Mozilla - A nice browser

Adrian · 2002-08-27 13:19:53

Thought I'd let people know that there is a good alternative to Internet Explorer out there - the open source Mozilla browser. I've been using version 1.0 for several months now and have been impressed by its speed and functionality; it's just as fast as IE, and with its advert pop-up killer and tabbed browsing (so you can have several pages open within one window) it's made my life a lot easier.

I just downloaded 1.1 today and it's improved a lot of small little things. I'm normally quite wary of open source programs - while I admire the ideology of the volunteers, I've found that some programs can't match commercial offerings. I'm happy to say that Mozilla has restored my faith in their ability to provide something that I can use and find useful.

So: go and give it a try! It won't mess up your computer and it uninstalls very cleanly.

(And no, I'm not being paid by them. They don't have enough money )

Pat Galea · 2002-08-27 14:07:38

I just downloaded 1.1 today and it's improved a lot of small little things. I'm normally quite wary of open source programs - while I admire the ideology of the volunteers, I've found that some programs can't match commercial offerings. I'm happy to say that Mozilla has restored my faith in their ability to provide something that I can use and find useful.

I'd like to second this! Mozilla is fantastic.

The tabbed browsing is the real killer feature. It's particularly well suited to reading forums. You can keep the main index in one tab, while opening each of the threads in their own tab. Then you can work through each one in an orderly fashion, knowing that you're not missing anything out.

Plus, because the new tabs are loading in the background, you have much less time waiting for pages to load.

Brilliant!

Josh Cryer · 2002-08-27 14:13:18

I personally use Opera. Mozilla is good, and I totally dig the OpenSource/FreeSoftware thing, but I find it to be bloated on Windows (my primary OS). Opera has a very small memory footprint, and is blazingly fast.

Mozilla does look like it's improving, though.

Palomar · 2002-08-27 14:16:18

I personally use Opera. Mozilla is good, and I totally dig the OpenSource/FreeSoftware thing, but I find it to be bloated on Windows (my primary OS). Opera has a very small memory footprint, and is blazingly fast.

Mozilla does look like it's improving, though.

*Mozilla...you're cuter by far than Godzilla...Mozilla!

--Cindy

[In a zany mood, couldn't resist]

Phobos · 2002-08-27 22:31:00

Mozilla kinda reminds of me of Mozzarella cheese rather than Godzilla but that's prolly cuz I haven't eaten all day.

periscopeboy · 2002-08-28 09:46:12

I also use Opera. Though it has some downfalls, like the advertising (I'm using the freeware version), and incomplete support of CSS, nothing beats it for speed, and ease of use. The use of mouse gestures saves lots of time. Also, there's an integrated e-mail program (which Mozilla has as well). It's also easily costomized, to include search windows, which is especially useful while reading these forums, because I always have to do searches about the technobabble, 90% of which I don't understand ??? .

Josh Cryer · 2002-08-28 14:07:03

Yeah, mouse gestures are invaulable. But Mozilla does have mouse gesture capabilities. Inline text searching is awesome. I edited out my search.ini (undocumented, but you can do it), so that I could have m-w.com / dict.org one click away. It's really great.

The small memory footprint is still the primary reason I use Opera, though. I have an old, low memory sytem.

Adrian · 2002-08-28 18:07:59

I'll agree that Opera is probably the fastest browser around right now and it has much to recommend for it. However, if speed is not an issue (e.g. you have a fast computer) then Mozilla is a good choice; it's extremely flexible in allowing add-ons and customization. For example, I recently downloaded an add-on called BannerBlind that erases all ad banners from pages. It makes browsing much more pleasant, and it's free to boot!

And of course Mozilla is completely compliant with CSS2.0, which is wonderful; even IE6 can't match that.

There is possibly one dark cloud on the horizon though; subjectively, I have the feeling that v1.1 is slower than 1.0. Not by a large amount, and not so that browsing is annoying, and I couldn't prove anything, but there's the feeling. However, I haven't seen any corroborating reports and I suspect it's all down to the fact that I expected 1.1 to be faster than 1.0.

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#1 2002-08-27 13:19:53

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#2 2002-08-27 14:07:38

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#3 2002-08-27 14:13:18

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#4 2002-08-27 14:16:18

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#5 2002-08-27 22:31:00

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#6 2002-08-28 09:46:12

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#7 2002-08-28 14:07:03

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

#8 2002-08-28 18:07:59

Re: Mozilla - A nice browser

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