Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Hi guys (no, not the user)

I know that pretty much everybody uses Firefox around here. I am currently using Internet Explorer, and it has never failed me. That click to activate thing doesn't bother me at all. So therefore, I see no real good reason to switch.

But lately I have been kind of curious about it. Could you guys give me some good reasons why I should switch and how it differs from IE? I would appreciate it a lot.

Also, is there anything else that I would have to do?

Thanks.

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Speed. (Faster than IE)
Customability. (Themes, extentions, and a whole buncha fun stuff)
Features. (Live bookmarking, easier access to things, search bar in the top right that you can customize to search any website you want)
Safer. (Better pop-up blocker, has better safety tools)

And a whole, whole bunch of other stuff. *waites for the hard-core Firefoxers to get in here*

Internet Explorer=Microsoft=Big Corporation That Only Cares About Money And Not The Little People Like Us
Firefox=Mozilla=Made By Little People Like Us

...Or so that's the perception I've seen. And also, the points Code J made are valid, too.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Security - It's not integrated into Windows itself, so it takes more for viruses to infect your computer.

Open Source - People can see the source so everybody can look at it and fix vulnerabilities.

Those are my two favorite reasons.

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well, i like it because you can change how it looks and put extensions onto it.
plus pop-up blocking and built-in search engines.

I'd say security.
The last time I used IE you had to delete all the private data manually if you wanted to be sure they really got deleted. Now I just push one button and it's done (however, I use Opera). Also, every time I went browsing with IE, Ad-Aware could always find something bad.

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My music
My LJ

Me too. Since I've made the switch, Ad-Aware very rarely has anything to say. Except for that creepy "BEEEOOOW" sound it makes. But that's it.

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Two things in my mind...

No ActiveX controls. You can disable these in IE. They have many many many good uses, but they are also very very very dangerous.

Tabbed Browsing. If you havne't used tabbed browsing, you havne't lived. I love being able to have 15-20 different web pages (say... forum posts) all in the same window rather than 15-20 different windows.

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I don't understand why there needs to be so much discussion about why you should try Firefox. Just try it. It'll take you all of 10 minutes to download and install it. Use it for a week, and if you don't like it you can get rid of it. There's no pain and no commitment, so download it already!

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I'm hoping that's not your reason for using firefox, man...

Actually, to ANYONE who uses firefox because they are simply Anti-Microsoft, please stop. It makes the people who use firefox because it's better look like a bunch of anti-microsoft fanboys.

My biggest reason for firefox is tabbed browsing. Like Stu said, you haven't lived til you've used it, and, like a scroll wheel on your mouse, you don't fully appreciate it til you have to go without it.

I also like the number of extensions available. I have an RSS feed reader running with mine, as well as a program that makes jpg images of entire webpages (a lot more useful than one would think) plus some other neat things.

I have nothing against IE, and, if they ever match the usability and security of Firefox, I can see switching back.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

That thing gave me the jibblies! I'm glad you can at least turn it off.

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My music
My LJ

Nah, I was just joking. But there is a good point in that since IE is made by Microsoft, it's more interconnected with the rest of Windows, so FireFox has the potential to have different modes of thinking when it comes to programming security, meaning there's the potential for improving the security on your system. And I really love tabbed browsing, too--many tabs in one window instead of many windows doesn't slow down your system as much (especially if you have an older system). Though I DO hear that the new IE coming out is going to have tabbed browsing as well.

I don't think Microsoft is entirely evil (but try convincing my Linux-using boyfriend of that)...especially what with all the charities that I hear Bill Gates donates to personally.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Anyone know how to delort IE froma windows computer? Add/Remove programs doesn't list it. I've been using Firefox/Opera for a while now (safer faster tabs foxyplayer) and I get adware pop-ups in IE at random times causing slowdowns. Any way to get IE off my computer?

Since Firefox/Opera is so much better, faster, and stronger. And it doesn't cost 6 million dollars!

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TIRES TIRES TIRES

I haven't removed IE from my compy, but I found the option to do it in the "Add/Remove Windows Components" part of the "Add/Remove Programs" menu.

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Thanks. I never even saw that part.

(P.S. This Island Earth is a great song {saw it in your last.fm banner})

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TIRES TIRES TIRES

Now, my friend, your dream has come true.

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FYI, by all accounts (well, except Microsoft's), IE7 (which is still in beta) comes nowhere near matching Firefox's security or functionality.

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Yes, but in some aspects, which StrongRad mentioned, it does.

