I've decided I don't like firefox.

[Asher]

It's up to user preference. Opera may be nice for the occasional internet user, as is Internet Explorer, but I honestly don't see how any heavy user of the internet can surf the web without the plethora of extensions in Firefox.

Maybe people just don't know what they haven't experienced.

 

[azzaman333]

I don't have a need for the plethora of extensions in Firefox, since all they did was cause my computer to use too much memory.

 

[Zelig]

It's up to user preference. Opera may be nice for the occasional internet user, as is Internet Explorer, but I honestly don't see how any heavy user of the internet can surf the web without the plethora of extensions in Firefox.

Maybe people just don't know what they haven't experienced.

Enlighten us, in that case, as to which extensions are essential for the heavy internet user.

I keep Opera, Firefox and IE around, mostly for the web design I do as a hobby, Opera is my primary browser.

Although I can't say I've know much about Firefox from a usability standpoint (as opposed to a code-functionality standpoint), I generally don't have any extensions installed, and find it quite cumbersom to browse as efficiently as I usually do with Opera.

 

[Kranden]

I use adblockplus to block ads
and adblock filterset.g updater

customize google to kill google ads.

download statusbar.

fasterfox for enhanced prefetching

flashblock both for speeding web page loads without auto flash playing

flashgot

IE tab for the super rare pages that wont open in firefox or if i want to see if a page normaly has advertisements.

Noscript to block auto scripts from running on your computer (Don't use this unless your willing to allow or deny certain pages access as not all things work. if you want to allow global scripts which is very dangerous and don't want to customize then don't download this.)

 

[Strider]

Enlighten us, in that case, as to which extensions are essential for the heavy internet user.

Foxmarks - if you use more than one computer often.. automatically keeps bookmarks synced

NoScript - disables javascript

AdBlock - allows you to block advertisements. Dislike that ad banner at the top of CFC? You can make it disappear.

Firebug - Immensely useful for web designing.

Stumbleupon - A good "if your bored" extension.

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The five above are just the one's I can't do without. There also the main reason why I don't use Opera more often.

 

[azzaman333]

Foxmarks - if you use more than one computer often.. automatically keeps bookmarks synced

NoScript - disables javascript

AdBlock - allows you to block advertisements. Dislike that ad banner at the top of CFC? You can make it disappear.

Firebug - Immensely useful for web designing.

Stumbleupon - A good "if your bored" extension.

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The five above are just the one's I can't do without. There also the main reason why I don't use Opera more often.

Opera basically has its own version of AdBlock built into the browser. Dunno about the others (although I know NoScript can be a pain when I'm using Firefox)

 

[Asher]

Opera's adblock is worthless. Requires WAY too much user intervention.

Blocking ads is far easier with the Adblock scripts, and they also support subscribing to massive blacklists of known advertising...it blocks ads before you even know they exist on sites you've never been to before.

Other things not mentioned here that I love:
The Official Google extension that allows my web history to be saved to my Google Account. This is a godsend to me, I use Firefox across ~3 computers on a regular basis and I hate trying to remember which one I was on when I visited a site I want to visit later. Now it's all indexed through Google Web History online.

BugMeNot. On most sites with a login field (eg, NY Times), right click on the field and select "Bugmenot". It automatically logs you in with one of many accounts for that site, so you don't need to create one.

Greasemonkey. I've got all kinds of customization scripts for sites. For instance, I can right click and "Save as" any image on Flickr, even if they're supposed to have that disabled. When I visit Apolyton, posts by various users do not show up on my screen at all (not even the "Click here to view this post" for ignored people). Can download videos painlessly from YouTube also. Duggmirror script automatically redirects me to a mirror of popular digg.com linked sites, which frequently go unresponsive after they get lots of "digg.com" hits.

 

[Souron]

Are you using tabs or opening multiple Browsers. Also Minimizing Firefox helps when your not using it.

btw frob are you using the newest version of firefox?

I do use a lot of browser windows, but that by itself isn't the problem. The leak emerges from prolonged use, not when I open a new window.

Possibly having multiple windows open magnifies the problem though.

 

[Asher]

If you have a true memory leak, use this extension to find out where it's coming from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2490

 

[mdwh]

It's up to user preference. Opera may be nice for the occasional internet user, as is Internet Explorer, but I honestly don't see how any heavy user of the internet can surf the web without the plethora of extensions in Firefox.

Maybe people just don't know what they haven't experienced.

Because Opera does what I want as standard, and I don't have time to search out every extension I might need to replicate the experience in Firefox.

I'm sure Firefox does fine, but I switched from IE to Opera before Firefox even existed, and see no benefit in changing.

 

[Asher]

The thing is you shouldn't look at it as needing to find extensions to replicate the Opera experience, it's looking at extensions to take it to the next level.

Most people don't know what they're missing out on. Check out some of the extensions:

Recommended addons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/recommended
Popular addons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:all/sort:popular

 

[Kranden]

Opera is not bad and its better than Internet explorer. But Firefox is still way better with all the extensions you can use to customize it.

 

[mdwh]

Of course Firefox is good, and it's great to have choice. I'm just confused by the claim that a heavy Internet user is unable to browse the web without all the extensions that Firefox has.

If they're that essential, why aren't they shipped as standard in Firefox?

 

[Kranden]

Because basic users should not be confused by advanced features. It's not like they are hard to install and gives users freedom of choice when using the browser what they want instead of what they are forced to have.

 

[Maniacal]

Opera has rarely crashed on me, and most of those were on a lousy computer when the RAM and CPU got overloaded.

 

[azzaman333]

Because basic users should not be confused by advanced features. It's not like they are hard to install and gives users freedom of choice when using the browser what they want instead of what they are forced to have.

Well, I choose to use what is standard for Opera.

 

[Strider]

The thing I dislike about Opera is that many of it's "features" I'll never use. It's basically just wasted hard drive space. FireFox lets you pick and chose what you want in your browser.

 

[Toxitalk]

I find it crashes about once a week on me (I haven't a clue why). I despise IE like everyone else, so I've switched to netscape. It never fails me, and it emulates both Firefox and IE page displays, so no screwed up Firefox page diplays.

Feel free to comment on Firefox's awesomness, netscapes' stupidity, and why I'm an internet-idiot.

Ironically, the faults probably with the websites and not the browsers, although that doesn't help you.

I use Firefox a good 70% of the time. I find it is fast and reletive accurate at rendering pages. Sometimes Firefox does throw its rattle out of its pram, and I will then switch to either IE7 Opera or Safari.

I like some of the new thing they have put into IE7 like a built in FTP client and the ability to magnify a page (not just the text), I like the way in opera that you can view in accessibity modes and Safari's ok, but I have not used the Windows version enough yet.

But I spose the reason I stick with Firefox is that its open source, which I think is the most important reason of all, freedom and choice.

Also try seamonkey, its quite cool, its netscape navigator based on the Firefox engine.

 

[mdwh]

The thing I dislike about Opera is that many of it's "features" I'll never use. It's basically just wasted hard drive space. FireFox lets you pick and chose what you want in your browser.

Opera download size: 4.0MB

Firefox download size: 5.5MB

 

[mdwh]

Because basic users should not be confused by advanced features. It's not like they are hard to install and gives users freedom of choice when using the browser what they want instead of what they are forced to have.

What sort of features would be confusing, out of interest?