I first wrote about the FireFox browser in March of 2005. Since then I typically install it on all of my Windows PCs (but not the Macs, Safari is good enough in that realm).
There are still some disturbing problems with the browser. Most of these problems, I suspect come from web pages that support IE only. Since IE added multiple tab browsing the scales have tilted back towards Microsoft's IE 7 if it weren't for one very special attribute of FireFox.
I've been having some trouble with one of my PC's. It needs a bios update, but it has Pheonix Bios, and you just can't download any update, it has to be one for your specific motherboard and I don't remember what it is. I'll take a look at it sometime and see if I can figure it out.
The end result is that this machine crashes, typically in multimedia operations. No blue screen, no - hey you might want to save before the ship goes down, just down and bounce in a reboot instantly.
FireFox, which I've been using for the most part, has a way to recover sessions. The best part of it is that all you have to do after starting FireFox in order to recover your previous session is click a button.
This is particularly handy in that even in cases where I've been writing in a text box in a tab, this information will be saved (not in every case, though). It remembers your cookies, and even if you were logged in to Comcast e-mail.
This is powerful stuff. I think there is even a setting for it to remember your session even when you just close the program. I'll think about that one, there could be benefits and detractions to it.
But in terms of saving the information as I was writing an entry on IIDB forum, boy it saved me a lot of anger and frustration. Saving frustration is important to me. IE7, doesn't do this, or at least not yet.
I noticed when IE 7 came out that Microsoft employed a neat way to close the tabs. FireFox, you had to move your mouse all the way to the right edge of the screen to close a tab. Microsoft had it right on the tab. Shortly afterwards, FireFox fixed this. It certainly seems a lot like one-upsmanship, but FireFox really did something useful with the session recovery.
Good job guys, it is nice to see programmers to go, since I am at least in part a programmer.
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As i am a firefox addict the major differences in my mind are all the things linked to it. Blogs, gmail, groups but most of all is google documents. IE7 or any of the other IE systems do not give me the versitility afforded by google in its interconnections. After wearing firefox IE is like wearing a straight jacket.
Don
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