Firebird is dead; long live Firefox. IE is dead; oh hang on . . .

Browser Wars Rekindled: Mozilla Firefox 0.8 Review

By Matt Stephens
March 7, 2004
(Updated March 8)

For many people, the browser wars have been over for a very long time. In the distant past of Internet history, the "evil empire" created a mighty weapon (that would be Internet Explorer) and crushed the opposition (Netscape), before flooding the world with its bloated virusware.

But today, in one small corner of the web, a pocket of resistance still fights valiantly on. Firefox has emerged as a real contender to pick up the browser wars from where Netscape fell.

But what exactly made IE such an unstoppable weapon? Detractors will point to the fact that IE was (and still is) pre-installed on every copy of Windows; and that does seem like a pretty good reason for IE's almost total dominance of the browser market. But there's more. The uncomfortable truth is that IE, for all its shortcomings, is a quality product. It renders web pages well, and is incredibly forgiving of badly formatted HTML. It's also reasonably usable.

So it's going to take a very special kind of web browser to stand a chance against IE. Luckily, as we'll explore in this review, Firefox does well in the areas that really matter: usability, extensibility and security. To put another way: what Internet Explorer gets wrong, Firefox gets right!

You'll find that most of this review is about comparing Firefox with IE, because IE is easily the dominant browser at the moment. People are used to the way IE operates. So for a new browser to reach mass-market status, it needs to behave like IE and yet do things better.

First Impressions

On first run, the first thing that struck me about Firefox was its nice, uncluttered UI. I seriously hope it'll stay that way and not become too bogged down with "featuritis". The optional extensions approach (which I discuss later in this review) should help, as it means users can just install the features they need, and not have to install (then navigate around) everything and its pig.

Rather crucially, Firefox's page rendering is done very well. Like IE, it's forgiving of badly formed HTML. Rather than sitting in a standards-clad ivory tower, insisting that the global, organic web conform to its ideals of closed-tag perfection, it instead does the best job it can at getting that page rendered. User experience matters more than conforming to a narrow standard. It's a sign of product maturity that the web pages in Firefox look as if they've been rendered in IE.

Initial startup is slower than IE – probably because IE is already mostly loaded into memory. Although I normally dislike apps that pre-load themselves when Windows starts up, perhaps Firefox would benefit from at least having an option to do this.

When you first run it, Firefox automatically imports all your IE favourites into its bookmarks list – this is totally automatic; no user intervention required, the favourites are simply there in your Bookmarks list. However this isn't a "live" linkup – if you add another favourite to IE, it doesn't automatically appear in Firefox. The assumption seems to be that once you've started using Firefox, you won't want to continue browsing in IE (which might be reasonable!)

The browser includes support for Flash – although it would be nice if Flash was installed by default.

There's also support for the latest Java runtime (1.4.2), but apparently with a few issues. As I discuss in this article, Java desperately needs better support on the desktop/browser. If Sun were to embrace Firefox and help make Java work incredibly smoothly on it, that would be a very smart move. Also, here's hoping that Java 1.5 support is added to Firefox as soon as humanly possible, as 1.5 is a big step forward in Java technology.

Security

One of Firefox's big selling points (sorry, giving-away points) is that it is much more secure than Internet Explorer. Time will tell whether this is really true - but the initial signs are promising.

For starters, Firefox deliberately doesn't offer ActiveX support. This is touted as an advantage, because it immediately eliminates a whole host of exploits to which IE is vulnerable. Somehow, the lack of ActiveX doesn't seem to have negatively affected my browsing experience one bit – but it certainly feels safer!

Unfortunately, corporate users might miss out on the Firefox experience if they have to use intranet apps that rely on ActiveX (e.g. Microsoft's rather spiffy web client for Outlook). They might be able to run IE alongside Firefox if their sysadmins will allow them.

The fact that Firefox isn't tightly integrated into the underlying desktop like IE will also be seen by many as a big advantage, security-wise.

Being open-source, the full browser source code is available. With a thousand eyeballs poring over the code looking for exploits (and fixes), this should prove to be a big help in keeping the product secure.

