Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Browser wars are back



If you thought the "Browser wars" of the last few years were over, think again. After Internet Explorer won out so convincingly a few years ago, most people thought that they could just go to sleep and use ie forever.

Well, for just over a year Mozilla's Firefox browser has been making big ripples. I personally have been using Firefox for about 8 months now. I have even installed it on the G5 as my browser of choice.

Whilst I'd love to sit here and Evangalise, the point of me making this point is simply that most of the schools in Stoke-on-Trent are still all using Internet Explorer.

I understand that the reason for this is "network related". Internet explorer, which is bundled with windows is easy for technicians to deploy. They have years of experience with all its teatures and plugins. Many educational packages link directly to Internet explorer. and furthermore the vast majority of teachers and pupils have experience with it.

However, despite these obvoious reasons for Interent explorers continued usage. I am still in favour of Firefox trials. Wouldn't it be great if Head Technicians and heads of department, downloaded Firefox at home and gave it a months trial?

In the late 1990's I worked at Staffordshire University IT Services dept. Staffs uni still used Netscape 4 back then, and trying to get them to adopt Internet Explorer was really difficult. "User familiarity" was cited as the main reason for keeping Netscape. I argued with my boss that surely user experience, reliability and standards compliance outweigh user familiarity.

Today I'm having the same argument with people in the Education authority.

So Now I'm going to be bold. Why not checkout Firefox? Why not..Are you afraid to try something new? I'll provide the link to the software and then I'd like you to leave me feedback on the features of the browser. Who knows, maybe, just maybe we will see Firefox replace Internet explorer sometime soon.

Here is the link to the software and also some relevant links.

Download Firefox


New browser wins over net surfers

BBSPOT -Comparisons

BBC News::Firefox browser takes on Microsoft

BBC News::Microsoft warns of latest flaws BBC News::Browser users urged to patch up

posted by City Learning Centre at 3:57 PM

2 Comments:

  • Well, I will be the first to add a comment. I would be happy to go for a trial with this. However to win teachers and advisors over to using something new we face the same battles as with everything else. For people to change we must make sure that what they change to has some simple and immediate benefit. The question is what immediate benefit does firefox offer over IE? this is the main challenge.

    By Blogger The director, at Thursday, December 15, 2005  

  • Firefox has many immediate benefits:

    - For one, there is the extensions tool, I haven't met one person who hasn't liked that.

    -Firefox is more standards compliant. If Firefox beats IE, programmers will be able to make much more complex web pages. IE works by its own standards, Firefox attempts to comply to the W3C web standards, which makes the Internet a better place (ask any Web designer about the frustration IE has caused him/her).

    -Firefox allows tabbed browsing, which reduces desktop clutter

    -Firefox looks a lot nicer

    -Firefox is faster moving (Features usually take 6 months, not 6 years, to be implemented) - this is because it is open source.

    -Firefox has a huge user-driven support base, which is always extremely helpful.

    However, for schools I would recommend Opera. Why? Because it doesn't require extensions to have amazing features, and is also the fastest browser on Earth.

    By Blogger Peter Roberts, at Saturday, January 14, 2006  

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