Lotus Geek :: Is it time to start looking at life past IE?

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I have been reading stories and comments lately about the future of IE - or the lack thereof. Remember, way back when, the days when Netscape was THE browser to use? Then they began stumbling over themselves, which allowed Microsoft to easily dominate the browser market (of course it didn't hurt that they cheated and made it required as a part of Windows). Well, now I keep seeing rumblings that IE is on its last legs as a standalone browser - and there is some evidence to support it. First off, IE hasn't really been updated feature-wise in quite some time. I know that it is behind in CSS support, and we've seen the problems with Java ("it's in", "wait, it's out", "ok, it's back in"), so it doesn't appear that much effort is being put into it (past patching the security hole of the week - or is it day?). Couple this with reports like the one that surfaced awhile back on Slashdot reporting that IE SP1 will be the last standalone version of IE, and you have to begin wondering where IE is headed.

Now I haven't been really thinking about alternative browser technologies, because the prefrences of my users dictate what browser I use for development, and that has been IE, hands-down. And I haven't looked to try to persuade my users to switch because Netscape ("Nutscrape Constipator") was horrid during the 4.x codestream, and while the 7.x codestream is much, much better it still seemed fat. And Opera is out simply because it costs money, while IE doesn't (even though there are inumerable hidden costs with IE, you can't convince clients of that). Well, I think there may finally be an answer to IE out there - Mozilla Firebird.

Lean, Mean, Browsing Machine
Mozilla.org is the open source community behind the Mozilla browser/internet suite and the guts behind Netscape 6.x and 7.x. Now I have been running Mozilla and Firebird for awhile, mainly to check for cross-browser compatability. However the more I play with Firebird, the more I realize that this is a full-featured, stable, sleek browser. Of course I am just now coming to a conclusion that industry pundit Joel of Joel on Software came to back in June. He points out the reasons why he switched, and I have to say I agree with him.

There seems to be a conversion of opportunity and product with the impending demise of IE coupled with the rise of Firebird. So, I am putting my "money where my mouth is" - I am now, from this day forward, going to use Firebird as my default browser. Firebird is packed with features such as popup blocking, tabbed window, better Javascript debugging, etc. yet is simply a browser, without all the extra crap that the other browsers come with such as POP mail, chat, newsgroup reader, etc. Incidentally, it appears that even Mozilla.org is going to move the Mozilla codestream to the Firebird stream after Mozilla 1.5 is released, meaning that Firebird is going to be around for awhile. So, based on all of these reasons, I am making the switch. Oh, and Mozilla has a nice "why you should switch" page here.

I'll give reports occasionally back here on how the switch goes, problems I have, etc. And if the switch is successful, I will probably begin trying to persuade my clients to make the switch as well.

What are your thoughts on the future of browsers? Have you made a switch away from IE (the Windows users, that is - I know about Safari for Mac, Konqueror for KDE, etc.)? If so, how is it going, and if not, why not? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Incidentally, I am leaving Monday for London for the DeveloperUK conference and a Penumbra meeting. I will be blogging from there, but the timing of them may be a bit different than normal. If you're in London, drop me a line and let's get together for a pint or three.

Rock
**When cheese gets it's picture taken, what does it say?

Comments

1 - Adam,
How are ya? I like the google toolbar because of the things like site search, translate into english, etc. It is just really handy.

I need to check out the Web Developer toolbar - thanks for the tip

Rock

Posted by Rock At 10:14:36 AM On 10/31/2003 | - Website - |

2 - I've been using Firebird as my default browser for months now on the home machines. No choice at work, where we must use IE, but at home it's Firebird, on the Windows machines and on Lindows. The only problem is the periodic sites that are coded to work ONLY with IE. I leave those sites if I can and figure if they don't care about ME, then the heck with them

....But once in a while I DO still have to fire up IE

....I guess I need to be a little more dedicated and start emailing those IE-only sites and tell them that they are losing my and others' business.

Posted by Joe Litton At 10:14:36 AM On 10/31/2003 | - Website - |

3 - If only I could use Firebird to read Notes email...This works fine with IE, but for some reason, I cannot get Firebird to talk to Notes mail.

Posted by David At 04:00:30 PM On 11/04/2003 | - Website - |

4 - Rock,

Google toolbar? Have you tried this?

http://googlebar.mozdev.org/

I'm not promising it'll work for you, but it sounds like it might.

Posted by Rob McDonagh At 10:14:36 AM On 10/31/2003 | - Website - |

5 - Remember, Netscape 7.x is just Mozilla with a different UI. Just a different way to package it. My guess is that with the spinoff of mozilla.org into a standalone entity, the days of Netscape packages of Mozilla are over

Posted by John Head At 10:14:36 AM On 10/31/2003 | - Website - |

6 - Yeah, me either David. That would be great. However, I do use the "View this page in IE" extension available for Firebird, so when I do hit an IE only site, I simply load it with that.

But I do agree, I wish iNotes would support IE and Mozilla, or more specifically, the Firebird codestream.

Thanks for posting.

Rock

Posted by Rock At 08:32:26 AM On 11/05/2003 | - Website - |

7 - Hey Joe,
Any "gotchas" with Firebird? I did find the Google Toolbar for Firebird, so that made the decision to go with Firebird much easier (I am addicted to the Google toolbar). Anything else I should know about?

Rock

8 - Firefox will take over... unless MS can release something soon

Posted by Abraham Elias At 06:04:16 PM On 04/01/2005 | - Website - |

9 - That's what I'm saying - I am using the Mozilla Google toolbar, and it works great.

Thanks!

Rock

10 - Wow, excellent info, Stan. I haven't noticed an overall appreciable difference in speed yet - somethings are faster, some slower, but overall I do like it better thus far. I am still poking around to learn all it has to offer.

Thanks again!

Rock

11 - Rock,
Why use the Google Toolbar on Firebird? It has that sweet search field of its own to the right... that's always been sufficient for me.

There's also plenty of other plugins to make a developer's life easier...I currently use the Web Developer toolbar.
-Adam

Posted by Adam Slagle At 10:14:36 AM On 10/31/2003 | - Website - |

12 - Rock, the only "gotcha" with Firebird is that it allows one to see how many sites out there were designed for IE and IE only. It's also slower than I'd like it to be, especially the JavaScript engine -- dynamic pages take a while to come together.

There are a lot of other reasons why Opera is off the table, most of them having to do with CSS. If you think the box model bother of IE5.x was a problem (and with a web server like Domino that can change the stylesheet filename at service time, it really isn't), you'd have the screamin' willies trying to get anything approaching good behaviour from Opera. 6 was a write-off, 7.x (all tested) is merely horrid -- and one can't even try to work around the problem because the browser can spoof its identity. Colours spill out of boxes, background images tile uncontrollably (again, colouring outside of the lines), box dimensions may or may not be related to the content when specced by padding, etc. Not even worth trying.

Posted by Stan Rogers At 10:14:36 AM On 10/31/2003 | - Website - |