Why Mozilla is better than Firefox
In Why Mozilla is better than Firefox, Joe Clark has written a reminder of what came first, and notes that Mozilla has plenty of very useful features that Firefox still lacks.
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Roger Johansson is a Swedish web professional specialising in web standards, accessibility, and usability. More about me and this site.
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Comments
Actually I cannot see a single point why Mozilla is better. I have been trying to use it for browsing more than once, but always ended up keeping it for tesging only. And FireBird 0.6 just snapped into the place. Wild popularity of FF comes just becaus of what authors mentions: it does its main job perfectly - that mean browses. The wast wast majority of users will nevere have need for something else. Once again "probability vs. possiblity" case. As for missing features - most of them can bee added via extensions. Style switching is supported, search from the address bar is supported too. One point I agree - I do not get why shortcut key for "document info" is removed.
He does have a point that everybody seems to ignore Mozilla now, and I noticed this before as well. However, I don't agree with many of his points. Such as 5 (it works), and 7. What do you mean you can open them faster from mozilla? I don't see this is at all. It opens as fast as I click it in firefox. I pretty much agree with Rimantas on every one of his points.
Also, I don't want many of the Mozilla features, like email. I have Thunderbird for that. I want to browse, not have an all-in-one application.
Yes, most users won't need the features that Mozilla offers. But for those who do need them, I agree with Joe that it is a better choice. Link elements, for example, are a great way of navigating through a series of documents.
Sure, many of the missing features are available as extensions, but then it may be easier to just launch Mozilla ;)
Jeff, I agree that there are many features in Mozilla that I have never used. Email? I use Apple Mail. IRC? Ircle. News? Thoth. But Joe seems to be talking about the browser component only.
I would say that Mozilla is an excellent Browser Suite, and that it is not comparable to Internet Explorer as it is not a stand alone browser. Firefox is indeed comparable to IE, and it's a great deal better in many respects, Tabs; Security; popups; ease of use; standards compliance to name a few.
The browser section of the Mozilla Suite does all of the above too, and more!, and is also loads better than IE.
But the Mozilla suite can only be compared to a group of other internet programs. Being Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Address Book, Windows Messenger and Frontpage Express... and on that score, Mozilla is an easy and deserving winner.
I use the Mozilla suite and am happy to stay with it as I use all it's programs together.
Having said that, I have no reservations in saying Firefox is the best "Stand Alone Browser" I have ever come across... I installed it on my wifes computer!
I have been browsing for many years and cannot believe how well the Firefox has developed. I got so fed up with stinky "billy goats" IE browsers that I deleted all files related to internet explorer, which did great good to the computer and my bruised confidence.
Many thanks to Mozilla Firefox and contributors for claiming the internet back!
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