{"id":16,"date":"2004-05-13T14:53:46","date_gmt":"2004-05-13T21:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp\/?p=15"},"modified":"2004-05-13T14:53:46","modified_gmt":"2004-05-13T21:53:46","slug":"why-i-switched-to-mozilla-firefox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2004\/05\/13\/why-i-switched-to-mozilla-firefox\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Switched to Mozilla Firefox"},"content":{"rendered":"


So yesterday, after a few weeks of experimentation, I made the decision to transition from Microsoft\u0092s Internet Explorer<\/A> to Mozilla Firefox<\/A> as my default browser. I know, it\u0092s hardly earth shattering news, and longtime Mozilla fans are likely rolling their eyes at my “discovery” of this platform, but it wasn\u0092t an easy one for me as I\u0092ve been using IE forever. Now, for those of you who may be smelling an anti-Microsoft rant from that opening, you\u0092ll be disappointed. I\u0092m not here to bash IE, as it\u0092s – in my view – a fine product. To wit, the following are *not*<\/B> the reasons I\u0092m switching:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Anti-Microsoft agenda<\/B> – not only don\u0092t we have one, I think product decisions made on emotion rather than pragmatism are always problematic. I\u0092m going to use what\u0092s best for me, period. <\/li>\n
  2. Internet Explorer frustration<\/B> – I\u0092m not switching due to any inherent problems with IE\u0092s browsing experience. It hangs on me occasionally, sure, but for the most part it\u0092s a very good, very stable browser. <\/li>\n
  3. Open Source zeal <\/B> – open source is dramatically important to RedMonk, and a genuine cultural as well as business phenomenon. But just as I won\u0092t choose products along an artificial anti-commercial software requirement, nor will I select open source simply because it\u0092s that. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Instead, my reasons – or reason, actually – for switching was pretty straightforward, as many such decisions happen to be. It\u0092s called tabbed browsing<\/A>. It\u0092s absurdly simple in concept, and not at all new; the idea is that rather than spawning new instances of the browser as IE does to visit multiple sites simultaneously, it opens them up as tabs within the single browser instance. And Firefox is hardly the only browser to have this – the regular Mozilla<\/A> has it, as does Apple\u0092s Safari <\/A>and a variety of other products as well. <\/p>\n

    Why tabbed browsing? Well, it can be nice to have everything in one window but it\u0092s not really a UI decision for me. Instead, it\u0092s memory. I\u0092m run a Thinkpad X23<\/A> – an ultralight laptop – as my standard work machine. It\u0092s been a great, great box and I couldn’t recommend the X series Thinkpads more highly. But I\u0092ve only packed it with 256 MBs of RAM, meaning that at some point, I run out. So rather than run 5 or 6 IE instances at 45 MBs a piece (that\u0092s just with the Boston.com sports <\/A>page loaded, mind you), I can run one Firefox instance at around 36 MBs, and that\u0092s with 6 sites open in 6 individual tabs. My poor little Thinkpad is ecstatic. <\/p>\n

    So why Firefox out of the browsers that offer this nifty little feature? Because it\u0092s the best I\u0092ve found at mirroring the shortcut key conventions I use with IE (CTL + ENTER to add www and .com to anything typed in the address window, for example). <\/p>\n

    For now then, it\u0092s IE out, Firefox in. We\u0092ll see where things go from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So yesterday, after a few weeks of experimentation, I made the decision to transition from Microsoft\u0092s Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. I know, it\u0092s hardly earth shattering news, and longtime Mozilla fans are likely rolling their eyes at my “discovery” of this platform, but it wasn\u0092t an easy one for me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends-observations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}