Why The Heck Don’t I Use Firefox?

Jim (aka AsparaGus), wrote to take exception to my preference for Firefox. I invited him to expound on his reasons for the column, and here’s what he offered. He makes some valid points.

Why the heck don’t I use Firefox?

I’m not a kid, and I came to PCs late in life - about five years ago. I watched the browser wars (and Microsoft bashing in general), with the growing displeasure of an adult witnessing a food fight at the kiddie table. Heaven forbid anyone criticize the darling Firefox (as Fred Langa did), by observing as usage grew so did incidents of security problems. Otherwise sane and intelligent people become raving lunatics at a negative comment. Strangely, they seem to be the same who are so eager to sling mud at IE and Microsoft.

Its plug-ins always give me trouble. Its automatic update always fails for me. I downloaded the latest version today, v1.07, and it needed Quick Time to play a simple midi (why QuickTime?) Even though it identified the plug-in, it wasn’t available and sent me to Apple.com where I was told what I already knew - that I had QuickTime on my system already.

I looked quickly at the top ten extensions you referred to in the page linked from your article, even though your own estimate - that it would slow the system - pretty much sealed their fate in my mind. I don’t need a browser to tell the time or weather. I don’t want an extension that will let me view a page as if it were IE. I know how to disable JavaScripts in IE already (or set them all to ask first), why ever would I need a script to tell me how? I have HTML and CSS tools. Why would I trust a browser to try to do that job? I have spyware defenses, AV, and a firewall; why would I expect or want my browser to do that - deciding what is safe or not shouldn’t be a plug-in, extension, or whatever developed by who knows what contributor with who knows what agenda? Just serve up the pages I want - that is a browser’s function.

I use Netscape 8, which already has the IE view incorporated. It installed and found what plug-ins it needed relatively easily. I don’t use it for much beyond testing pages. Opera has some more interesting toys, but I don’t use it much either. Firefox is the tail end of that list. For tabbed browsing I use Crazy Browser v 1.0.5. (I didn’t much care for the improvements of a later version.) It configured easily, let me move the tab location to the bottom with a few clicks, and uses the IE rendering engine and works just fine, thank you very much.

I’m not offering solutions because there is no problem. Except for all those clever guys telling me the sky is falling if I don’t use Firefox.

It isn’t.

[tags]firefox,extension,ie,netscape,crazy browser,asparagus[/tags]