I like Firefox as a development platform but not as a browser. I used to use it on PC, Mac and Linux. Now I use it only on Linux. Safari and IE7 are better -- faster, smaller memory footprint, and they don't crash. On my Linux box (CentOS 5.x), I run Firefox and Thunderbird. Each of them crashes about twice a week. On my Mac, when I used to run Firefox, it would build up to a huge memory usage after being open for several days. Then there was a bug where cut/paste would stop working, and (IIRC) this could only be cured by a reboot, or maybe by logging out and in. I do miss Foxmarks. I used to miss Adblocker, but I now run Pith Helmet on Safari, which is at least as good. As for IE, well, I don't use the PC that often, so I'm not sure what plugins are available. But the biggest attraction of Firefox to me has been the plugins, and it's clear that Safari, at least, is catching up. I find Mozilla to be a very poor effort, and am happy that there are now good alternatives.

I switched over to Firefox some time ago and I really like it. I had major problems with IE like it would crash most of the time I used it and it made my computer run slowly. I am looking forward to Firefox 3.

The two things that disappoint me about Firefox are cosmetic: (1) tables with borders look dismal and boring in Firefox and much nicer in IE7 and (2) the way the scroll bar changes the width of the window depending on the depth of the screen is absurd - it makes sites with the same menu at the top jerk dementedly when navigating between pages. When there is no scroll bar the width should still be allowed for it. I have mentioned this last to Firefox over the years as have other people, but they take no notice. I now make every webpage deeper than the deepest screen I know of just to accommodate their whim. Perhaps they have fixed it in version 3, but I very much doubt it.

My disappointment with IE7 is the way that in a screen with many images some of them randomly do not appear until one uses "show picture". I have asked often enough how to fix this and never had an answer.

Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how blog posts reveal just how uninformed people are. As nmcallister points out, cookies are set by the websites you visit, REGARDLESS of what web browser you're using. And it's not difficult at all to remove them (easier than with IE, actually). And yes, Firefox won't work for sites that use ActiveX controls, which are one of the biggest causes of IE's security problems because they allow too much direct interaction with the OS. Also, Firefox and Safari are FAR more standards-compliant than IE is. If sites render fine in IE but not in Firefox or Safari, it's most likely because the website was designed using sloppy or non-standard coding that IE has been taught how to interpret. In that case, it's the website and the developers behind it, not the browser, that are at fault. The ever increasing market share of browsers other than IE should (hopefully) start a movement towards better standards-compliant coding.

Like Hillary Clinton, I misspoke...

It wasn't a cookie per se that FireFox inserted on our computers, but spyware, benign spyware certainly, but difficult to expunge.

We had to delete FF in order to get rid of the thing, because other spyware trappers couldn't get rid of it.

Rich Reynolds
RRRGroup

For those who remind us that spyware and cookies are inserted from sites and the browser isn't responsible, let me assure them that only Firefox allowed the data-gathering insert that was identified by Ad-Aware and other spyware catchers we use. IE didn't contain the "spyware" -- it only showed up in FF when we scanned for spyware, and we couldn't rid our computers of the detritus except by some extensive machinations. Our IT guys here said that it was an adjunct of FF, and only FF. That's all I know.