Mozilla Firefox! Internet Explorer goes bye-bye.
Leonardo
Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
Finally did it - installed Mozilla Firefox today. Not that I had a great desire to do so, but it seemed to be a good preventive measure, seeing how nearly every technical site these days suggests dumping hole-ridden Internet Explorer.
Well anyway, so far so good. Just one minor problem so far: when typing in messages in Short-Media, the characters only half render as I type them; as soon as I complete a character, it is completely clear. Weird. No biggy.
Is there any way to combine toolbars like in IE 6? I enjoy a minimal browser and like to have just one bar at the top of the page.
I was surprised at how easy it was to install and configure Firefox. I just about jumped for joy when during the installation process a window popped up and asked if I wanted to import Favorites from IE. What a cool installation feature. We'll see how it goes, but so far, I'm pleased with Firefox. After a couple days of testing it some more, I'll install it as the default browser on my wife's computer as well.
Well anyway, so far so good. Just one minor problem so far: when typing in messages in Short-Media, the characters only half render as I type them; as soon as I complete a character, it is completely clear. Weird. No biggy.
Is there any way to combine toolbars like in IE 6? I enjoy a minimal browser and like to have just one bar at the top of the page.
I was surprised at how easy it was to install and configure Firefox. I just about jumped for joy when during the installation process a window popped up and asked if I wanted to import Favorites from IE. What a cool installation feature. We'll see how it goes, but so far, I'm pleased with Firefox. After a couple days of testing it some more, I'll install it as the default browser on my wife's computer as well.
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Not really a way to dock toolbars on spare space of other toolbars (that actually uses ActiveX in part to even do), but learn some of the keystroke shortcuts, which FireFox has many of, and look for context menus with right clicks on all sorts of things. I customized my toolbars even in Mozzie, only one basic one showing. Also look at themes for Friefox, there should be about 20 that work with it decently-- including an American Flag theme if you want...
Start by looking in Edit|Preferences (Preferences is like Internet Options in IE) to get under the hood with FireFox. The tools menu should offer finer tools, and help in FireFox might now have a For Internet Explorer Users option (I'm using Mozzie right now adn do not want to switch and loose most of this message) that talks about what to do to accomplish IE tasks, with at least one XREF table based on what former IE users are used to, then to right how FireFox does it. IF you get confused, go to Mozilla.org and look at the FireFox FAQ linkages....
For the fonts, get into preferences, then appearance, then fonts, and change fonts to a Truetype like Arial for default, I use 11-12 pixel sizing minimum (yes, it uses pixels and not normally points, but points are 1\72nd of an inch, so if things look rough and also small because you have an 81 PPI monitor like I do(or denser), try 11-12 pixels to start for minimum font for all font size dropdowns, hook sans serif to Arial or a Helvetica, then hook default to sans serif, the site works great in sans serif from Mozzie and Firefox, so in fact that is how I force sites these days in both those). This site in Mozzie on Linux loses last character in entry box until it wraps, when server there is busy, not if not busy at site. BUT, I think the entry box scales to favro sans-serif, have had Mozzie do weird things with default font set to serif (like Times New Roman, that is a Serif font).
IF I seem "too familiar" with "Mozzie" and FireFox, that is cuz I have been using Mozzie for ages (started really favoring the netscape\mozzie tree of browser and mail things in 1990 or before, before when Mozzie officially started quietly, and used Netscape from the Netscape publishing company before that), and Firefox acts mostly like a semi-IE themed Mozzie. BTW, for Firefox plugins, use Netscape API style plugins-- it likes those, hates IE style plugins. The most funny thing, is I can copy plugins for Netscape right into Opera's plugins directory from Mozzie or FireFox, and they work cool also.
Almost anything at all you want to know about the Mozzie or FireFox browsers, I will be happy to discuss, in threads or PM, Leo.
