Alright you Firefox lovers...come talk with me

[Larry_OHF]

I cared nothing for trying Firefox until the day that I actually needed it. My sister-in-law asked for help today because she was trying to download some music that she paid for from a church website, but she could not get it to work. She asked for my help and I took her username and password to that site and tried but I also had trouble. I read in the forum that they have set up that it appears that Explorer 7 was the cause of the trouble. The administrator said that Firefox would work everytime, though one guy specifically had trouble getting Firefox to work too.

I thought I'd finally try Firefox on my system and see if it would work, and yes, I was able to download the music straight to the Desktop.

I have v2.0.0.1.

Now...there were some things that I did not like about Firefox. For example, the page loaded a bit slower than Explorer, mostly with the graphics.

With Explorer, I had the option to download the entire file (11 songs) at once, but Firefox made me download them one at a time.

Firefox did not let me choose a folder to place the music in, and only pointed to the Desktop (no sub-folders). This was the only option unless I wanted to play the music straight from the site.


With the hopes of getting some advice since I know you guys know more about how to properly use 2 browsers with the most efficiency, I thought I'd hold onto Firefox and see if it is worth anything to me. I am not impressed by the looks of it, so there must be something it has to offer that you can point out to me. I have so far selected to import all browser information from Explorer such as favorites, cookies, etc. I have not made it my default broswer because I see no reason to. I have added all three GUIs.

Now...what do I need to know to make this better, more complete, more like-able, etc.?

[PurpleXVI]

I believe that, for Firefox, it's possible to assign a specific downloads folder. Still not as good as being able to pick(There may be an option for that, but I've never found it.), but it sure beats having everything you download dumped on your desktop.

Personally I'd suggest you go with Opera instead, it's got a nicer interface, almost the exact same set of features and the only thing you're missing out on are a few plug-ins that don't really serve much practical purpose. For compatability, just about anything that'll let you use Firefox will let you use Opera, and then some. Opera also works just like Internet Explorer for downloads, except that you get a handy Transfers tab where you can keep an eye on them all with ease. In my experience, Opera loads pages faster than both IE and Explorer, except in a few rare cases.

I'd also recommend against using two browsers, it's much easier to just use one browser and stick with it. Easier to keep track of settings, homepages, bookmarks and functionality, plus there's really no advantage to regularly using two.

[Bungleau]

Firefox 2.0... Tools, Options, Main. Check the box that says "Always ask me where to save files" and your first nit goes away (or was that second?).

Right above it is the option to set the Downloads folder...

I prefer to use FF over IE, but some sites require IE (like my employer's [img]smile.gif[/img] ). So I have some things that run just over there... few, but some.

As for the slow download... that could be due to caching the images. Are they as slow the second time you go there?

[Sir Krustin]

^What he said.

FF can be slower, but mainly due to the plethora of plugins most people tend to gorge on, though one plugin (fasterfox) does optimize FF's network performance.

[bubbe]

I just tested fasterfox, and it seems to help actually, but then.. i just installed it and just tested a few really slow sites like our mainly newssite in sweden: www.aftonbladet.se

i will keep test it!

[Bungleau]

I'm sold! I just installed FasterFox, and the difference is quite noticable!

This is just on my normal startup... Yahoo home page, login, click over to IW.

Impressive...

[Larry_OHF]

I am staying with Explorer 7, but for those of you that have dual browsers (I have heard some of you talk about it) when do you decide or in what circumstances will you use one over the other? That is what I need to know.

[Bozos of Bones]

I use Firefox, always. Any and all compatibility issues can be fixed with extensions. After configuring Firefox to your needs and desires, I've noticed it does get considerably faster than IE.
I would use Fasterfox, but I'm limited to 5 gigabytes per month.

[PurpleXVI]

I use pure Opera. As I said, there's nothing and browser can do that it can't, and it's plenty fast, so there's really never any inspiration not to.

[Thoran]

I use Firefox and IE interchageably... I like the search function in Firefox a lot more than any other browser and that alone keeps it installed on my machines.