Wednesday, November 10, 2004
16:23 by FoxTwo Hey people...
Check this out! FireFox 1.0 is now released upon the world!!
Finally the browser has gotten past the alpha, beta and release candidate phase. Happy Happy Joy Joy! Ok what's so great about it? Well for one thing - you have LESS chances of being infected via a web virus. Yeah nowadays they are really mean - you can get one installed on your PC without even knowing it, just be browsing a website! Why less chances? Because, Firefox uses a completely different engine from the rest of the world, and thus viruses written specifically to target the "majority" of users will skip YOU because you are in the MINORITY.
Frankly speaking, I have been on the Internet for a long time. Ok, not that long compared to people I know who've been in the University using the Internet in the earlier days, but I have been on the Internet since about 1994 or so. At the time GUI was almost non-existent - we connected to the Internet via SLIP or shell accounts. Singtel (back then "Singapore Telecomms") would give us a diskette with KERMIT software on it and we connected to the 'net via Lynx, a text-only web browser. HTTP was new, most of the Internet was filled with protocols like FINGER, GOHPER, WAIS etc systems. Searching for anything was a big challenge cos you need to know which WAIS system or which GOPHER server you'd want to get the most "hits". Searching for files involved using Archie servers to look into FTP sites. To download something off the Internet you need to have FTP software. To talk to your friend online you'd using FINGER to see if he's online and then use TALK to initiate a conversation with him/her.
Now, users hardly know that these protocols ever existed. FINGER has been disabled (no thanks to spammers!) due to security reasons. Nobody uses TALK anymore. The only thing that has remained rather constant is IRC - yes folks, IRC today looks basically the same as it was 10 years ago.. or even 14 years ago... it's text-based still, only wrapped around in a nice GUI today. Most things have changed into GUI versions. Email isn't read like it was (well I still read mine as text-only and I refuse all HTML-formatted email), Newsgroups have become less and less popular, nowadays "communities" spring up all over the place with web-based forums replacing the old newsgroups.
Ok, I digress... point being, since day 1 when I finally moved over to Windows 95 (yes, I had refused to install Windows prior to Win95) I had used Netscape. Netscape was king back then. EVERYONE, and I really mean EVERYONE was using Netscape. Microsoft had a sorry excuse of a browser called "Internet Explorer" back then. It was pathetically inferior to Netscape in every way. Then, as we know, Microsoft dumped money into it and twisted every vendor's arm to make IE a must-have icon on the desktop.
Yes folks, that is how Internet Explorer became "popular". It's not that it was better than Netscape or was easier to use. It became popular because it was made to be a must-have icon on the desktop and humans being the lazy creatures that they are, will just use that and not bother to go out and get a web browser. "Why bother? I have one already on my desktop".
So yeah, that was how Internet Explorer took over the world. Me, I stuck with Netscape through the years. Yes the Internet Explorer icon had been on my desktop all this time, but I've never ever voluntarily launched it to surf the web. I left it alone as the "default browser" on my system so as not to "break" any other software dependant upon it. However for my surfing needs, I have always used a non-Microsoft browser. I went with Netscape up to 6.x. When I heard about Mozilla I took a look at it, and it looked very much like Netscape. Not surprising since it's basically Netscape but open-sourced. Then along the way, FireFox was announced as a project and I kept up to date, switching to FireFox around version 0.7 when it became "stable enough" for the public to beta-test it.
How did I handle those websites that refused to display properly in Netscape? Simple - I don't ever go back to that website. If they only code for ONE browser (IE) then it's their loss on coding for only half of the entire Internet population. Yes folks, only HALF of the entire Internet population is on Internet Explorer... because, there are people using Macs, Linux, and a variety of other OSes, all on the Internet. It's just that the guys using Windows and Internet Explorer form the biggest chunk of the population.
Well anyway, enough rambling.... go get FireFox and you probably won't regret it. Me? I will never regret anything cos I never switched over to Internet Explorer in the first place! *evil laughter*
16:23 by FoxTwo Hey people...
