Firefox Tutorials - Why Choose Firefox?

While no browser is 100% secure Mozilla Firefox has much better security than Internet Explorer. Firefox does not support Activex which is a tool that can be used with good and bad intentions. Activex allows web sites to have more access to Windows. As a result of this, cyber criminals have taken advantage of it. This means that viruses and spyware (and sometimes other types of malware as well such as adaware) can take advantage of it, resulting in these programs ending up on the visitors computer (if using Windows at the time). Spyware is any piece of software that silently gathers information about a user while he/she navigates the Internet and transmits the information to an individual or company that uses it for marketing or other purposes.

Spyware and other types of Malware usually do not target Firefox, but there is some out there that will also get Firefox, but it is rather unlikely that a Firefox user would get it. Unless for example they install loads of extensions from all kinds of web sites.

If a Firefox user has the cache turned on a Trojan can end up in it. A cache is an amount of space in which Firefox uses to temporarily store images and other files from sites so you can load the page up quicker if you chose to go back and view the page again. You can turn it off by going to "Tools" then "options" click on the "privacy" tag and then the "cache" tag set the amount of MB's it's allowed to use to "0". However a Trojan just sit their in the catch and will not do anything unless the user actually opens it. If you have a virus scaner (like AVG) it will be able to remove trojans and worms from your computer.

Spyware, viruses, and other things like this are usually only a Windows issue. In fact viruses aren't really an issue with other operating systems such as Linux. Linux is known to be very secure and virus free. However some viruses were made for Linux, but they were never distributed out of the lab. Ubuntu is a popular and rather good Linux distribution for beginners. It is worth checking out and especially if you have had enough of Windows and it's many problems such as it's very bad security. Linux is very stable and does not just crash like Windows does for some users. (Personally my PC never crashes, but I've had some problems before.)

With popular free open source programs such as Firefox, or Linux distributions. Any security issues are fixed very quickly. Unlike for example a software company like Microsoft were it can take years before a security issue has been fixed. That is of course if it ever gets fixed!

Simply put, Firefox uses less resources, loads pages faster, and can be tweaked to make best use of your computer. There are guides and tools that can help you get the most out of it. Also note that the Gecko Rendering Engine engine is always being updated as new versions of Firefox come out.

Because of the Extension/Theme compatibility that is programmed into Firefox you can just about make it able to do or look like whatever you want, provided someone has made an Extension/Theme to match your tastes.
You can get very nice Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird themes from http://www.spuler.us

It is, because of Internet Explorer's huge market share and lack of web standards support that it holds the whole web back from becoming a lot better. Yes lack of web standards support as in lack of being able to support web page coding that standards compliant browsers such as Firefox, and others that also use the Gecko Rendering Engine Rendering Engine to display web pages with can support. There are also some other standards compliant browsers that do not use the Gecko Rendering Engine Rendering Engine to display web pages with.

A standards compliant browser is a browser that takes the The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) seriously when it comes to supporting it's web page coding. Firefox supports nearly all of the web standards coding for web pages and exactly how The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) want them to

The World Wide Web Consortium create the web standards as in the official web page coding. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee the inventor of the web. They have a validate where people can find out if a web page validates, as in follows the web standards or not. If it does not validate it will come up with errors. For short they are known as W3C and they also try and make the web more accessible to people with disabilities. For more information about them you can visit their web site at: http://www.w3.org

Internet Explorer holds the whole web back from becoming a lot better, because of it's huge market share and lack of http://www.w3.org web standards support as in the web page coding it supports and how. This means that the majority of web sites are made for it. As a result of this they are not as good as they could be, because they are not using web standards coding that can do really good stuff to these web pages.

Certain web sites are only made for Internet Explorer this is bad, because web sites should be made to work on more than one browser.

If Internet Explorer had about 50% market share and standards compliant browsers such as Firefox had about 50% market share. We would probably have a much better web. The majority of web sites would probably validate or nearly validate at W3C. Some web sites might even make more than one version. One version for Internet Explorer and another for standards compliant browsers. In fact maybe, just maybe, Internet Explorer would be a standards compliant browser or nearly if it had about 50% market share and the other browsers such as Firefox had about 50% market share.

Yes it will with Internet Explorer 7 for XP and the next Windows, but not enough of it to make the web much better if the majority of web users used it. People who use a previous version of Windows such as Windows 2000 will not be able to use Internet Explorer 7 on that version of Windows, but they can use Firefox.

It is important that the browser makers do as the Web Standards want, because if they didn't we would need to use many different browsers so we could view many web sites The Web Standards is a clear way of writing HTML code that if you stick to every browser will be able to read, it works in theory anyway.
I haven't seen a browser yet that can read every single piece of Web Standards code, but Firefox is rather close.

Please view this web page in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The web page validates at W3C and uses some of the later web standards coding that Internet Explorer cannot support, but browsers such as Firefox can support. That is why it looks so very, very stupid in Internet Explorer and rather good in standards compliant browsers such as Firefox. The web page has been created using only web page coding, and no graphics have been used at all!

Acid2 is a test to show how compatible a web browser is with some Web Standards Features that are not normally handled well within browsers.

Acid2 Test Page
If you want to test your browser this link will take you to the acid 2 test page.

Acid2 Browser Comparison
If you want to be able to compare what appears in the test on multiple browsers this person has kindly taken screen shots.

StopIE.com
This site is dedicated to showing you why Internet Explorer is a bad browser.