So now, i got mozilla, am using it, but what's so great about it?

[Nothinman]

NT4 versions exist for x86, PPC, MIPs and Alpha.

x86 is the only supported platform now, I'm not even sure if IE6 was released for anything but x86 and I do know that WindowsUpdate requires you be on x86. IA-64 and X86-64 will be soon though I assume.

And technically, platform != architecture. I think he means porting IE to something other than Windows, IE5 exists for OS X but it's not the same code-base as the Windows version and there's no IE6 yet and IE6 has been out for quite a while.

Another thing, if IE was so unstable then Windows use in general would also be unstable because almost everything made by Microsoft draws from the same HTML rendering engine that IE draws from. You'd constantly have problems with Office, Outlook Express, online help, etc.

I have seen IE get in a state like that on machines at work. I can't say what the reasons are because it's never happened on my machine.

Obviously that doesn't happen.

Other people seem to disagree, so obviously it does.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

IE 4 was crap, especially on DOS based platforms. I didnt play with NT4 much.

I never used IE on DOS but I know on NT4 it was a rock.

Well on win9x (DOS) systems, it was pretty bad.

And one of my reasons for not using something cannot be my boycot?

There's a big difference between asking "which browser do you prefer?" and "which browser is better?". A boycott is a valid reason for the first question but it's not a valid reason for the second question.

If you gave me a piece of software written by the same people that wrote wu-ftpd, I would laugh at you. For the same reason I avoid Microsoft software. Does it make the software worse? In my opinion, yes. And what is better is all based on opinion. Its my opinion, and I wont argue it any more in the thread.

Is DOS 3.3 on the Apple IIe better than Windows XP because it's not made by Microsoft? Of course it isn't. Likewise Mozilla isn't automatically better than IE simply because it's not made by Microsoft.

I avoid software with what I consider a poor history. Windows fits in this category, IMO.

Thats all. When Microsoft can port their software to more than 2 platforms, Ill consider using it more.

NT4 versions exist for x86, PPC, MIPs and Alpha.

Win2k came out 2 years ago. Its supported on 1 architecture. ie 5 was released for: DOS x86, WinNT based systems x86 (maybe others for NT, dont know), ppc Mac OS 9, PPC Mac OS X. Thats not all that large of a base there. Mozilla is supported on DOS x86, WinNT based systems x86, PPC Mac OS 9, PPC Mac OS X, FreeBSD (x86 atleast, maybe alpha), Linux (variety of platforms), Amiga, BeOS, etc. Portable code is usually a sign of cleaner code.

i have had IE5 crash on me trying to access a ftp site...

Are you sure it wasn't just taking a long time to connect so it wasn't repainting the window? Slow FTP connections sometimes cause that but it doesn't mean the browser has crashed.

I have had problems like this, and when I brought up the task manager IE trying to hit the ftp site had a (Not Responding) next to it, meaning to me it crashed.

Another thing, if IE was so unstable then Windows use in general would also be unstable because almost everything made by Microsoft draws from the same HTML rendering engine that IE draws from. You'd constantly have problems with Office, Outlook Express, online help, etc.

Obviously that doesn't happen.

Ive had mroe blue screens trying to install SP2 for Win2k than I want to admit

 

[manly]

Nothinman and n0cmonkey have been more charitable than usual.

As I said earlier, anybody who says BOTH that IE4+ on NT kernels has never ever crashed PLUS they've suffered through thousands of Netscape crashes is not credible. Either that or the only such user on the face of the planet.

 

[Damascus]

Originally posted by: Sunner
Oh and yeah, I also call IE never crashing BS, I've seen every browser crash, though some tend to do it more often than others, the leader in number of crashes is definately Netscape 4.7x, with IE 5.5(I think it was, 5.something anyways) on a Win98 box comming second, after that, Mozilla, IE on my Win2K box, Galeon, and Opera are all pretty equal, and they crash seldom enough for it not to annoy me a whole lot.

You forgot about IE4!

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I've had many times where IE would lock-up/crash/whatever and the whole "Explorer" part of Windows would die.

Funny, I've never seen IE crash at all. EVER. Right back to IE 4xx on NT4 to IE 6xx on Windows XP.

I've seen Netscape crash thousands of times though (in addition to rendering pages slower than IE and inaccurately as well) and it was my understanding that Mozilla is built off the same codebase.

It's also amusing to see the anti-MS trolls in here claiming that one of the reasons why Mozilla is better than IE is simply because it's not a Microsoft product. My, what an "interesting" world they live in.

