So i downloaded FF3 for the hell of it. Anyway, its slower than IE, confusing (in layout and buttons), badly laid out and all in all pointlessly unmodifiable. I went through 5 menus trying to get rid of a toolbar i didnt want but it couldnt, or wouldnt. Why do people even use it?

You must not have really used firefox before- FF3 is not that much different. It sounds more like a problem with you making the switch from IE to FF, rather than FF itself. (Correct me if I'm wrong. )

(And I'm not sure how it took you so long to undo a toolbar. :3 Right click up top, and uncheck the name of the toolbar, and you're done )

Firefox has a community that creates add ons that makes things more convenient, as well as safer.

I can check my weather, download videos, upload videos, and block any add I want with a single program.

Top features. Why it's safer.

If your an ex-IE user, there is a little guide for you in the Help bar.

Contrary to Redmonke's uncited quote, Internet Explorer and Firefox are very close in their security and they both do a good job. It's just personal preference for which one to choose. I alternate back and fourth and I test web designs in both browsers.

I tried the uncheck box - that left me with a big blank box with no toolbars hanging under the address bar. It took 20 seconds to load my homepage (msn) where IE does it in 5 or less, and I was under the impression that it was supposed to be simpler than IE. It had twice as many buttons and toolbars

It didn't happen when I just tried it, so I dunno what happened to you.

(As for MSN, maybe it didn't have any files in its cache, or maybe your internet/their servers was slow.)

I've not had any problems you've had.

I have an incredibly thin toolbar which intrudes on the screen as little as possible. In IE7 there are huge thick lines around the edge, a huge bar at the bottom and a gigantic bar at the top with loads of tabs and everything. Firefox is nice and simple, and it doesn't run slower, web servers run slower. Adblock is also absolutely amazing!

The reason it was slower is because you first started using FF, so it hadn't stored any temporary files, while IE has stored them from all the past ties you've been there.

I guess we have different definitions of the word huge and thick because I don't have issues with those. The status bar is small and I've disabled the Menu bar because I didn't need it. You can also disable tabs if you want or only have the bar show up if there are multiple tabs open.

Edit: I was referring to the latest versions of both web browsers. And of course I didn't forget about "the key point of security." I decided not to include it because I did not find it necessary to post. This thread is more on the visual aspects of the two browsers, not the security issues.

You're forgetting the key point to security. No software is 100% safe, and there are ALWAYS going to be exploits, some worse than others. However, IE not only makes itself more vulnerable by being easily modified by other programs (for one; the home page, bookmarks, etc. are all stored in the registry), but also utilizes the highly insecure ActiveX components.

Next to that, there's the target potential. Firefox, while perhaps not technically more secure than IE, has a much smaller market share and has been around far shorter than IE. There have been hundreds if not thousands exploits found for IE, by blackhats or whitehats in its relatively long lifespan because it was simply the most used browser, not because it had more per se. Wherever there are more targets, there are going to be more hackers. And right now, IE 6 is still the most used internet browser, with the largest array of potential targets, and not to mention the already enormous range of unfixed exploits.

Yea, those activeX things are the worst.

My friend was at a dodgey website, decided to click the download ActiveX button.

Next thing he knows, all his google searches have...bad things.

And he keeps reformatting his computer and reinstalling Norton, while at the same time thinking Norton is doing it's job.

Most of the time, I find that dodgy websites are websites you shouldn't be on anyway, and if you are you should expect to catch a virus.

Don't torrent, don't go on porn, don't do illegal stuff, you'll very rarely come across a virus.

I don't think it's slower. Ever since I got IE7, it's been running slower than IE6.

EH, maybe its me. And you dont need to worry about security if u dont go on weird websites, and have a decent firewall and anti virus (thank you AVG ZoneAlarm ( that is a bit dodgy tho ) and ADAware)

Those are all free, btw.

And don't accept anything - from activeX, to certificates, to downloads - from a place that you see as unreputable. You're just asking for it.

You could also download McAfee site advisor:
http://www.siteadvisor.com/

This will give useful information about the site and whether its dangerous or not

AVG also does that. And MvAfee didnt help my uncle - virus city.

(He goes on obscure german re-enacment sites (Oh and he isnt a nazi))

Hey

I used to have McAfee a very long time ago and I don't think It did much.

But now I use AVG, Zone Alarm and AdAware. AVG and Zone are brilliant. Zone Alarm take a little bit to get used to if you don't have too much firewall experience as it asks all of the programs that need internet access wether to allow them online or not.

If your a long time IE user, FireFox generally takes a little time to get used to. I've used FireFox for quite a while now and I prefer It much more, but If you don't like the FF interface you can download a IE interfaces for it which is what I did because I prefer the IE tabs. The only Problem then is the menu (File, Edit, View etc.) , but even then you can download an add on to take it away.

