Friday, July 15, 2005

Firefox Woes

1.0.5 Under Fire
Since its release July 12th, the open-sourced browser has come under fire and received some undue flack. I thought I would address a couple of concerns to hopefully help make Firefox more satisfying.
  1. Massive Processor Usage:
    Tabbed-browsing, for its speed and organizational aesthetic benefits can have a downfall if used to excess. Having 20 tabs open in firefox, while not the only cause of inefficient processor use, can easily bring your computer productivity to a crawl.

    Solution #1: Try Adblock.
    This solution has many benefits. This free extension blocks pesky advertiser banners from appearing while you browse, whose attention-nabbing images act like leeches on your memory. Also, adblock *will* prevent Spyware from being downloaded to your machine. Read more.

    Solution #2: Buy more memory
    It's that simple. If you must have 100 webpages open at a time, your computer is going to need some help.

  2. No Update Feature:
    At this point, Firefox is pushing out updates seemingly left and right. To stay up to date, a home user has to be conscientious enough to keep up on software news and download the newer version from Mozilla's website. Admitedly, this is a valid gripe.

    Solution: Suck it up.
    I don't mean to be quite so harsh, but we are talking about a *free* browser that is safer, faster and far more powerful than its Microsoft equivalent. At least the program is "smart" enough to save all preferences, bookmarks, extensions, etc.

    So, yes. It is somewhat annoying to have to visit a website to download a newer version of Firefox, but for all the benefits they provide, I can cut Mozilla a little slack and invest 30 seconds of my day.
Spread-Firefox Trouble
Unfortunately, Spread Firefox has been breached. If you have an account, you should have already received an E-mail about this. Check your mail and follow instruction. The Mozilla Foundation has issued a statement that this security issue is isolated to the Spread Firefox website and does not affect any part of Mozilla.org. Read more on John Hoke's Blog.

Happy Browsing!
-T.

2 comments:

Thia Michelle said...

I meant to include this in my post, but forgot:

Here's blog that ripped on v. 1.0.5 and motivated this post.

The Daily Thing

Jeremy said...

Mozilla is currently integrating a better update system into the Deer Park Alpha browser, which will eventually become Firefox 1.1.

Check the Deer Park Alpha project page for more information on what new features Firefox 1.1 will have.

Mozilla's Deer Park Alpha 2