And IE7 does have tabbed browsing, so if that's his biggest reason for wanting Firefox IE7 could bring some pretty close competition, it appears.

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Let's not forget the most wonderful browser of them all, safari!

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If I had posted during the time of COVID, COLA woulda called me worse than the virus.

I have a add-on that makes the Homestarrunner window fill the whole browser window.

To see an preview of it go to
addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1696/previews/

I wouldn't get rid of IE if I were you...

As you know, some pages don't work well in Firefox. But that's OK, we've got IE Tab. Not entirely. Some websites can detect whether your'e using Firefox or not and redirect you to a page saying "This site is only viewable in IE" even if you're in an IE Tab. I've only seen one website like that, but that's one of the reasons it' can be good to keep IE.

If you own a website and want to upload something, you can also do easily it in IE with ftp.website.com. I don't think you can do that in IE Tab.

It's also good when Firefox won't seem to open, and won't seem to close in the task manager, and when you want to finish something before rebooting the computer.

I'd say keep it installed, just in case.

Tabbed Browsing is a gift from God unto the internet using population, now I don't have to worry about 10 IE windows attacking me whenever I use the internet. It's also great for posting on forums, you can use one of Firefox's many many spellcheckers to make sure you dont enb up typeimng leik theis.

Oh, and Foxytunes. I love me some Foxytunes, now I don't have to keep minimizing/restoring Winamp whenever I want to switch the song.

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RIP Nathan "Buz" Buzdor

There's lots of good reasons to love Firefox. My top 2 are the Adblock and Adblock Filterset G extensions.
I don't waste bandwidth downloading stupid ads.
That alone is enough for me to never use IE except when I absolultely have to.

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You can't uninstall IE. Unless you're using Windows 95 or earlier (or being clever and not using Windows at all), IE is built-in to the OS. Which is what causes a lot of the problems.

Because of the many tasks that the OS uses IE to perform, IE is given quite broad rights to do what it needs to do, and so is the JScript code on the web pages - Windows Explorer (ie My Computer, etc) is built around IE, so IE needs to be able to do everything that needs to be done in Windows Explorer.

Now the problems arise when an random malicious website manages to trick IE into thinking it's a local, trusted page. It can then wreak havoc on your computer. The usual sequence of events is something like

1. Create a "temporary" file in %TEMP% (usually C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp, on XP)
2. Write an HTML file to it
3. Load that temporary file into IE
4. IE sees it's being loaded locally and grants full access
5. Virus goes to town

Of course, that's due to bugs in the code, and is not the only way.

ActiveX is again, something that is given a lot of abilities since it's integeral to the OS, even more so than IE (a large majority of "big" programs use ActiveX/COM at some point. DirectX for example is entirely based on ActiveX/COM). And this time when you install an ActiveX control it's not a bug that the code can do pretty much whatever it wants. This is exactly how it was designed. It's basically the same as the standard "Dude, click on this link and run this program"-style trojan-horse virus installation, except performed automatically by the browser.

So that's why I switched to Fx. I stay because of the extensions... expecially Greasemonkey, ImageZoom and the DOM Inspector - those things are awexome. I also stay because it's probably the only decent browser for Linux (I mean, there's Konqueror, but it suffers the same integration issues as IE... or at least it might, I haven't really researched it much... it's used for browsing the computer too, like Windows Explorer)

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Now, Someone give me a reason I should switch from MSN to Firefox.

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Because MSN Explorer is just a shell around IE - you're still using IE, just in a different interface. Have a look here - if it says "Trident" in the right-hand column, then you're really just using IE, complete with all its vulnerabilities.

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You my freind have just blown my mind.

...Cept, I see nothing about MSN on that page.

Firefox here I come!

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You know, if I ever heard that sound from my computer, I would think it's posessed.


I switched to FireFox a long while ago, and I'm glad I did. I never get any pop-ups like I did on IE, I love the tabbed browsing (Better than tons o windows), and my computer has been faster now with Fox than it ever was with IE.

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Weird, it's linked to from the MSN Explorer page... oh well, I guess I should check these things before I post them...

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I highly suggest you try it. FireFox is awesome. Ed suggested I change back in the Time Capsule, and I haven't used IE since.

As many others have said, tabbed browsing is a gift unto the people from the gods of teh intarweb. One window with about three easily-accessable windows on the top of the screen there? Beautiful.


Oh, yes, IE now has tabbed browsing. Only about a million updates too late, Microsoft.

Sree, stick with Firefox. As Jonesy said, it's still a lot more secure than IE7.

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