| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| sean |
Just moved back to Firefox...Bloody hell, it's a *lot* faster than Safari. Mind you, the site doesn't look as nice.... |
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| Tittch |
Must confess I've never tried anything other than Explorer or Netscape (many moons ago).
What are the advantages of Firefox? |
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| sean |
It's faster. The tabbed browsing works really well. There are lots of neat plug-ins. And they tend to fix security glitches faster than MS. | ||||||||
| JB |
Main advantages over explorer; - it's more secure - its HTML / XHTML / CSS compliance is vastly better - better popup blocking there's a bundle of other minor advantages but those are the main ones. Downsides are that it is slightly slower to startup and as more people move over to firefox instead of ie it may become more of a target for browser security attacks. (oh and some sites still assume you use ie and so rely on non compliant ie'isms) All in all I'd recommend switching to firefox to anyone and everyone. |
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| tahir |
Me too. |
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| sean |
I'd still like to know why downsizer doesn't look as nice using it though.... | ||||||||
| bagpuss |
plus its open source so there is a nice liberal cardigan wearing feel to it too!
imho it is generally a better browsing experience but do be aware occassionally incompetent web developers stop you using their site if you aren't using IE but generally you wouldn't want you to use their sites anyway the plugins are really cool and I really like the tabbed stuff it means you can have multiple websites open everytime to start firefox up which can make life a lot easier |
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| JB |
Couldn't answer that as I've not needed to use any other browser to look at downsizer. I don't have safari here but I've just tried with ie (forgive me father for I have sinned  ) and opera and couldn't say that either of them looked much better (or even that much different).
The main style differences I see between browsers are trying to use CSS to avoid table layout but most sites including downsizer use tables to control layout (precisely because it is still a bit hit and miss otherwise) |
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| Tittch |
Where would you recommend downloading it from then? | ||||||||
| JB |
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ | ||||||||
| sean |
It just seemed to give smoother edges and slightly rounded corners. It looks 'starker' through Firefox. |
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| Tittch |
Thanks! Can it be run alongside Explorer? Sorry to ask so many questions.... |
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| jema |
No idea abotu downsizer.
What I love is all the extensions you can get. I have 12 mods installed to make for a browser that suits me very well. |
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| tahir |
Yes, you can even get it to share/synchronise favourites between the two browsers |
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| dougal |
I don't think its Downsizer. Its Firefox. I don't believe Firefox uses OS X's fancy Display PostScript (think PDF) rendering engine known as Quartz. (Let alone the fanciest effects, 'Quartz Extreme', that require a decent video chip and more vram than my elderly laptop offers.) One of the things that Quartz provides is 'anti-aliased' (smoother looking) text. Of course Apple's Safari browser uses Quartz... |
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| Tittch |
I am now viewing this through Firefox. It does seem to be faster than Explorer but I might be imaginating it 
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| crumbledust |
I still use Safari on my Mac through force of habit.
The one SUPREME advantage Firefox has over Safari (at least the version that comes with Panther) is that you don't get the annoying modal dialog box that pops up if the address you're trying to get to isn't there. Sometimes I wonder at Apple's user interaction team! |
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| sean |
I thought you'd know.  I'm happy to live with the difference in exchange for increased speed, just wondered what was causing it.
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| jema |
So much does lie in the fonts and anti-aliasing.
My Linux system needed quite a lot of tweaking and even recompiling to get the web looking decent. |
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| Bernie66 |
I recently switched to firefox, would never go back now. Its more "human friendly" than IE IMHO. |