As we're getting closer to release Firefox 3 (in June), I'm often asked why should people switch from their existing browser, which was bundled with their PC. The short answer is that their old browser is obsolete, and I genuinely mean this. But this leaves too little space for people to really understand the actual benefits of using Firefox 3. So I whipped up the following list:
Ten reasons to choose Firefox 3 over your obsolete browser
Safer browsing
- 1 - Proven security track record, with more frequent, transparent updates, so that you use a safer browser
- 2 - malware protection to be protected against unwanted downloads such as viruses and trojan horses
Better browsing, with thousands of improvements
- 3 - Awesome bar, so that you can find places you've been before with a couple of keystrokes
- 4 - "Save on exit" so that when you launch Firefox, you're immediately ready to surf, with last windows and tabs open
- 5 - Remember passwords without a dialog box, so that you decide to save the password after you've logged-in
- 6 - New download manager, users can pause a download and resume it later, with a search box to easily retrieve previous downloads
- 7 - Customizable: change the look and feel (themes) and add features (extensions) to Firefox through the built-in add-ons manager. More than 5,000 community-built extensions are available for free!
Better performance
- 8 - Fastest on complex Web applications, such as GMail so you are more comfortable, even on old machines
- 9 - Uses less memory than any other browser, so you'll get more mileage out of your computer
- 10 - Moving the Web forward by supporting advanced Web standards so that the Web keeps evolving and benefits users in the long term.
I tried to sneak in the Open-Source / Free / Libre concept in here, but as I try to stay as concrete as possible, I found it hard to make clear in a few words why this was directly benefitting users...
17 réactions
1 De CeD - 19/04/2008, 13:06
May we consider this post by Mozilla Europe's President as an official announcement of FF3 final release??
2 De Staś - 19/04/2008, 13:08
I won't discover anything new here, but I guess you could say that being open-source is a way to guarantee a continuity of our efforts. Suppose tomorrow the producer of the browser bundled with your OS says 'we will no longer support it'. Firefox's users don't have this problem. I do believe this may be a valuable and important advantage for end-users.
Anyways, great post! A neat cheatsheet for encouraging people to switch.
3 De Kanaka - 19/04/2008, 13:32
The resize grip of the text area on this blog does not work correctly in Fx3. Often it would start dragging the image, in which case the connection between the drag handle and the mouse pointer gets "stuck", and the only way to separate them is to reload the webpage.
Another problem is that moving the mouse downwards quickly enough while resizing would start selecting the text under the text area.
None of these two problems are present in Fx2.
4 De Nat - 19/04/2008, 14:28
Traduction rapide et brutale : http://nat.fam-martel.eu/2008/04/10...
5 De Léo - 19/04/2008, 15:03
Firefox 3 is good, but not new and perfect.
6 De Tristan - 19/04/2008, 15:11
@CeD: The official statement is that Firefox 3 is going to be released "when it's ready". And we hope that it will be ready by June.
7 De Tristan - 19/04/2008, 15:19
@Léo: if you like Opera better, then just use it, seriously. Opera is a good browser, just like Safari. I wish it had more market share, was easier to use, had extensions, anti-malware, better Website compatibility and was Open-Source...
I did not mean to compare Firefox with Opera, but maybe you did not read my sentence "why should people switch from their existing browser, which was bundled with their PC".
8 De Peng - 19/04/2008, 16:40
That's all great, but I have three reasons why I'm not only not going to be using Firefox 3 despite having tested it since the early beta stages, but I'm looking at other open source browsers for my Linux comp for the first time since Firefox 1.5 came out.
1. The Awesome Bar. It's good, but not that awesome for me. I do miss it in Fx2 for using my bookmarks faster, but I'm not completely in love with it.
2. Text Zoom. Despite the fact that full page zoom has been available by an extension for a while, we're not getting it shoved down our throats. It took a god-awful long time to get text zooming back without an extension, but now our zoom settings are per site rather than per tab. There was an extension that gave us old school zooming back but now it no longer works the same way. And no, having to go into about:config to get an old behavior back is not a great option, as I'd recommend it for very few users. It's too damned easy to break something in there if you don't know what you're doing.
3. The Clear List button in the Download Manager. As we got closer to RC status the number of comments in the bug have hit critical mass (over 100) and we're told to either use about:config or an extension to bring back this simple button.
All in all it seems the devs are coding for how they want to use Firefox, rather than making it easy for users to continue using Firefox the way they have since version 1.5. That's why I'm looking to leave the Firefox community. I haven't enjoyed the koolaid and I dislike being told I have to change how I surf the web from how I've been doing it with Mozilla browsers for four or five years.
9 De Moe - 19/04/2008, 17:23
Hello,
is it ou Faster ? Is Firefox the fastest browser ? Or Firefox 3 is faster than Firefox 2 ?
Concerning the ninth reason, is there some benchmarks to compare the memory occupation of the different browsers ?
10 De Atul - 19/04/2008, 18:12
Great post!
Re: sneaking the open source concept in there, I wonder if it might be useful to put it in the security section; something along the lines of this:
Just a thought.
11 De Atul - 19/04/2008, 18:15
Er, I just noticed the title of the list--I'd recommend using a word other than "obsolete" when referring to someone else's browser. Because lots of people who read it aren't going to understand the context in which it's meant, I think they may interpret it as elitism/snobbery, which could turn them off to the rest of the post.
12 De Amigomr - 19/04/2008, 19:48
I translated into Japanese : http://amigomr.dw.land.to/blog/arti...
13 De Jean-Marc - 19/04/2008, 23:37
That sounds great, and I will certainly switch as soon as the final version is available.
But I also believe that some issues should be taken seriously, all the more since we're hitting version 3 of the browser, like a decent bookmarks management for instance. Can't believe such trivial annoyances like bug 196509 still survive.
Good job anyway, thanks to all the Firefox folks
14 De Diego - 19/04/2008, 23:44
Léo: The "awesomebar" idea was developed by Epiphany well before Opera (in 2006 at least). Epiphany is a gecko-based browser - so firefox is sharing this nice idea with them. If anything Opera got the idea from them.
15 De Allen - 20/04/2008, 10:03
I don't think Opera and Firefox are "competing". I see Firefox, Safari, Opera , etc. as cousins. We all have to fight the main culprit here... Internet Explorer..
16 De Billy - 21/04/2008, 05:38
Okay, so maybe 4 or 5 of those 10 are actually useful.
17 De HunterRose - 21/04/2008, 10:04
Except Safari is Macintosh, Safari is teh suck, and yes I have used it.