Firefox and Thunderbird from an Opera addict's perspective...

[Jason P]

Hmmmm... guess I'm still prejudiced after several years of Opera browsing. I have seen a lot of raves about Firefox lately so I figured I owe it to myself to give it another shot.

First (unfair) impressions after only an hour of fiddling:

I haven't got it to do tabs consistently and automatically like Opera does out of the box (maybe I'm missing something here but reliable tabbed browsing is #2 in my list of musts next to security), and the few skins (themes) I've tried so far still don't make it look as "professional" and smooth as I'm used to. Hadn't realized how brainwashed I am by the few mouse gestures I'm used to as well so I must get that working right away.

Popup blocking: every bit as good as Opera or even IE with the Google bar I suppose. I really don't know where to go to test this, though, since I never see popups anyway but I haven't seen one yet with Firefox. Ad blocking isn't really an issue for me and I don't even use the Opera tools available for this other than to throw the worst sites into the hosts file.

The tricks that Mozilla is borrowing from Opera are getting better integrated now and it's a definite improvement over the earliest betas. Somehow the features feel tacked on though rather than an organic part of the browser.

It imported my preferences from Opera very nicely and smoothly. I don't know if Opera imports that well since I have nothing to import from. I doubt it, because Firefox handled it beautifully

Sorry, but overall Firefox still feels like a work in progress to me and curiously unfinished in its general behavior. This is just a personal "feeling" though and it's still miles ahead of IE in functionality and security.

Important point for Internet Explorer users: Firefox generally DOES behave much more like IE than Opera does. I only use IE when forced into it by a bad site so IE is not familiar or comfortable to me, though. Firefox would almost certainly be the first choice for someone who's trying to break from IE and needs to feel at home but in my case it feels like anything but home.

Conclusion so far: It's still a matter of taste and what you're used to. Opera is like moving to a foreign country with alien customs if you're used to IE so if you don't have the patience and/or desire to learn the lay of the land Firefox is a more than suitable alternative and will probably not frustrate a newbie outside of a few quirks. I like the foreign country and have lived there so long I'm not much inclined to budge without strong persuasion.

I'll fiddle with it some more over the next few days and try to set Opera aside (oops, I'm typing in Opera right now...) and see if my opinion improves. If it doesn't, I'll check back when Firefox hits 1.0. It just feels like riding a tricycle after years of mountain biking to me.

Related subject: I'm trying Thunderbird (Mozilla's mail client) again as well. First impressions are that it's still quite slow and clunky. Since I filter mail with Mailwasher before it hits the client anyway and since Outlook Express has some kickass security upgrades with XP's Service Pack 2 I'm not inclined to try Thunderbird much more at this time. It's getting there though, and it IS a bit better looking than OE. Again though, dammit, it all feels like something whacked together in someone's basement. I can't put my finger on why and I don't see too many other people making the same complaints so chalk it up to old habits dying hard. I'll come back to this one when it hits 1.0 as well. And when I finally decide on a flavor of Linux to play with I'm sure Thunderbird will find a place there pretty quickly.

So I imagine my final choice will be Opera with Firefox as a pretty close second choice and Outlook Express (with XP SP2, mind you) with Thunderbird as a quite distant second choice - or even third, with Eudora and other fine clients out there competing. With XP's new security in OE I don't see myself switching in the near future except to experiment.

The only reason I can think of for using Outlook rather than OE at home in my case is the calendar feature. And here's a place where Mozilla creams everyone: the Sunbird calendar project, which can be found somewhere around here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

It's VERY beta at this time and doesn't have advanced features that many people need but it suits my purposes just fine.

With the open-source nature of Mozilla bringing possibilities of lightning fast improvements, who knows what will be on my machine a year from now? The only safe bet is that IE will still be used for Windows Update and nothing else.

[Jason P]

EDIT: Ugh. Never mind my original reply here. I just found that if Mozilla runs across something on a web site it doesn't understand, it hands it to the operating system to deal with without user intervention. This in effect seems to mean that any exploits on the internet that use non-standard code to attack Windows can be passed through gecko-based browsers such as Mozilla and Firefox and accomplish their objectives even without IE.

This is not an issue with Opera, as it simply will ignore very badly written code it can't parse or code it doesn't understand and won't run any executables at all (you have to deliberately download it and run it yourself, and Opera washes its hands of the affair at that point). This means that some web sites won't have full functionality but it is either potentially unsafe functionality or just sloppy or lazy coding that the designer shouldn't have been allowed to get away with in the first place. Mozilla, in trying to stem complaints of the browser "not working" on poorly coded sites, seems to have introduced this "feature" (I call it a bug or an exploit) in order to gain more universal acceptance. However, they have in effect produced a browser that is potentially as unsafe as IE and potentially can be exploited to make it even less safe if I'm reading these things properly (since even IE will sometimes ask you what the hell you think you're doing when you click on something stupid).

Another edit: Mozilla has a fix here: http://www.mozilla.org/security/shell.html - though a couple Slashdot geeks are saying it's kind of a band-aid and the underlying problem is still there and waiting for hackers to get around. I'm not a developer and don't know if they're full of hot air or not but I'm not willing to gamble on it when I already have a browser that is more usable and enjoyable and is completely free of this issue.

Now, the Slashdot crowd are fanatical about free software so anything Windows does=bad (and they're very often right) and anything Linux or Mozilla does=good (50/50). In this case they're arguing that Mozilla has done nothing wrong and it's Windows' fault that people's machines can still be hijacked using Mozilla or Firefox. I call shenanigans and say this is absolutely unacceptable. In my myopic and unlearned view, a browser simply should not under any circumstances be allowed to run executables on a computer without the user having to jump through hoops to prove that they intend for this to happen. In other words, if you kill your own machine through your own actions that's your own lookout but if your browser allows it to be killed through inaction it's a bad browser and should be avoided.

For the casual user who just thought he was switching to avoid IE's security holes and doesn't know to go looking for patches for this "secure" browser, this is halfassed in my view. I've been poking around to see how decisions are made on what to include in Mozilla's products and it looks to me like this kind of thing could be a BIG problem again in the future. Firefox is off my machine and I will only recommend Opera until I know that Mozilla's oversight is improved. This was an incredibly stupid flaw to allow in a product that's been worked on for so long by so many people.

My original post follows, but I say "You get what you pay for" may be applicable here for the time being so my advice is to go with Opera and deal with the ad or pay the money if you can afford it:

Ah, but I keep forgetting one important deciding factor: Opera puts an ad in the corner - doesn't seem to bother most people but it's there. It costs $40 to get rid of it. I first paid for Opera back in when it was 4.something or so and each additional upgrade is $10 or $15 so I've been paying roughly $15 a year for the ad-free version. I am quite willing and able to pay for cool software I use a lot if I prefer it over the free alternatives but if you want or need the free thing and don't want the ads this may be the dealbreaker. Just trash IE, okay?

Edited July 9, 2004 by Jackass

[WordWolf]

Why I've been liking FireFox during my shakedown....

A) It's my favourite price for software

B) More secure than IE, slightly faster than IE.

C) Close enough to IE from an ergonomics POV that I am pretty much

hitting the same keys and commands for the same functions.

D) Built-in popup blocker, plus easy-to-add extra features.

Eventually I'll have to get converted to the tabbed browsing

(which is built-in), but this way I can ease into it slowly.

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No fair rewriting your message while I'm responding! :D-->

Especially when you do a 180.

Thanks for the heads-up.