BleepingComputer.com: Advice Re Firefox Please!

I have recently been advised to download Firefox 2 as it apparently has advantages over Explorer which I am using for my trading activities at the moment.

Is it really likely to speed up operations and are there likely to be possible problems which I will have to look out for? I am an almost total computer duffer and might find myself doing more harm than good in changing if I am not careful.

Help greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Edit: Moved topic to the more appropriate forum. ~ Animal

Well...the questions I would have:

a. How much memory is installed on this system you want to speed up?

b. Is the system sluggish (in your opinion) only when it comes to the Internet?

c. How much free space is available on the C: partition?

d. Have you dumped your cache?

Louis

It's all about how you use your browser. I use Mozilla because I like the layout. I'm sure I don't know even half of the tweaks and add-ons you can do. You mentioned trading so I will add this. On the different insurance, banking, and investment sites I go to , there are a few that are not compatible with Firefox. Some developers just don't see the need to make their sites alternate browser friendly

Thank you both very much.

The comp is a 1.53Ghz AMD XP.

Memory is 256. and 55.33 % of the memory is free.

Yes it is sluggish on the Internet but maybe that is Omantel (Middle East) who provide the broadband. Sometimes it is very quick, but not too often. on the other hand I have nothing to compare it with so I am guessing as to exactly what is quick!

The site I visit advised Firefox as they said some people who were having difficulty in accessing found it to be very good.

Hope that helps.

I love my Firefox! But it took me a couple of years to learn to love it. I'd try it. Get frustrated and take it off. Then try it again. I mention this because you said you consider yourself a "computer duffer". If that's anything like a noob to computers and "spoiled" with the way IE had everything built in automatically (that was me), then you may experience a learning curve. Now I hardly use IE at all. IE is just for the occasional website that won't work well in FF. But that happens rarely.

Firefox will work right out of the box, as they say. But there will come a time when you'll want to do something with it that came easy in IE, but you won't see that function in Firefox. That's because it's designed to give you a basic browser and then you can customize what it does to your liking. You do that with changes in the user.js or chrome files (kinda like editing the registry in Windows), or most times you'll go hunting for a Firefox extension (now called add-ons) that you just install into FF to get the function you're looking for.

While you can, go get the latest FF in version 2 and install it now, or save it if you don't want to try it just yet. The reason I say this is because soon there will be a new Version 3. I'm not planning to upgrade to 3 immediately when it comes out, because I've finally got my FF the way I want it! When 3 comes out, it will likely make a lot of the add ons and themes available now not work anymore. It'll take some time for the people who design the add ons to make them compatible with 3. So I am going to hold off awhile and let the dust settle and give the add ons people time to catch up.

I do believe FF is faster for browsing. However, because it is not integrated into Windows like IE is, when you first open FF it will take longer to load.

FF will not mess up your system. You won't "do more harm than good". If you don't like it, just uninstall it.

Word of warning though: Do not try to uninstall IE. That will cause more harm than good. If you like FF, just forget IE is there until you need it for that oddball website.

Good luck!

Thank you for that Mommabear you have answered just about everything I wanted to know. I will get on with it and install. You are a ''real Momma''

Thanks again. John

Help please, the darn thing is in Arabic!!!!!

Well I have uninstalled. I tried to go into IE and that came up the same way. A Google box in Arabic with no way to change it to English.

So what do i do now please?

John in Oman, on Mar 4 2008, 05:14 AM, said:

Good Lord! The language change has me completely stumped. Are you saying IE is now in all Arabic too or just the Google?

I think FF opens in Google the first time you use it after installing. I just clicked an old shortcut that I bookmarked that I thought would take me to the FF website and I got Google too. It's called the "Firefox Start Page". If when you installed FF you made it your default browser, that might be why IE brings it up again. The FF install probably set Google as the home page.

Look at the homepage settings in IE and see if that needs to be changed now. You can also reset IE as your default browser by going into IE-Properties-Program Tab. The default function is at the bottom.

This page will take you to all the language downloads for Firefox, if you want to try again.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

After you get IE straightened out, you might want to make a system restore point before trying FF again, just in case the language thing happens again. I'm guessing something in your Windows setup decided that you needed an Arabic version at the main FF site. But I'd think you can override that by getting the English version at the link I've provided.

I have already tried the English version and still didnt work. It was the Google bit that came up in Arabic and then when I went to IE, up popped Google again in Arabic. I do live in Oman so maybe that has something to do with it!

John in Oman, on Mar 4 2008, 12:30 PM, said:

You're probably right about that. But you might take a look at the Preferences to the right of the Google search bar and see if you can make any changes there. If you took FF off right after that happened, then you didn't get a chance to see how normal websites would look, ie.... browsing to sites you know should be in English. Would they have changed to Arabic? Maybe not.

Or is your Windows set to English or Arabic? Look in the Control Panel-Regional and Language Options. That could be it too, since FF is designed for a Windows installation.

The ONLY thing that comes up in Arabic all the time is Google, but it does give me the optio of changing to English. That it didn't do in FF.

Thank you for your continued interest!