Internet Explorer is so early millennium. It's almost 2005 after all, and time for a change.
Why? There has been a LOT of talk lately about the advantages of using browsers other than Internet Explorer, partially because of functionality offered by these "other" browsers, but primarily because of the non-stop attacks waged by hackers, and the constant need to patch IE to prevent your computer and/or data being compromised. IE is so dominant in the browser arena, it makes an excellent target.
Another reason for all the buzz is the recent availability of an excellent alternative, Mozilla Firefox 1.0. Once I'd read about the 10th recommendation, I figured it might be worthwhile. It's been installed for the past month or so, set as my default browser.
So far, so good. My favorite feature is the tabbed browsing, though I do wish I could configure it to open ALL windows as tabs. (You can left-click on a link and select "open in tab", or use control-click on a link to open it in a new tab. To open a new tab, click control-t.)
Using Firefox hasn't been without it's glitches. For example, some functions in my older version of Movable Type just don't work in Firefox, though apparently newer versions of MT play nicer. You may occasionally come across pages that don't work quite right in Firefox, but that's easily remedied. As mentioned in Inter Alia there's an extension that you can install called IE View, that will allow you to open a link in Internet Explorer.
The consensus, at least this month, is that Firefox is a fine IE alternative. Let's just hope it doesn't get TOO popular, or the hackers direct their fire to Firefox instead of IE, and we'll all be back where we started from.
Time to Find an IE Alternative?
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