I have been using Mozilla’s Firefox as alternative to Internet Explorer since Sunday the 14th, and have been pretty pleased so far. There are a few bugs that need to be worked out, particularly with pages that have frames, but, I can live with that for the benefits of Firefox.
What are they, you say? First, it is a much "lighter" program then IE. Less memory intensive. At this time, I have Firefox and Feedreader running on the laptop. Also, I am connected through a WiFi G network. There are 2 open webpages. Ye olde Taske Managere tells me that I am only using 249MB of PF usage. That would be much higher with IE. I open a 3rd page, and I am now at 256 PF usage. Not bad, eh? Heck, the downloaded installation file was less then 5mb. (as a sidebar, alot of the PF usage is due to other programs, such as MacAfee, Pop Up Stopper, and not having done a restart in a few days.)
Because Firefox doesn’t allow much Java, it is much harder to get spyware and virus’. That be good, shiver me timbers!
It will automatically import your favorites and other stuff. That makes instalation easy. It is very clean, and there are features that have been written by third parties to change the colors and add abilities. Looks similar to Netscape.
A feature which I really like is being able to open a new page in the same "browser" page. Underneath the top task bar you will be able to have up to 4 (and can add an extension to allow more) open pages, which means less clutter on the bottom task bar. Takes a little getting used to, but it is very sweet indeed.
Go ahead and give it a shot, if you do not have Firefox yet. Look down on the right hand side, under ads (not really an ad, I do not get paid for it, just the best place to put it), and press the Firefox button. You will not be disappointed.
I can vouch for Firefox. Love it. Tabbed browsing is a godsend for bloggers. I haven’t noticed any 4-tab limit though . . . mine has allowed an unlimited number of open tabs since the beginning.
Some of the code I tried putting on by blog had issues with firefox. PW can vouch for that. He was the one most effected. I’ve noticed that pages load MUCH quicker with Firefox though. I guess you just have to be careful of the code you stick on your site.
Yeah, I have noticed that some sites come out funky with Firefox and not IE, or vice versa. I switch to IE quickly if necessary. I have the extension loaded which allows me to right click, and allows me to “view this page in IE”