, back when I was still with EDS. Yeah... THAT long ago!

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  5. I just want my email to work like it did on the desk top. And I am working toward that goal, slowly, cautiously.

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  6. Lou: Your e-mail not working as it did on your desktop made me scratch my head... as in "why wouldn't it work the same?"

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  7. Buck I've got 4.0, but I'm pissed. Delicious hasn't made their add-on compatible yet and I put all my bookmarks "in the cloud" on it as more convenient than physical on-site back-ups and it's a pain without it. Also, I disagree with you about the "instrument-scan" bit. The old system with the tabs at the lower edge/line was intuitive and the first un-cluttered thing the eye hit. Now it's a line buried in the clutter third from the top and I have to orient myself briefly every time I go to change tabs to chase the right one down. "Old dogs", etc...sigh. It IS faster, more stable, of course, still...

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  8. PS: I know--I should stick w. standard bookmarks and simply have *Carbonite* back EVERYTHING up daily. At 5 bucks/mo it's a bargain. I probably should gravitate that way..

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  9. Virgil: Agree somewhat on the interface; as I said, muscle-memory is killin' me. As for back-ups... I do it the ol' fashioned way: an outboard hard drive with daily incrementals and a full back-up twice a week.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.