Usability

A lot of browsing features are similar to IE; so IE users should find the UI familiar enough to avoid too much pain switching. The team seems to have recognised when to keep it similar, and when to diverge from the Microsoft "blueprint" to improve the user experience. For example, the small thumb-button on the side of my Intellimouse Explorer still serves as a "Back" button; it's possible to get a History panel at the left of the window, just like IE; the "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" is basically the Links folder in IE. The full-screen view should also look very familiar to IE users (with close buttons etc in the same place). Also the full-screen shortcut key (F11) is the same as IE's. Keeping the UI familiar is a smart move. But there are also many differences (almost all of which seem to be improvements – as we'll explore in this review).

Tabbed browsing – Until now, I had been something of a luddite when it came to tabbed browsing. I couldn't see the point, especially as I'd grown used to just having all the IE browser windows clutter up the Windows taskbar.

In Windows XP, it's not so bad because the taskbar groups similar windows together in little vertical stacks. Although this "unclutters" the taskbar, it does mean an extra mouse click when you want to switch to a different window. It also hides away the other browser windows until you go looking for them. It doesn't quite make sense to hide windows that are related to the application you're currently looking at. So as a way of managing lots of open browser windows, the WinXP/taskbar/IE combo isn't the most usable solution. Enter tabbed browsing (done the Firefox way).

Ctrl-clicking a link opens the link in a new tab, but – and here's the clever part – doesn't take you there. Instead, the new tab shows an icon indicating whether the page has loaded yet. So you can continue reading the current page whilst the new page loads, then click over to it when you're ready. That's pretty neat, and often grabs you a few extra seconds which would otherwise be spent staring at a half-loaded page, tapping your fingers.

It's an interesting interpretation of how punters typically browse the web. If you encounter a web link halfway through a story (essentially "click here for more info"), the natural thing to do is to open the link in a different browser window but keep it for later, in the meantime finishing off the current story (basically finishing off the current thought process before moving onto something new). The Firefox approach lends itself naturally to this way of browsing. The result is that browsing the web becomes a more focussed, less "choppy-changey" experience. You get to finish reading one page before moving onto the next, and also save some time waiting for the other pages to load. You might even find that browsing becomes an almost serene experience (and not just because of the built-in popup blocker!)

Tabbed browsing looks great, until...

Firefox's implementation of tabbed browsing does have room for improvement, however.

If you've got 10-20 tabs open, you need to be able to organise them a little bit. If you keep opening tabs, the tabs just get smaller and smaller until you can't read them; then the newer tabs become inaccessible. Another sad omission is the ability to reorder tabs by dragging them. So, sad to say, Firefox doesn't seem to cater well for the "power browser user".

The Mozilla team should look at the new NetBeans 3.6 UI for an excellent example of how to handle large numbers of tabs. The NetBeans tabs are scrollable, so they're never inaccessible. Also the alpha-sorted dropdown list is a nice simple idea which works well in practice.

A nice addition would also be to have an option to remember your tab configuration next time you launch Firefox (i.e. re-open the same browser tabs).

(Since writing this review, it's been pointed out to me that some of the features I've suggested here are already available as plug-ins. Not quite the same as having the tabs behave that way by default, but it shows the extensibility of Firefox and the XUL approach...)

A slightly annoying "feature" is that if you click a link from an external app, Firefox loads the link in the current tab, obliterating the page that was there. It would be nicer if it automatically popped up a new tab. This "feature" can be particularly annoying if the previous page was your webmail or some other stateful web-based app.

Also (while we're on the quibble front), hyperlinks that use the "_new" target open in a new window instead of a new tab. This can be quite jarring, especially for new converts (like me) to tabbed browsing, who can be worse than reformed smokers or born-again Christians in our fanatical devotion to something new. Why introduce a funky new paradigm and then break it at the first opportunity?

Still in quibble mode: At one point the toolbar links folder didn't pick up the website's "favicon" (although the browser tabs did). Strangely, when I went back into the browser later, the links folder was suddenly showing the favicon. This appears to be the reverse of IE's problem, which often randomly loses each site's favicon.

One fairly major issue (which seems to affect all browsers based on the same Mozilla codebase) is that if you type in a URL that doesn't exist, the entire browser freezes - not just the current tab or window, but the whole thing, including any other browsers you have open (all your webmail etc). This caught me out today at a really bad moment. Grrr!!

There's an integrated Google search in the toolbar, with a neat option to include other search engines, such as Dictionary.com. The toolbar isn't as versatile as the "real" Google toolbar (which I found myself missing), but pretty neat anyway.