I've seen IE crash plenty of times, it certainly crashes far more often then Mozilla. I especially love how IE inturrupts whatever you're doing to announce that it just crashed (this is especially fun when you're in the middle of an intense battle in a multiplayer video game).

Yes, Netscape 4.ugh was utter crap. No sane person will dispute that. However, Mozilla is an extremely solid browser. Its an entirely new codebase from NS4. It renders every bit as fast as IE, is more stable (in my experience, running Win98), is more standards compliant, has a far superior e-mail client, has better cookies/privacy management, supports a tabbed interface, has a built-in popup killer, is more secure, etc. If IE were better, then I would be happy to use it.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Damascus

Originally posted by: Sunner
Oh and yeah, I also call IE never crashing BS, I've seen every browser crash, though some tend to do it more often than others, the leader in number of crashes is definately Netscape 4.7x, with IE 5.5(I think it was, 5.something anyways) on a Win98 box comming second, after that, Mozilla, IE on my Win2K box, Galeon, and Opera are all pretty equal, and they crash seldom enough for it not to annoy me a whole lot.

You forgot about IE4!

Well, actually I didn't forget about it, I just never used it

 

[BFG10K]

Well on win9x (DOS) systems, it was pretty bad.

Win9x is not DOS. Other than the bootstrap loader coming straight from DOS the rest of the files were included for compatibility reasons but the system certainly didn't run off a DOS runtime except when a program itself requested it.

Windows 9x/ME is a modern OS with most of the associated features one (eg preemptive multitasking, dynamic memory allocation, virtual memory, caching etc).

I have had problems like this, and when I brought up the task manager IE trying to hit the ftp site had a (Not Responding) next to it, meaning to me it crashed.

Not responding does not necessarily mean a program has crashed as it could be that it's not responding to requests sent to it from Windows (such as repaint commands). If programs get caught in heavy processing loops they'll occasionally show this message. Microsoft Access (for example) does this for a few seconds on rare occasions when I'm running particularly heavy queries.

 

[thedan]

You can do the Mouse Wheel tricks in IE aswell.

CTRL + Mouse Wheel Up/DOWN = Text Size Change
SHIFT + Mouse Wheel Up/Down = Browsing Forward/Back

 

[thedan]

Just got Mozilla, its pretty slick.

Went and downoaded Mouse Gestures too...

Thats the best part.

The only thing that will convince me of IE again is if they can find a mousegestures program for IE! *hint hint*

 

[AG73]

I still think Opera 6.01's tab feature is better. I like to open all pages (like 6 or so) in a folder all at once (eg all the deals pages in my designated "deals" folder). I haven't figured a way to do this in Mozilla, though I know there is a tab feature. It does seem more stable than opera, and in general loads the pages more correctly than opera. I like Mozilla though, and won't uninstall it any time soon. I'll be watching for updates. I also can't seem to alphabetize my imported bookmarks, and it seems like this may be a known issue.

 

[MaestroQuark]

For you people complaining about Mozilla being 'slow', I have two suggestions:
1) Quick Launch. Yes, it takes up more memory. Meanwhile, IE does this by default without choice. You can't say rendering is slower, because in all the reviews I've read, where they actually tested it, Mozilla rendered faster the majority of the time.

2) Phoenix. This is my browser of choice right now, and I'm using a nightly build b/w 0.3 and 0.4. Hasn't crashed on me yet, has an extremely fast loading time (and does not use quick launch), and adds in a bunch of minor things that I happen to like. Phoenix Help also has some nice tips about how to customize the browser.

But I will warn you, so far the new versions require a deleted profile to start over. That's the only true caveat I can think of right now (and I still use it anyway).

Quick Reference:

Any browser that intends to compete in today's browser wars must load Web pages quickly. That's why Netscape launched the Mozilla project more than four years ago: to wipe away the slow, buggy Netscape 4.x code and replace it with a modern browser engine. CNET Labs ran Mozilla through four speed tests to see how it measures up to Netscape and IE. Mozilla topped Netscape 6.x in our mixed text and graphics tests but ran a fraction slower than Netscape in the other three. And that's a bit odd, considering that Netscape 6.x is based on a much earlier version of the Mozilla software. Even stranger, in light of previous Netscape/IE tests, both Mozilla and Netscape outran IE 6 in three of four tests. However, since the browser's actual speeds often varied by less than a second, it was a very close race.

unforgivengly stolen from CNET.com