Check this out! FireFox 1.0 is now released upon the world!!
Finally the browser has gotten past the alpha, beta and release candidate phase. Happy Happy Joy Joy! Ok what's so great about it? Well for one thing - you have LESS chances of being infected via a web virus. Yeah nowadays they are really mean - you can get one installed on your PC without even knowing it, just be browsing a website! Why less chances? Because, Firefox uses a completely different engine from the rest of the world, and thus viruses written specifically to target the "majority" of users will skip YOU because you are in the MINORITY.
Frankly speaking, I have been on the Internet for a long time. Ok, not that long compared to people I know who've been in the University using the Internet in the earlier days, but I have been on the Internet since about 1994 or so. At the time GUI was almost non-existent - we connected to the Internet via SLIP or shell accounts. Singtel (back then "Singapore Telecomms") would give us a diskette with KERMIT software on it and we connected to the 'net via Lynx, a text-only web browser. HTTP was new, most of the Internet was filled with protocols like FINGER, GOHPER, WAIS etc systems. Searching for anything was a big challenge cos you need to know which WAIS system or which GOPHER server you'd want to get the most "hits". Searching for files involved using Archie servers to look into FTP sites. To download something off the Internet you need to have FTP software. To talk to your friend online you'd using FINGER to see if he's online and then use TALK to initiate a conversation with him/her.
Now, users hardly know that these protocols ever existed. FINGER has been disabled (no thanks to spammers!) due to security reasons. Nobody uses TALK anymore. The only thing that has remained rather constant is IRC - yes folks, IRC today looks basically the same as it was 10 years ago.. or even 14 years ago... it's text-based still, only wrapped around in a nice GUI today. Most things have changed into GUI versions. Email isn't read like it was (well I still read mine as text-only and I refuse all HTML-formatted email), Newsgroups have become less and less popular, nowadays "communities" spring up all over the place with web-based forums replacing the old newsgroups.
Ok, I digress... point being, since day 1 when I finally moved over to Windows 95 (yes, I had refused to install Windows prior to Win95) I had used Netscape. Netscape was king back then. EVERYONE, and I really mean EVERYONE was using Netscape. Microsoft had a sorry excuse of a browser called "Internet Explorer" back then. It was pathetically inferior to Netscape in every way. Then, as we know, Microsoft dumped money into it and twisted every vendor's arm to make IE a must-have icon on the desktop.
Yes folks, that is how Internet Explorer became "popular". It's not that it was better than Netscape or was easier to use. It became popular because it was made to be a must-have icon on the desktop and humans being the lazy creatures that they are, will just use that and not bother to go out and get a web browser. "Why bother? I have one already on my desktop".
So yeah, that was how Internet Explorer took over the world. Me, I stuck with Netscape through the years. Yes the Internet Explorer icon had been on my desktop all this time, but I've never ever voluntarily launched it to surf the web. I left it alone as the "default browser" on my system so as not to "break" any other software dependant upon it. However for my surfing needs, I have always used a non-Microsoft browser. I went with Netscape up to 6.x. When I heard about Mozilla I took a look at it, and it looked very much like Netscape. Not surprising since it's basically Netscape but open-sourced. Then along the way, FireFox was announced as a project and I kept up to date, switching to FireFox around version 0.7 when it became "stable enough" for the public to beta-test it.
How did I handle those websites that refused to display properly in Netscape? Simple - I don't ever go back to that website. If they only code for ONE browser (IE) then it's their loss on coding for only half of the entire Internet population. Yes folks, only HALF of the entire Internet population is on Internet Explorer... because, there are people using Macs, Linux, and a variety of other OSes, all on the Internet. It's just that the guys using Windows and Internet Explorer form the biggest chunk of the population.
Well anyway, enough rambling.... go get FireFox and you probably won't regret it. Me? I will never regret anything cos I never switched over to Internet Explorer in the first place! *evil laughter*
