Why do I use Firefox?

Tags: ajax, firefox, ie, php
Written by: kamasheto

For quite some time now I’ve released the new version of the intranet, v3. It’s still a little buggy and I want to implement an AJAXed feature that should most definitely speed up loading time for users and reduce resource consumption for our server; anyway, that’s why it’s still in beta phase. I released it so that everyone could have a look and perhaps report any bugs or features they want to see in this version.

When I say everyone, I was hoping 10-15 users would actually take the time to help around. Heh, little did I know that only 1 person will have the courtesy to actually give me feedback. Last semester’s downloads was way beyond expectations because of the traffic, this semester however, and because of the new download cart the figures are going to be astonishing.

All this doesn’t really bother me - people that hang around to take something and don’t want to give back are just part of the world we live in. I’ve been working for the past 4-5 years solo anyway so I’m fine working on my own on this project as well. What really bothers me, is that regardless of how much time and effort I spend on making things look nicer and making things easier to use, I as a web developer always get devastated by how IE illustrates my skills!

Why do I use Firefox? Same reasons I will _never_ use IE for, same reasons I will always tell people to use Firefox and never IE for; and they are only two MAJOR reasons.

• Firefox is ALWAYS being updated. I can’t remember when was the last time IE told me there was an update, but Mozilla updates Firefox all the time. Not that I want a new interface every other day, but because I want a browser that will use the latest CSS and Javascript features there is. For example, in the new version of CSS, CSS 3 introduces a new property which allows to have rounded corners.

  border-radius: 10px; /* Standard */
  -moz-border-radius: 10px; /* Mozilla */
  -webkit-border-radius: 10px; /* Safari */
  

  It’s still a beta feature so Firefox (and Safari for that matter) are thankful to even consider including this feature (and many others) in their last stable releases. Now this is what I love most about Firefox. If all the world suddenly stopped using IE and started using Firefox then we’d have a world wide web that has all the new features usable even before they’re made final. This way the developer won’t have to follow the usual procedure to have rounded corners for example, and the user won’t have to wait as long to have the images load (the usual procedure for rounded corners is using images.) Does any of these two parties have to wait for the properties to become final before using/seeing them? I don’t see a reason why.

  Not only that, Firefox even has it’s own implementation for this feature, that even though not standardized, is very wise to do.

• Firefox is SMART. I tend to work more efficiently during night when I just woke up with all those ideas storming through my head. It happens that during that same exact time I tend to be extremely unfocused - which means I could easily forget a / in a </div> or </textarea> (which in case you don’t will probably break everything that is to come.) Now when Firefox sees this code it will understand this is definitely not meant to be like that, rather a <div></div> in the first case. In IE, it’ll not bother and parse things the way they are.

  I know this shouldn’t be something to blame IE for (after all, it is my fault as a developer), but Firefox is worth praising for how this helps both the end-developer and the front-end-user: after all, who wants to see a website full of bugs? Not only that, whenever Firefox decides to act on its own in a similar situation, it will highlight the code in a bold underlined italicised red font in the source in case I (the developer) want to fix it for the IE users.

I wasn’t paid to say this, I promise; but if you don’t have it already, do yourself and all of us, web developers, a big favour - download Firefox.