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So far with Firefox (thoughts and comparisons with IE, my previous browser):

These thoughts are from downloading and using it over this week. I've not yet spent any real time playing around with properly.

Tabs. Tabs are great. I like tabs. I can have one window containing all the pages I usually keep open, and don't have a task bar cluttered with windows.

Loading pages: seems slower than IE, this may be just my perception. Firefox often loads pages in an odd way, which means the layout is very screwy during loading, but gets it right in the end.

Firefox doesn't assume you want the file protocol when you try and open files on mapped drives. If I type "E:", it copes. If I type "E:/cvs/myfile.html" it complains that e is not a protocol. This is mildly annoying.

I like Firefox's little file download manager window. It's tidier than IE's handling. I'm not, however, convinced of its ability to realise the file you're downloading has changed and actually fetch a new version. I need to test this.

Firefox's search box (which works like a cut-down Google tool bar, but also works for Amazon, eBay, Dictionary.com, etc) is a nice idea. Its Google functionality is slightly less nice than the google tool bar, because it doesn't allow you to easily highlight your search terms. This could be worse, because...

Searching a web page comes up as a little tidy, friendly-to-use bar at the base of the page, not a splatty dialog in the middle of what you're trying to read. For bonus points, not only does Ctrl-F bring this box up, but / does as well :)

I have yet to find a way to stop Firefox from making noises when I search for text and fail to find it. Unwanted noises are Very Bad.

So, on balance, I think that's "does some things more nicely than IE". Notable exceptions are loading pages and making noises, but it scores very highly for having tabs. I think the last one just balances out the first two. I'll stick with it for a while longer, certainly, and may stay permanently.

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Googlebar for Moz/firefox

Thanks, I did look at that a couple of days ago. I quite like the ability to search d.com and Amazon easily, though, and don't want a small nest of search boxes. They might breed.

Don't suppose you can tell me offhand whether or not it's possible to stop the 'we haven't found your search term' noise ? If I know it's not possible I'll stop looking for the option ;)

Not sure about sounds - FF seems to be somewhat less configurable than Mozilla.

There's probably a prefs.js file you can edit though :/

Type the URL "about:config" into the bar, and it'll come up with a list of configuration options. One of them is accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound which you should be able to set to "false".

Thank you :)

If we ever appear in the same physical location, I will buy you a pint. (Clue: I won't be at Intrusion this month :)

Good good. How many CDs do I owe you now BTW?

Just the one with the Go On Show, I think.
Are there any others that I might be accusing you of owing me ?

I got very attached to tabs very quickly. I don't think I'd particularly want to go back to a non-tabbed browser now.

Expect them to make an IE appearance soon, now that development has been revived.

Firefox is v nice,

but it's true strength comes from the extensions.
I love mouse gestures (like in Opera) and Adblock (gets rid of all those pesky unwanted banners that take more time loading then the page).

The extensions are dead easy to download from their site and make browsing a lot better.

It does pay to check it out.

For bonus points, not only does Ctrl-F bring this box up, but / does as well :)

I discovered that by accident, and being the vi-ophile that I am, it made me happy. Sadly, it doesn't support '?'.

Vi ? Vi ?! VI ?!

That function is from less you barbarian !

<simmers with rage>

Now, now, play nicely, Bateleur.

Yes, I know where / comes from, but I choose to humour vi users.

Actually, out of curiosity, I wondered if Firefox fairmindedly pandered to emacs users, and supported Ctrl-S. It doesn't of course, that's a "save" - is Ctrl-S intercepted by Windows, as the options box that comes up looks Windows rather than Firefox flavoured ?

I don't think it's Windows.

That said, I'm not enough of an Emacs advocate to suggest that other things should adopt its save/search convention. The clumsiness of C-x,C-s only makes sense in the context of the complete set of keybindings, some of which would be chosen differently if done from scratch in the modern world.

(Also, pedantically, Emacs's C-s and Wordpad C-f don't actually do the same thing. The former is marginally more useful !)

Ctrl-S is search-from-where-I-am and Ctrl-F is search-from-top ?

Or is there some other difference I haven't noticed ?

EMACS' is incremental-search-forward (search as you type), where Wordpad uses search-forward (enter search string, and then jump to it).

Specifically, in EMACS, you can delete characters from the end of the search string, and put another suffix on, in real time.

Blimey. I'd never noticed that a Ctrl-F search wasn't incremental.

Pah.

It's not intercepted by Windows (ha! We've had an argument with Oracle support about how F1 is implemented as Help by the operating system, so it's not possible to alter the behaviour. Of course, this is rubbish.)

But on Windows, it brings up the normal Windows save dialogue, which is what I'd expect. It sounds like you're not on Windows?

Eh ? In what way does it sound like I'm not using Windows ?

My Firefox is Windows flavoured, so I don't notice any particular discrepancy between my Firefox browser window, and the Save As window.

I'd expect that, since M$ got their act together, and made the essential Windows dialogues generally available, applications should use those dialogues (Remember the days of individually crufted Print dialogues under Windows 3.1?)

