No phrase in the English language will get me into more hot water than the one I opted to use as the headline for today’s report. You must understand that I wrote it to get your attention. Do I have your attention now? Great.

Yes, I realize that an increasing amount of people are using Firefox for Web browsing and Thunderbird for viewing email (as well as managing other information). I, however, am not a flyer of the Firefox flag. I support Mozilla’s efforts, but I don’t think their software is amazing… yet. And before you begin to criticize my choices, understand that I’m just as annoyed with IE7. I have Firefox installed on my machine, but the only time I use it is when I’m troubleshooting a Web page.

Recently, Thunderbird users have been seeing mis-Capitalized Words in Lockergnome newsletters. At first, I thought it was a random hiccup – but then more subscribers started to complain. The common thread between them was the Thunderbird client. Tonight will prove my sleuthing efforts successful or void, as I believe I’ve identified the problem and fixed it. If not, then it’s back to the drawing board – back to trying to fix a problem that I inadvertently created. But is it really my problem, or is it the email client’s issue in the first place?

What I object to most is the attitude that some people take in thinking that Firefox and Thunderbird are infallable – that they’re natively superior to existing choices. That’s simply not true, and I know I’m going to catch rudabegas for coming out and stating that open source software can be just as crappy as proprietary software. The truth is: I love Firefox and Thunderbird for what they’re doing to this market segment. Would I use them daily? No. Would I recommend that others make the switch? Sure. But do I think they’re amazing? Heck no.

[tags]firefox,html,ie7,mozilla,internet explorer,web browsing,thunderbird,web browser,open source software,proprietary software,email client[/tags]