I vividly remember when Netscape and Microsoft were “duking it out” for browser dominance in the mid 1990s. As you may have guessed, I was an ardent Netscape supporter. Unfortunately, Microsoft cleaned Netscape’s clock and Internet Explore (IE) became the default web browser of choice for many years,
Although I run a blog, belong to many social networks and like to think of myself as somebody who readily embraces change, I have religiously used IE since Netscape’s demise. That said, I never noticed how slow and clunky IE was until I started working at home again. I always attributed IE’s slowness and frequently aberrant behavior at work to my employer’s woefully inadequate internet connection. However, because I connect to the internet at home via FIOS, IE’s continued lack of responsiveness and frequent crashes could no longer be explained by inadequate “pipe size” or poor connectivity.
The thing that sealed the deal for me were my unsuccessful attempts last evening to use IE to access my Fantasy Football League’s homepage to check yesterdays results. My obsessive need to learn my Fantasy Football fate, forced me to use Firefox to attempt to access the site (I downloaded a version of Firefox several years ago). While I still wasn’t able to connect to my Fantasy Football homepage (the servers were jammed by other obsessive people like me), I found that I was able to access many of my other favorite websites much more quickly and with greater ease than I had ever experienced with IE (with or without a FIOS connection). An apt comparison for the speed differences between Firefox and IE is Usain Bolt’s dominating performance over the rest of the field in the 100 meter race at this year’s Olympics in Beijing.
Over the past few years, many technologically-savvy people suggested that I switch from IE to Firefox. I didn’t because I subscribe to the notion that if “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That said, I am now a Firefox devotee. I feel like I just emerged from the Dark Ages!!!!!
Until next time…
Good Luck and Good Web Surfing (use Firefox…it rocks)
.jpg)
There has been a growing reliance on the use of online tools to teach science to primary, secondary and college students. This makes sense because anybody who has pursued a science career will tell you that using web-based programs, applications and searches is absolutely essential when conducting scientific research. To that end, Amber Johnson at onlinecourses.org sent me an article that details some really cool educational add-on tools that are available for the Firefox browser.
