This week I’m explaining why I use certain internet software and programs, and wondering why some people don’t.
I’ve had a few situations where I’ve convinced a friend to use something and after they did they said, “Dang, why didn’t I know about this before? This is AWESOME! I was a stubborn, pig-headed mule but now I’ve seen the light! THANKS, RHODESTER!”
There were variations of this reaction, of course, but mostly they were positive. Only one actually admitted to being a stubborn pig-headed mule.
Here’s the week’s schedule..
Monday – Twitter/Tweetdeck (deleted post because I no longer use these, except Twitter, but I have no idea why.)
Tuesday – Firefox
Wednesday – Gmail
Thursday – Google Reader/Google Docs
Friday – Skype
Okay, so let’s continue with..
FIREFOX
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived RhodesTer and coffeesister.
They bought a laptop computer – their first one – and it had a whopping 150 MB hard drive with 16 MB of RAM. It ran Windows 3.1 on a monochromatic screen, and they were thrilled when, after much trial and error, they finally got it hooked up to a phone line and they were greeted with a noise..
“ZZZZZzzzzztttt.. sh-dong, SH-DONG!”
They were ONLINE!
Looking back, that old browser – whatever it was – was like a Charlie Chaplin film. Ancient by today’s standards, but thrilling at the time. Information was coming down the phone line onto the screen! They were talking to people via electronic messages and “billboards!”
The people talked back to them – total strangers – and whoa, they could see graphic black and white symbols of things!
It was all so thrilling!
Metaphorically speaking, they ducked when the train came rushing at them.
We wouldn’t do that now. The train thing, I mean. HAHA! It’s just a train on a screen! It’s fake! We’re veteran movie watchers and you can’t scare us so easily now!
This is because we’ve all gotten wise, and we’re not so impressed with glimmer and glitter and fancy baubles now – we want functionality, darn it! And that’s what’s so nice about FIREFOX. It has loads of functionality. Sometimes too much.
Not long after that first laptop, we were hanging out in a pub called The Black Sheep in Ashland Oregon. There was this geeky guy named Rob who’d sit at a table with a snifter of brandy and his Apple laptop computer. Rob was a “technical writer” for Apple, whatever that was, and one day Rob had some friends come up from “the silicon valley” who sat at the table with him. He invited us to join in, so we drank beer and listened with clueless expressions to all this technical talk about browsers and internet and innovation.
Rob’s two friends, Jim and Marc, spoke of creating a new web browser. They’d been working tirelessly on it and had driven up to Ashland for a break. I didn’t realize until later that they were Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, and they’d been working on Mozaic Netscape, later to be known as Netscape Navigator.
This has little to do with Firefox – I just wanted to do some Internet pioneer name-dropping – but one thing that does stand out from the conversation is the memory of the two guys working on something “to give an alternative to Microsoft.”
I thought, “Why would anyone want to do that?” But after opening the cardboard box with the ship’s wheel graphic on it and loading Netscape Navigator from the floppy drives onto my desktop computer (64 MB of RAM now! Whoo!!) I could see why.. it was just better.
The years have flown by with a soft whooshing sound, and Netscape has developed into something called SeaMonkey, which I don’t use because of the traumatic childhood SeaMonkey incident of 1971, involving a cat and a mop. Poor choice of branding there.
I use Firefox.. and, to be totally honest.. I don’t really know why. I understand that Firefox is a part of Mozilla, which is what those two guys at the pub were a part of, and it’s distantly related to the Netscape/SeaMonkey thing, but whatever..
It’s just better.
Like many of you, I’ve been forced to use Internet Explorer at work because it’s the default browser on most corporate computers and they get all huffy if you try to download and install good web browsers and software on their systems. For one thing, they can’t spy on you if you do.
I’ve even used Explorer briefly when setting up a new home computer, because I have to bring up a browser on the system to go download another one, namely Firefox as of the past few years.
This could change if someone does something better. I tried Google’s Chrome for a while, but it wasn’t as good. I noticed that when playing YouTube videos it’d snag and flicker a bit, which may be because I have a PC that’s a few years old, but hey.. Firefox runs videos nicely on my system, so there.
Phhht! to Google Chrome.
Much like I was back at the pub table in Ashland, I’m still technically inept. I don’t know a whole lot about the inner workings of most of this stuff, but I know what works well and what doesn’t, so the bottom line is that Internet Explorer bugs me while Firefox makes me happy.
Google Chrome isn’t what it could be, so I’ll give it some time. SeaMonkey, well.. I cry when I flashback to that cat licking its paw after consuming my new friends.
Have I tried others? Just Google Chrome, because I like Google except for the fact that they seem to own almost everything now. Otherwise, no.. why would I, when I like Firefox?
The only problem I’ve found so far is that if I install too many of those add-on things, it doesn’t run as well. That’s understandable. I once wore three hats, two jackets, five pairs of underwear plus galoshes over my boots that were over my shoes that were over three pairs of socks. I collapsed two blocks away and had to crawl home.
If you haven’t been running Firefox, get it but don’t add-on too many of those add-on things, unless you have a brand new system with a jillion megs of RAM and a quantum-leap processor that makes calculations before you turn the system on.
Oh, and you MAC people.. my next system is a MAC once I can afford it. Coffeesister uses a MAC notebook and still uses Firefox, having downloaded the MAC version, so there. She swears by it over Apple’s default browser, Safari.
Rob the Apple geek would be SO proud of her today!
{ 7 comments }