Now, if I were using Firefox under Linux, and the Save As looked like the Windows one, I'd find that sufficient jarring to comment. (Where I should actually be writing KDE, or Gnome rather than Linux, since this is a feature of the Window Manager, rather than the OS).

It's

I'd expect that, since M$ got their act together, and made the essential Windows dialogues generally available, applications should use those dialogues

I didn't know this.

The Firefox download dialog is noticeably Firefoxy. I therefore expected the save-as dialog to be Firefoxy too.

M$ don't provide a download manager, that's why ;-)

umm, crtl-s isn't "save" for a Mac (of any flavour), nor as far as I'm aware is it ever a 'search'

Having used Macs from the old ClassicII, thorugh PowerPC, iMac and now the shiny, lovely, gorgeous eMac *strokes his 'puter fondly* the 'control' button just basically ain't one of those buttons that you use on a Mac.

Nah, you misunderstand :)

We weren't talking about these new fangled Mac machine things - we were talking about emacs, a text editing program[*] which has been kicking around for donkeys years. Nothing to do with Macs at all, it was originally evolved for Unix.

(Backplot as to what else was going on - the other text editing program of similar age, venerability, complexity and arcanity is vi. People use one or the other. You know how the green/purple debate goes ? Yeah, well the emacs/vi debate goes rather like that.)

[*] Kinda like Notepad. But with knobs on. Lots of knobs. And some bells. And whistles. And some weird wiggly bits of uncertain function. And more knobs.

I've actually never used a Mac, y'know :) Up until

zandev starting toting his shiny tiny Mac laptop around, I'd never even seen one.

they are very shiny : ) Especially these days - OSX is Unix based and therefore not only very stable*, it's very handy for Mark to be able to do cunning techie stuff with 'puters talking to each other. We couldn't find how to open the relevant window-thing... until we just did a help search for it and it's first option was 'would you like to open one'

Oh yeah, and barring the odd game, when a Mac crashes, it gives you an error message and the manual tells you what kind of error it is (as opposed to odd messages that are only useful if you have tech-support).

Gah! I really am a 'Mac User' - we always go on about how good they are *blushes*

*In a year I've had one crash -- and that was MythIII's fault.

I don't believe I've ever used less.

Hey ho, barbarian me. And unrepentant too.

You wanna watch that rage, a watched rage never boils.

I'm trying to remember whether Firefox on Windows supports ^W (delete preceding word) and ^U (delete line to cursor) on Windows. Of course, with ^W also being "Close Tab", you'd best be sure that you've got the focus in the right place. Unless you're running Tab Browser Extensions with its natty "Undo Close Tab" option.

Tabs really are great. But popup windows have a tendency to be annoying popup windows. Opera has an option to turn them into popup Tabs. I'm now using Firefox at home, and find this lack quite annoying.

Opera does assume the File protocol :)

Opera's download manager starts downloading *as soon* as the download site provides information. It gets on with downloading while the user deals with the interface (selecting where the file should be saved). As a result, for quick downloads, it's fairly common to find that the download has finished before the user has!

Opera has the same kind of mini-search function, and the search in page function. This is good. It also has a "go to URL" function: highlight the text in a page, and it'll put it straight into the URL (rather than ctrl-C, move the cursor, ctrl-V)

Opera doesn't make "failed to find" noises. :)

Opera lets you nickname bookmark folders ;-)
Opera lets you rebind almost all the keys (which might keep

_corpse_ happy, but I don't know, off-hand, if it supports "find backwards")
Opera supports tiling (or cascading) tabs, so you can see more than one at once.

Not only does Firefox have excellent popup blocking, for those rare occasions where you *want* them, Tab Browser Extensions offers "only open new windows when I request them" or "never open new windows" modes, both of which force popup windows to open in new tabs.

Firefox's download manager also starts downloading as soon as possible.

Middle-click in a page will paste to the URL bar, so you can highlight a URL and middle-click to visit it (don't know whether this works on Windows).

Given that I rarely visit sites which do much in the way of anti-social poppuping, I'd actually rather than popup blockers worked via a blacklist rather than a whitelist. Things are welcome to pop windows up, until I decide they're evil, in which case I'll tell my browser not to let this site do it in future.

But I guess that's not what most people want :(

Middle-click in a page will paste to the URL bar, so you can highlight a URL and middle-click to visit it (don't know whether this works on Windows).

<thumps plastic between two mouse buttons>
Nope, doesn't seem to :) I'll hunt around to see if there's a means of doing it.

In hunting, I just accidentally found the "view source for selected fragment" option, which is nice.

Ah, thanks: it's useful to know about the TBE.

Didn't know about the Download manager, but I guess I'd have found out when I used it. But it gives

venta an extra plus point :)

Middle click doesn't work under windows: it autoscrolls instead (if autoscrolling is enabled).

Opera also crashes. A lot. Espseically on ATi's download drivers page.

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Extensions

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Use of '/'

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Comparison with Opera

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