The Browser Den

Mozilla Firefox 2 - Mozilla Corporation and contributors
Guest reviewer: Ian Charlton

As a web user since 1996, I switched from Netscape to IE 5 when Windows 2000 was launched. Since that time Windows Update has handled all my updating needs. I stuck with IE as there was no compelling need to switch browsers. As I was always careful about the sites I browsed, always kept the system up to date and avoided running day-to-day as an administrator I never had all the problems with spyware that others talked about, and I was happy to be running a browser that I knew would work with all mainstream sites.

I've been asked in the past if I want to try out other browsers but I have declined. The reason I'm looking at alternatives now is because IE7 has been launched, a lot of things have changed in that version, interface wise it has no resemblance to IE6 or any standard Windows XP application. I decided to try out Firefox first as that is the most popular of the alternative browsers, in the meantime I decided to keep IE6 on my system, it means if I didn't like tabbed browing I could easily switch back.

The following pages will provide a detailed look at the issues I encountered when using Firefox, I made extensive use of online resources once I installed Firefox to learn more about it. My configuration cuurently is IE6 on Windows XP Service Pack 2, the only add-on I use under IE is the Google Toolbar. Prior to SP2 it provided a useful pop-up blocking capability, now I just use it for the search tools.

Overall I enjoyed using Firefox exclusively for a week, it's interesting to see how far things have progressed since IE7. This has made me keen to try out other alternative browsers too, so after this review I'm going to give Opera a try, so maybe this may not be my last review for the Browser Den. I'm going to wait for a few months before installing IE7 because I want to see if there's any major problems with it before I make the move. As IE7 is used by various components of Windows then I'm slightly worried that the uninstall process may not be clean enough if I had to revert back to IE6 for any reason.

NEXT: Installation