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No conflicts with IE. On one Win98 PC, I have Mozilla 1.6, FireFox 0.8, IE,
MyIE2 (enhancement shell for IE) and an old version of Netscape 4.xx
installed (never use the latter anymore, just haven't uninstalled it).
A few caveats / observations to add to the IE naysayers' comments
regarding the "larger feature set" of Mozilla browsers:
1. Be prepared to scour through the extensions pages in order to get some
basic functionality, especially in FireFox. FireFox doesn't even sort
bookmarks "normally" without downloading a sorting extension that allows it
to sort "folders first".
2. The Mozilla browsers load slowly by comparison to IE because IE
components are loaded at boot. In order to get Mozilla to load quickly, run
the "QuickLaunch" utility at startup. You can also get rid of the Mozilla
splashscreen by running the "-nosplash" switch Desktop icon:
"C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\mozilla.exe" -nosplash
I believe there is another parameter (-quiet?) that does the same thing. In
my experience the browser doesn't load any faster, I just don't like splash
screens.
3. Back to extensions...seems that a lot of them are written by script
kiddies, and so they may or may not work as advertised. Often they don't.
And often they only work with a specific build of Mozilla or FireFox (each
has its own specific extensions).
4. More on extensions...extensions often have to be re-downloaded each time
you update Mozilla and / or FireFox (assuming a new extension has been
written and made available), and each browser (especially Mozilla) is
updated fairly frequently. Extension writers don't always include the
option to install the extensions in the Profile folder, and therefore, when
you upgrade Mozilla or FireFox, many of the extensions are lost (as
Mozilla.org often suggests uninstalling a previous build before updating to
the latest). So once you have gone to all the trouble of installing
extensions and getting the browser(s) to behave as you like, you may have
to start from scratch. Also, uninstalling an extension that you decide you
don't like may wipe out other extension in the folder as the instructions
on the Mozilla extensions pages for uninstalling extensions require
deleting files that contain information about other extensions in the
installation folder. There is an extension called QuickManager to help with
all this (and appears nice in theory) but it never connects to the
extensions properly for me. Maybe you will have a different experience.
Is Mozilla and/or FireFox worth the effort. Maybe, especially if you
really, really dislike Microsoft's products based on philosophy. Otherwise,
the browser(s) come in handy if IE doesn't render a page properly (as IE
comes in handy when Mozilla / FireFox can't render a page properly - see my
final note at bottom of this message).
To get much higher functionality than any Mozilla browser (even after
downloading many of the extensions) or IE as a standalone, try MyIE2 as a
shell for IE. A relatively small, single source solution (as opposed to the
extensions solution of Mozilla) that works great. (For developers,
admittedly Mozilla has some nice extensions, but as far as normal
productivity / usage, IE plus a shell like MyIE2 wins with none of the
hassle in my opinion).
If you must use one of the Mozillas as your only browser, I recommend
Mozilla (without the mail and news client if not needed) instead of
Firefox. Install the Multizilla extension which provides a lot of
functionality in one extension package. FireFox is touted as being
minimalist, but it is as slow loading as Mozilla despite its stripped down
nature.
Some Mozilla links:
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/
http://quickmanager.mozdev.org/
http://multizilla.mozdev.org/
Mozilla ActiveX control - can be used with MyIE2 to utilize Gecko engine
(Mozilla / FireFox) instead of IE. Because of fast development of Mozilla
and MyIE2 (which has 'experimental' functionality with the control), it's
difficult to keep the ActiveX component functional with all versions...it
may work and it may not depending on version of control (which also comes
with the Mozilla package) and the version of MyIE2 you are using:
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm
MyIE2 is found here:
http://www.myie2.com/html_en/update.htm
Make your own decision through experience and disregard many of the
comments that outright place the Mozillas above IE. It is usually an
emotional issue as opposed to anything else.
-------------------
One final note:
I use Proxomitron as a proxy and have found that many sites that previously
loaded slowly or hung in IE will load quickly if using this as the
Proxomitron User-Agent header filter (you can do the same thing by changing
an entry in the registry, I believe):
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8
Sites which usually caused problems for IE or IE shells were web forums or
the like. This is obviously a tip that can be viewed as snake oil and of
course your mileage may vary. However, in a much-less-than-scientific
experiment, this seemed to work for me and my setup.