Browser Roundup Series:
For most people, the web browser is the most important piece of software they will ever use. As a programmer specializing in web applications, browsers are even more important to me. Applications I build can be viewed in a variety of browsers, and so I have always had several installed at any one time.
I make a habit of switching my default browser from time to time, so that I can get a good feel for the "end user" experience, and I also do a lot of testing of my applications in various different versions.
I have a lot to say about each of the current contenders, so I'll split this up into several posts. First, we'll tackle what has been my preferred default browser for the last 2 years.
Mozilla's Firefox 3:
Since this one has been out a while I'll not spend too much text on describing the specific features in much detail, but I do have a lot of overall opinions to venture.
Firefox was born out of a desire to take Mozilla's impressive rendering engine and embed it into a stripped down browser UI without the commercial constraints and bloat that had complicated Mozilla first browser suite (which had been bankrolled by Netscape).
Firefox got started by being simply a great browser! It re-thought the UI which gave it an edge over stale old IE, and the rendering engine was light-years ahead of the competition. The most successful feature was tabbed browsing.
Firefox also evolved a fantastic add-on architecture that would allow users to pick up advanced features on an as-desired basis without those features hampering development of the core browser... and most importantly it was easy for users to find add-ons, install them, and manage them.
Firefox 1 and 2 were all about perfecting the initial design, and so changes between versions had been fairly incremental, but Firefox 3, the current incarnation, was a major overhaul.
Overall I'm disappointed!
There are tons of new features in the new version, most of them quite good even, but I generally find that Firefox 3 is not as enjoyable as the previous versions were. It has a lot of power, but it has also added a lot of complexity.
The UI is loud, crowded, and noisy. The default theme has a cheese-ball cartoony feel that just isn't any fun, and and finding a 3rd party theme that doesn't look like it was designed by a middle-schooler on crack is neither easy nor fun.
Another major problem is that Firefox 3 takes much longer to launch, opening new tabs is slower, and the interface is sometimes sluggish to respond to commands (and I see this behavior even on my top-of-the-line XPS M1730 laptop).
Firefox 3 still has the best rendering engine out there. And it remains the king of flexibility and customization via an amazing add-on infrastructure. But the new version has trended very far away from the regular user's needs. It just feels bloated and complex... which is ironic considering the history that spawned Firefox in the first place.
Firefox's popularity with most users had stemmed from the tabbed UI and fantastic rendering engine. It offered enough gravy via add-ons and advanced features to tip many users away from IE.
But now Firefox is facing a really big problem...
The new entrants in the browser competition have finally gotten their own rendering engines caught up to the W3C recommendations (including IE 8, which has made massive strides in that area). Even though Firefox had enjoyed several years of leadership in technical compliance, this isn't much of a big deal anymore. The recommendations (the so-called "standards") don't change that fast anymore, which means that Firefox can't leverage much expertise here to differentiate it's browser offering.
The other side of Firefox's success was always in the convenience features, slick UI, and tabbed browsing... but the competition has also caught up in this area, and they have many more years of experience in design and usability... plus the financial incentive to really do a good job with their new designs.
So Firefox is fast finding that it only has significant market appeal for power users and developers... but catering to that market segment has caused it to drift away from the needs of the vast majority of end-users who just want to browse the web without complications.
I'm still a big fan, but even as a power user and developer myself, I generally find that I don't use that many of the add-ons and advanced features either. Sure they are nice, and I played with them for a while, but after the "wow, neat!" factor wears itself out, I find that all I really want is to open a browser and browse... not muck about configuring things and keeping up with a dozen wonky 3rd party add-ons.
I do love the integrated spell checker though... I wish that was standard in all browsers.
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