Firefox also has a whole host of usability features that IE lacks. The keyboard and mouse shortcuts are well thought out, making browsing of multiple pages a pleasant experience. Being able to type your way to a link is also a nice idea (aside from accessibility, which is important, I'm not sure how often this feature would get used though – perhaps if your hand is a long way from the mouse, it might just about be quicker to type the first few letters of the hyperlink).

Extensibility

One of the most striking things about Firefox is the huge number of plugins (called "extensions" in the Firefox world). These can be downloaded from their website and automatically installed. There is evidently a thriving developer community around the Mozilla project in general, and this has benefited Firefox. The sheer variety of extensions is huge - they range from the useful (RSS aggregators, Bookmark Links Checker) to the somewhat geeky (Minesweeper as a browser plugin??)

Over time, the more useful extensions will work their way into the core browser download -- but the Firefox team have been very clear in their intention to keep the core browser clean and tidy.

While we wait for some of these extensions to make it into the core, however, Firefox does have some surprising oddities. For example, you don't get a tool-tip showing an image's "alt" tag. You have to download and install an extension for that!

Firefox, to its credit, is very highly configurable, being written using the XUL user interface language. Actually customizable would be a better word. By cutting and pasting scripts into various config files, you can make Firefox behave pretty much however you please (see their Tips & Tricks page). For example, the following Javascript snippet can be copied into your user.js file to force frames to be resizable:

// Force frames to be resizable
user_pref("layout.frames.force_resizability", true);

Of course, many non-technical users will find the prospect of cutting and pasting source code a tad scary. Really, Firefox could do with a more user-friendly "Customize" options screen, where all the features on their "Tips & Tricks" page are listed as checkbox options ("Tweak Find as you Type", "Disable Other JavaScript Window Features", "Disable Bookmark Icons" etc). These customization features should of course be dynamically updated from a central source on-line.

Because of its speed and extensibility though, Firefox would be an excellent choice for new intranet projects where you can specify the target browser app. Its support for XUL for enhanced user experience means the client browser could be customised to precisely fit the intranet app being created.

Conclusion

With Firefox, all the years of effort that have gone into throwing out the original Netscape "shodware" source code and rewriting it from scratch seem to have finally paid off. Crucially, Firefox gets the user interface mostly right. And the project is controlled enough to keep it from becoming top-heavy and cluttered with unnecessary features.

But will mass-acceptance and adoption of Firefox automatically happen? As usual, Microsoft has the upper hand, as IE is preinstalled on every copy of Windows that ever ships. Millions of non-technical home users just won't bother to switch browsers, partly because they'll never be aware that there's an alternative, or even a need for an alternative. They'll accept whatever's put in front of them: that's the reality they're given, and for them it'll be good enough because it simply is. Trojans, system crashes, spyware – it's all just an inevitable part of life, isn't it? It's a crying shame, but to get Firefox in front of these millions of apathetic end-users, it needs to be there by default. This means OEM deals.

Now that Mozilla has lost the all-important AOL link, they will need to work extra hard to win PC OEM support. But it's essential if Firefox is to "make it" as a mass-market web browser: to win the browser war and mark a return to the Netscape glory days.

Talkback: Have Your Say

Post a new message

IE - The unstoppable Wormhole
Peter Drinnan spamcan@3da.com
Reordering and remembering tabs
Salman Mahbub salmanmahbub@yahoo.com
Extensions!
Andrew hardarse26@hotmail.com
Its just a quick review...
Dino Fancellu 
IE is still way faster
Peter 
Some counter-points
Dan Smith dan@deebster.com
FF rendering speed
Peter 
Firebird, Firefox faster
VCat 
Agreed - FF rendering is much faster than IE. ...
Dan 
Firefox not too hot to handle...
Nic Reglen
Speed
Colin 
Have firefox do the work for me  and keep my desktop uncluttered
Jessica jessica@mortgagefit.com
Rename tabs
philter none@now.com
rename tabs...
Dino 
Save Label
jg bob@bob.com
Firefox sucks
Jasper 
ridiculous!
Hurricane hurricane@cyberworlz.org
@Jasper : stop lying!
Hurricane hurricane@cyberworlz.org
BEFORE unleashing it??
PJD storm@blackhole.com
Doubled my connection speed
David drwhitworth2@tiscali.co.uk

barbara
barbara technoid@hotmail.com

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Firefox Links

Optimized Firefox builds for Athlon, P4 etc.

How to modify hidden preferences using about:config

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