Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Review

Overall 4.60 of 5 view all 47 reviews

Noelana
Herald, CA

Straightforward customizable browser.

a PC User, Every day computer user, PC owner, always online, a techie, pc-user, a person who enjoys quality, a busy person

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Pros

open-source, Extremely straightforward and easy, tabbed browsing, Restore Last Session, skins, free, fast, Downloads all in one tray, safe, Doesn't come with a ton of garbage, customizable, optional toolbars for many purposes, Option to resize icons, add-ons, auto updates

Cons

A few sites will only work IE, can be a system resources hog, Freezes with Vista, Bookmarks won't save, need manual addon

JAN

2008

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 —

When I first bought my laptop, it came with the general internet explorer as a browser. I absolutely hate it. It's very basic to me, not very much room to make it my own. A frend of mine referred me to the mozilla site to download Firefox. As soon as I got it, I admit, I was a little confused, as is anyone with a new toy. But it was extremely easy to get used to. I absolutely loved the bookmarks toolbar feature where I could line up extremely important links such as the bank, emails, resume sites, bills to be paid online, etc. They even have the icons set by the site for easy reference at a glance. I also love how I can make the window *bare bones* and remove what I feel like. I've added toolbars of my own, not just the standard *required* ones, and it has a rather small google search right there (I really disliked google, because many years ago when I started with internet searches it was just crappy to me, but through firefox it has become my preferred source). The ability to add toolbars at will, and the availability of so many compatable ones just surpasses explorer and any other I've used in the past. I like the large icons, and the ability to scale them. It's wonderful for my grandmother who is just a simple functioner on the internet and who I don't want straining her eyes at her age. She loves the simplicity, and the functionality after I set up her bookmarks toolbar and larger icons. The downloader window is also very useful to me. Rather than having ten download pages blocking up my computer's toolbar when I have other things I want to see, it puts it all into one box with download information. It gives the option of what to open the download type with which is handy when I don't feel like babysitting, yet i still have to give the *ok* for a download. Skins are also a great thing. Many are available to download, not all are great, but I like the variety and the uniqueness of the user made themes. I can leave it olive to match my windows theme or I can add a brighter/darker one to fit my own theme. The best part to me is loading the last set of tabs I had going. Internet explorer, sbc explorer, etc, all have tabs now, but to be unique, Firefox allows you to go back to your last session if you suddenly have a system down or just turn it off without closing firefox itself. Awesome, the first time I used it, the power was cut to my laptop and before I noticed I needed to plug it back in, it went to emergency shut down. I had very important information up, I was working on a profile for my resume which hadn't been saved yet. I about flipped. But when I loaded windows and selected firefox, it said *restore last session.* I thought nothing of it, but then my page popped back up and I was sold for life :) I even have a set number of tabs which load websites I must check daily, which is so much better than flipping through bookmarks hoping I have them saved etc. I Inoticed on some sites which I use, they require internet explorer to run some aspects, or the entire site. Fine by me, it's not firefox's fault, because the site must know about firefox and it's many users, but still hasn't adapted. Very few experiences and it doesn't inhibit my enjoyment. Very simple to switch over to explorer. And it's also nice that I can decide if firefox is my default explorer or use the one that came with the computer. Vista has proven difficult with Firefox, my main laptop has XP and does fine, but vista (which most of us know is basically in beta stages and full of bugs and won't run many programs without error or not at all) will run really slow or freeze all together with firefox running. It seems to me that with the high use of system resources, firefox needs to be downsized some and encoded more generally like internet explorer to be more interface friendly and website friendly. Firefox seems to take up a lot of my resources also, especially with more tabs. I wish they would streamline it better so that it doesn't take up as much of my system resources just to have three tabs open. Regarding bookmarks, I do hate one thing, the fact that if you have to reload your system, and lose firefox for some reason, your bookmarks are NOT saved. You actually have to rely on Delicious or another program which stores your bookmarks over the internet. Really a hassle to have to sign in, but easy after you've done it a million times. Nice compensation for a fault but I really would like to see some sort of way to save firefox bookmarks with firefox as I do on sbc yahoo's browser which I don't have to save as a file on my computer and can acess anywhere regardless of the type of explorer window used.