TW Blog :: Archives for August 2003

Firebird, A Browser For The Future

Relates to Browsers and Firefox and Co

Had a read of Blake Ross's Marketing Firebird Article and Simon Willison's Follow Up (+ comments) last night, and decided to delve a bit deeper into Firebird and it's capabilities. I have had 0.6 installed for several months now, but my default browser has been Mozilla, since this carries the DOM Inspector, Calender and other useful development tools.

Well following a couple of hours play, a few extension installs, and a change of theme to Breeze, I can now say I am a very content user of Mozilla Firebird. I had two recoverable crashes during extension installs, but otherwise have seen no ill effects following intensive use over the last 24 hours. I have transferred my Calender file across to the Firebird profile, and the only thing lacking really is the DOM Inspector. But there is a noticeable improvement in performance and speed now. What draws me to this browser is the minimal initial install and the freedom to install the extension I actually want to use without add-ons that just eat up my resources as they gather dust. I have found the following particularly delectable:

Mozilla Amazon Extension

An efficient and quick lookup window for Amazon products.

Quick Note Extension

Already commented on this addition to Opera 7.01, and the ability to take and store notes as just as flexible here.

RSS Reader Extension

Great! While I tend to use my aggregator to catch the latest in my favourite blogs, this is readily manageable and already have a long bookmarked list of feeds.

Web Developer Toolbar Extension

Very handy having quick access to all the validation sites from a toolbar as opposed to the context menu.

So the big question is why does the browser get so much criticism on Downloads.com? (Sorry, I am not going to give the link, you will just have to track it down if you must!) Well personally I tend to agree with Mickey C's remarks that many of the reviews do seem too calculated. I cannot see how so many people can become so bitter about a browser in such a small space of time, with no opinions from the opposite side of the coin.

Admittedly, there are quirks. I tracked resources with Cacheman and the browser does appear to get a bit greedy, it does boot slow, and there is the autocomplete bug - a known issue partially resolved in 6.0.1, but it seems to me the features far outweigh any satisfaction I have ever received from Micro$oft Internet Exploder. It is still early days for Firebird, but this is a very tidy and well thought on piece of software. I see Firebird becoming an integral part of my day to day surfing, while I will continue to use my browser suite for development. Even as I compose, Thunderbird is downloading.

A big thumbs up!

And if you want to know what makes Firebird, read up on Why you should switch to Firebird.

Posted on Monday, Aug 04, 2003 at 23:11:48.