The one thing I REALLY like about Mozzie over Firefox, is you can get pre-canned Mozzie installs with Sun Java J2RE included in them, or hook to existing J2REs with plugins easily. I do not know if your FireFox had a Java install option, but that is what it uses to cope with ActiveX sites. One advantage of the Microsoft and Sun settlement is a Java that actively is made to work with Microsoft stuff without using ActiveX.
HTH.
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/
There are some great extensions available for it too
I've been the longest IE user but even I (like you) are swayed by the zilla
Thanks for the link shorty!
Toolbar Layer on layer(of toolbars as object groups in a lower level container per toolbar-- data object content side is ActiveX\ADO and the graphics view shown is result of graphics routine calls), which is what docking does, is largely done with an ADO\ActiveX layering subfunction set utilization, along with calls from ActiveX\ADO to other graphics subfunctions for Windows (base code layers, in C and C++ and soem now in C#). Has been for ages-- 95 OSR 2.5 could layer toolbars on toolbars (how do you think the taskbar can have run area to left, then a major area to minimize adn maximize individual apps with a click or close with a right click, choice, and click??? Same software tech....
I did such code in Visual Basic 5.0 and 6.0. It is a toolbar layered ON TOP of base toolbar, with a move handle on left side. Move the toolbar right, more of the underlying toolbar is exposed off to left. What you see, since the toolbars are solid fill, is what is visible of each toolbar (that is why you get a dock to right over empty space on current toolbar only ability only for a new docking capacity).
They did not want to dev and distribute license Visual studio .net per dev. AND, they did not want the code overhead of building underlayers to support docking, for both *nix and Windows. It uses a Sun Java 2 base and its own JVM running as a session within the VM of Windows on Windows O\S platforms and as a Java session Within a Java VM in *nix, and in theory Java can do this, but the JRE for Java 2 does not yet have this full set ot things needed to do it built into it in a code-size-effective and code-time-effective way.
Mozilla ALSO did not do this simply because they did not want to license what they would have to license to do it in Windows only-- they wanted a cross-platform lookalike and actalike browser, it runs on BSD, Mac OS X Jaguar and up, Unix (if Unix has a GUI added), possibly will run on Solaris in future, and runs fine on Linux. In fact, it runs the same on my Linux box and my XP box-- except that Mozilla on XP was custom installed without (sans) email and Composer modules this time around. It runs on about 5-6 desktop bases in Linux and several on BSD, and 2-3 desktop bases on Mac OS X. I run Mozilla 1.7 plus security packs on both XP and Linux here, have run cross-platform with about a 90-98% cross-platform unity of action access (trend has been to more and more workalike cross-platform (software base, O\S base, hardware largely non-relevant)) with earlier Netscapes and Mozillas and FireFoxes for over a decade on Windows and over two years on Linux.
Not only do I have a decent browser\email set, but it acts the same in Linux and Windows. with JRE 1.42_03 I have 7 netscape API style plugins present, from Java 1 up to and through a Java 32 bit generic and a 16 bit Java generic VM for older windows also available. Java is about 90% backward compliant across platforms.
Linux CAN use qtk to have dock behaviors in apps, but it is semi-clumsy docking thus far. Out in California, there is a company called The Kompany that specializes in qtk dev and also app dev using it, some of thier apps have toolbar dock, or menu pane to dock functions (both present in dev environment options). so, given that Mozilla wanted a common ground workalike, that is WHY they did not use Windows-specific calls to let the Windows version of Mozilla stuff run with dockables. qtk in Windows is not fully mature either. Java 2 can layer also, though, now. That is why JBoss pled and pled for an open-sourceable JRE set-- and why Solaris parts had to be released also, some of them use Java stuff and will use more as Sun works to make Solaris very compatible with Linux+Java clients.
Strictly, Thrax is right, ADO\ACTIVEX has almost no pure low layer graphics routines in and of itself, but hooks were put in the graphics container management and object in container position management DLLs that ActiveX\ADO can link to, deliberately. And it has and does so link.
Edit, never mind guys, found the plug in.