Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Firefox ignites browser wars again

Posted by Frank Petrie Nov 10, 2004 at 6:03am

Throughout the past several years, we have been focused on the war in Iraq. But while that has been grabbing our attention, an old set of combatants has started to rise up once again to vie for the spoils of victory.

The browser wars have flared up again.

I know, I know. We all thought that things where under control. iCab fizzled out and OmniWeb is still trying to explain its reason for being. Safari had become the king of the Mac browser kingdom (except for those sites which required Internet Explorer). Now enter the free Firefox from the Mozilla Foundation, with a new engine under the hood. Can it dethrone Safari?

The Good

Installation is easy. If you have a site with a sturdy server and you have a broadband connection, the results can be quite impressive. And if you’re going to a site that you have already cached, it works at the speed of lightening.

I like the fact that when you type a URL into the address window, it doesn’t fill in the rest, but instead leaves all it’s suggestions in the list below. In Safari, it defaults to the last page you visited in that domain right in the address window, which can be a pain if you want to just go to the home page, instead.

Firefox comes with the standard set of preferences. It has a bookmarks sidebar if you so choose to use it. And the help pages are easy to navigate, if somewhat slow.

The Bad

The browser is a tad buggy. Some pages that I visit daily, even some that I built for my clients, Firefox could not find. And the user interface is an attempt to attract Mac, Linux and Windows users simultaneously. It’s never been pretty in the past and it ain’t no better here. (In fact, they took a page from Microsoft’s playbook. The tabs for tabbed browsing face upward, as opposed to Safari’s, which face downward.)

It’s automatic import feature is limited to importing the bookmarks and such of a handful of browsers, Safari not being one of them. Also, some of my “Services” that are available in Safari, are not available in Firefox. Haven’t quite figured that one out as the third party’s software has to be coded in a specific way to become a service.

The Ugly

Firefox is frustrating. When it works, it’s as smooth as ice. Which makes the hiccups that much more frustrating. Plus, it broke one of my UNIX commands, which is to have dual scroll arrows at both the top and bottom of the window. For some reason, Firefox will only display the up arrow at the bottom of the window. Go figure.

The Pulp

IMHO, Firefox is not ready for primetime. When it has no problems with a site, it’s fast, quite fast. But when it hiccups, it’s a nightmare. Still, as they’re trying to dethrone Internet Exploder, it’s a strong alternative. And after all, their primary target is the Windows empire, not Apple—although they have “borrowed” heavily from Apple.

I find that I like its Cocoa-cousin, Camino, much more. Better yet, If Apple would give the Cocoa treatment to Safari, the wars would once again die down and all would be calm.

But for now, Firefox is fun to explore but I wouldn’t use it as my primary browser.

System requirements: Mac OS X

Macsimum rating: 7 out of 10

Have a product you’d like us to review? Drop us an e-mail at daseller@earthlink.net

Frank Petrie is a freelance writer, curmudgeon, technologies and products specialist.

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