Why I Use Firefox

Every geek at some point or another has to defend hirself.

Sigh... here we go.

He begs off by saying he doesn't use Foxfire and doesn't know anything about it and that Foxfire represents only 6% of computer users anyway.

LOL. Which 6%, I wonder? ;)

Well, us for example. :-)

Sounds like Jim is in a bad mood.

Well, he just doesn't understand why anyone would use Firefox [sic]. He has little patience with Firefox [sic] users.

Okay, Jim; this is for you.

It's no secret that savvy computer users run Firefox. The reasoning is simple... in order to use Firefox, you need to be confident enough to download and use a browser that wasn't the default when you first turned on your computer. This - and it blows my mind to say this - is still beyond most people. Think of grandma as a very typical IE user... that is *anyone* who isn't familiar with the tool that is a computer enough to configure it.

Of course, Jim is not like that.

Unsurprisingly, that same 6% of people Jim's talking about are also the leaders of technology, developers, college grads, etc. There are lots of sites which provide data to back this up... higher technology sites pull higher % Firefox users, more sophisticated sites pull higher % Firefox users.
Of course, 6% isn't a fair figure, here's the most recent I found:
http://www.e-janco.com/browser.htm
If you look, Firefox is 15%. Now then, below Firefox are older versions of the same open-source code. So the real figures are much higher. Jim is just way off base there.

Also, while just 15% of the people use the latest version of Firefox, every computer science graduate I know runs Firefox.

Now here's the biggest reason why I use Firefox, but bear with me for a moment... it's not complicated, but it is a complex reason!

What makes the Web possible is the language that all the different types of computers (running different types of browsers) use to communicate with each other. That language is called the Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. By the way, that's the same HTTP as in http://prettygetter.tv! When you type that into a browser, you're telling your computer to connect to my computer. Connect how? By following the HTTP rules for conversation (computers are very strict when it comes to these things!)

So HTTP allows computers to share data- but what data? How can a computer running MacOS understand data written by a computer running WinXP?

That's the job of the Hyper-Text Markup Language, or HTML. The page you are viewing is composed in HTML. Every web page is composed (ultimately) in HTML. There is a standards body which determines what HTML can do; although they didn't create HTML, they are responsible for its growth. That group, founded by the creators of early web browsers, is called the World-Wide Web Consortium, or W3C for short.

Here's the rub with IE; it's the only browser on the market which does NOT follow W3C guidelines. All the other browsers do- Linux, Mac, whatever, you name it, they all render HTML the way W3C says they should.

Microsoft does not adhere to W3C guidelines, they modified and 'augmented' HTML to make it do all kinds of things that could only be done on computers running Windows. In doing so, they made it possible to write a wider range of more sophisticated web-based application, but at the same time, they created a larger mess (because HTML wasn't designed to do this!)

First, any page you write which uses these 'non-standard' features will ONLY work on IE. That's intentional, by the way, to keep market share. I find it despicable. Unfortunately, Len's page is like this... using code that only IE browsers on Windows machines can understand... and even then, only if they have the same codecs used to make the video.

I think you can see why this is bad in terms of putting information about there for all people to access. Better to put up video in a format and technique that allows all people to view it. I simply can't imagine why one would not choose to do this (unless they didn't know how).

Second, by giving these apps more power, Microsoft has made it easier to write spyware programs and viruses embedded into web pages which can infiltrate your computer.

Firefox users don't get virus, IE users do. Why? First, the things a virus needs to do can't be done with W3C HTML. Period. (To be fair, Microsoft has tried to address this by adding a whole mess of 'internet options' and 'zones' and whatever.)

Also, Firefox code is open-source, meaning the smartest, brightest people have looked on and worked with the code in order to make it stable, safe and secure... you know, people who do it for the love of it, just because it's the thing to do? IE has a team of programmers... maybe 30... Firefox code has been viewed by thousands and any bug or exploit cannot hide from so many eyes. (That itself is a major reason why there are so many open-source software advocates - the stability of mature open-source programs can't be matched.)

Third, any developer who wants to reach all users- W3C compliant or not- must now pepper their pages with code that runs on IE, and code that runs EVERYWHERE else. THIS is the reason why so many developers hate Bill Gates... perfectly standard code that runs the same everywhere won't run on IE cause they don't conform to W3C standards, or worse, each different version of IE conforms differently! What a needless nightmare!

I have been building sites which work the same on both IE and Netscape for over a decade now, and my secret is to follow the W3C guidelines exactly. I don't use proprietary features and I keep things simple, using my creativity to build full-featured sites that are also W3C compliant. Very few people can do this AND do it elegantly. That's how messed up things are.

So, as one who believes that if you put information about there, you have a responsibility to put it out there for all people freely, I am against IE because they do not follow global standards but instead pursue their own proprietary interests. This fragments the information world, makes your computer more vulnerable to attacks, and makes it harder for people to share information freely.

That is why I don't use IE. I also like that Firefox allows me to confirm or deny every cookie some random weirdo wants to set on my machine. You wouldn't believe the traceable information they can get about you if you don't do this!