Why Firefox should be the default

I was reading a post on Mozilla’s blog about why you should make Firefox your default browser and I thought I’d post MY (more realistic) reasons why.   I’ve also written a little bit about the other standards-based browsers out there (Safari and Chrome).

As professional website design and developers, we HATE Internet Explorer. There are so many reasons it’s a lower-class browser, but that horse is long-since dead. Instead, let me tell you a little bit about our favorite browser, Firefox.

Power – Not Profits

Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, is a not-for-profit organization with the goal of making the Web better for everyone.  They’re not trying to make money off their users – they just want to provide the best possible online experience, period.

Extendable and Cross-Platform

Not to get too technical, but Firefox has been using XUL user interface markup language since it’s creation in 2004.   The use of XUL makes it possible for community-contributed themes and extensions to extend the browser’s capabilities. Some of our favorites (as nerds) are Rainbow and FireBug.

Standards-Based

In the early days of web development there were no standards. That meant sites would often look great in one browser and terrible in another. Since the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) set standards, that is no longer the case. FireFox, in particular, is based on the powerful Gecko rendering engine (used by many other browsers) and supports all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff like HTML5, CSS3, transparent PNG and the DOM. Don’t worry about the acronyms — they simply amount to great stuff. As many a developer will tell you, Firefox flies the flag as the most compliant of the current browsers and is available for every computer platform under the sun.

Convinced? Download Firefox and make it your default browser.

What about the other browsers?

You fear change. Fair enough. Firefox isn’t the only show in town. There are several other great browsers out there like Safari and Chrome.

A Little About Safari:

Safari is Apple’s own browser for Mac OS X, and comes installed on all new Macs, as well as now being available for Windows. It has a terrific rendering engine, and has the best JavaScript performance of any browser (in my opinion).

A Little About Chrome:

In 2008, Google hired a bunch of ex-Firefox developers and some other very clever people to create their own browser. Chrome, like Safari, is based on the WebKit rendering engine, which means it’s super-fast, and executes JavaScript extremely quickly, which is particularly useful on JavaScript-heavy sites like Google’s own.

Whatever you think after reading all that nerdy stuff, just know there ARE alternatives to IE – and it’s easy to change your default browser.   There’s a beautiful online world out there.   Don’t miss it.