Try restarting your computer/uninstalling and reinstalling. Surely your computer isn't so inanely weak it can't run ff3? i have no problems. Btw if that doesn't work, uninstall, get ff 2, and then retry ff3.

This is a discussion on why people like FF3, not a help thread. Why would you have him downgrade then upgrade again anyways? (rhetoric)

yo dude im having the same problem as you. in firefox 2 the downloads were all normal and now in ff3 its much slower. i even tested the download speed in ie7 and it was much faster and normal. is this just a bug and how do i fix it.

Edit: Also however loading pages are normal i can load them fast just downloads are abnormally slow

Could it be that you're counting the virus scan as part of the overall download speed? Because there shouldn't be much of a difference.

What virus scan im totally confushed

I didnt do a virus scan

In FF3 once you download something it does a virus scan. This is seen in the Downloads box (Ctrl + J). It will say something along the lines of virus scan.. and show you a status for it (just a bar scrolling back and forth).

Like he said, surely your computer is that bad. Mine is about 7 years old, so bad that updating it won't even run the new RS graphics, and was built for windows ME. But it runs FF3 like a dream.

Norton can't block everything.No virus protection can block 100% of the viruses from other sites.If there is a file off some porn site that says "click here for a free virus download" and I click it and get a virus,it's not Norton's fault.



I was surprised it did that when I 1st downloaded FF3 a few days ago but I'm willing to bet that it's not a really high quality good virus scan.

Anyway,I think FF3 is better than IE7 because it is faster and safer.I also like the...umm....layout.The only problem is FF3 doesnt connect to youtube sometimes for some reason.So I use IE for that.

As for downloading things on FF3,I've never had any problems with that.

As a reply to the comp comments i have a dual core with 4gb or RAM 3.0Ghz 6mb Cache processor - this is what leads me to believe that its the browser itself and not something of mine.

For me, MF3 is a lot safer, quicker and far easier to use than any IE, as it is for most people I have heard from. I've never encountered problems on it, and I often did with IE. I'm surprised you've had those problems, and it is probably just a problem with the server....

IE 7 definitely seems to take longer to start than FF3, I dunno what your problem was. My sister and I have identical laptops (in hardware anyway), and her IE take much longer to load than my FF; though I supposed you could attribute that to the fact that I've changed from Vista to XP and she hasn't.
And downloads seem to be the same speed on both of our computers, more or less. FF loads pages faster though it seems, at least in the few tests that I've done.
As for the complicatedness (or lack thereof, whichever), it's just what you're used to. For example windows media player seems completely alien to me, and it takes me forever to do anything, while iTunes is much simpler. If you've just switched from one to the other, it's going to take some time to get used to the new one.

I find FireFox to be faster than IE and Safari, and about the same speed as Opera (though Opera downloads take longer)

Lots of websites hardly even work on FireFox, and if you think IE is slow....then you probably got Dial-Up or something...For me its like the speed of light!

I refute that statement, most websites don't work for Internet Explorer. If you've ever tried to design a cool layout you'll know what I mean, you have to find workarounds for IE, not the other way. IE is a law unto itself, and not much has been fixed so far in the IE8 Beta, so don't expect anything better.

IE may be the only choice for some websites, but that's not because it's better. If anything it's because it's worse.

IE has much slower performance on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and I find it to be slower in every aspect, and that's nothing to do with dialup, because I have Broadband and a fairly fast computer. Firefox is designed to run 'lightning fast' on very low power systems running Linux, rather than Mickey-Mouserosoft's Windows-only tool that is incompatible with the standards.

Don't say that a lot of websites 'hardly work' on Firefox, how can that even be proved, anyway?

I completely agree with the above poster, if you think websites hardly work on FireFox then you have a lot to learn. IE is every website and graphic designers nightmare, any website or design we ever make work on FireFox and the other browsers, but don't work at all with IE, they are utter messes because IE can not support it. So you, my friend, are very, very wrong.
PLUS, I have very fast internet, and IE is slower than FF, maybe not by much, but for the majority, it is.


Edit: This topic was bumped a few posts ago >.>

I have never downloaded or used McAfee site advisor
I cant even access their homepage

Nice spot.

However I'm going to let this go and keep the topic open; because there is still a discussion going on.

most places i see its on, is on Mac computers, because for Macs, they use Safari (which stinks to me) and firefox is better then it

I like Safari, it's just as fast as Firefox to me .. the only reason I use FF instead is because it is A) More customizable, and B) takes less time to load (the actual program, not webpages).

If Apple could fix A and B they would have a really good browser on their hands

I'm running Firefox 3.0.1 and I've been using Firefox since the 2.0.5 version I think. It's been amazing. Just give it a few days and you will get used to it.