LWN.net Logo

Firefox is useless?

Firefox is useless?

Posted Apr 5, 2007 15:11 UTC (Thu) by phip (guest, #1715)
In reply to: Two approaches to Flash by elanthis
Parent article: Two approaches to Flash

> In all honesty, for those very people, Firefox is useless.
> It does nothing truly remarkable that IE does not,

Firefox does tabbed browsing, popup blocking, warning the
user before executing downloaded software, and it supports
add-ons that do gazillions of other usefull things. It
also runs on more platforms and operating systems than IE.

Sure, IE has added some of these features in version 7,
but there never would have been a version 7 without
Firefox to light someone's tail on fire at Micros~1.
Prior to version 7, IE had gone about 10 years without any
sign of innovation (unless you count the Google Toolbar...)


(Log in to post comments)

Firefox is useless?

Posted Apr 6, 2007 0:35 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

In all honesty, for those very people, Firefox is useless. It does nothing truly remarkable that IE does not,
Firefox does tabbed browsing, popup blocking, warning the user before executing downloaded software, and it supports add-ons that do gazillions of other usefull things. It also runs on more platforms and operating systems than IE.

I believe the point is that for the people in question, none of these features are truly remarkable. And I agree. They don't want great; they want tolerable.

Sure, IE has added some of these features in version 7, but there never would have been a version 7 without Firefox ...

This is even less motivation than tabbed browsing, etc. for these simple users. They aren't going to switch browsers just to put pressure on Microsoft to improve its product. And neither will one of these users use Gnash just to send a message to Adobe.

Firefox is useless?

Posted Apr 7, 2007 0:11 UTC (Sat) by phip (guest, #1715) [Link]

> This is even less motivation than tabbed browsing, etc. for these
> simple users. They aren't going to switch browsers just to put
> pressure on Microsoft to improve its product. And neither will
> one of these users use Gnash just to send a message to Adobe.

I think you've got it backwards. Microsoft improved their product
because they saw their "simple users" switching to FireFox to get
features like tabbed browsing, safer handling of executables, etc.

Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds