Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

firefox vs ie


sammee

Recommended Posts

I use ff and it works with no problems... very occasionally it might not work but then a couple of clicks and its fine... this is rare though... (I have to admit though that I really REALLY dont like ie now I have been using ff for the last few years... ie is bad hmmkay)...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

here's a review that might explain some of the tradeoffs:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3000_7-5561073-1.html

It's not that IE is bad; it's evil as are all products marketed by Microsoft. I still have troubles since it is, of course, bundled with the OS on this laptop. I get conflicts when IE opens up even though the default is FF. I keep my Norton subscription and I wouldn't trust anything else.

That having been said, and I am no 'puter tech, with FF, I believe that I went to View and then Character encoding to acquire the necessary fonts for the browser.

You may otherwise go ton the Mozilla page and get a walkthrough.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IE lags behind in some of the functionalities, like tabbed browsing that was only introduced in IE rather recently - well maybe it's nearly two years ago by now - but still, it was many years behind mozilla and firefox. And firefox has all the thousands of plugins to add nifty little extras, both for language learning and otherwise.

You do need to keep IE as well unfortunately, since you very occastionally run into a page that is designed for IE only and will not work with anything else. Luckily these are few and far between.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless of course you have mac and then you are screwed since Microsoft cut of the IE for mac over 2 years ago...

Anyway....for me that is the biggest thing. Microsoft is so big now that they don't have the customer in mind with IE they only wish to control the customer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The sooner you dump IE and switch over to Mozilla, the better your life will be.

I couldn't agree more. :mrgreen:

FF itself may not be the best, but its wide range of addons can really make the life easier.

The best reason for me is that FF has a portable version. While I don't have a laptop, i put it in my usb drive which gives me some sense of taking my "own" computer with me. Now I can keep my history, bookmark, cookies and more importantly, it has TOR addon to deal with GFW issue.

As far as I remember, in non-Chinese OS environment, there's only 1 website (now.com.hk? ) can't deliver Chinese correctly in FF. That's fine to me, because i can click IE tab to render the page with IE.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just use Firefox and it seems to default to a unicode font that works nicely. It can display pretty much anything, even stuff I have no hope of reading and that I never configured, like arabic.

Make sure to install all the Asian font options and stuff. Make sure the default font is set to something like Arial Unicode MS, and like Quest said make sure to set the page encoding default to auto select.

I've never had any problems with any modern browser with any modern operating system, but I hate MS for doing their best to put Netscape out of business, then once that was done totally doing NOTHING to improve IE for many many years. MSIE only ever existed to put Netscape out of business and I refuse to use trash like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I prefer Firefox as well (safer, tabbed browsing and lots of plug-ins, especially language related) but in many cases Firefox will not work the same or not at all where IE would.

Examples: Try developing a PowerPoint slide show and save it as HTML, Firefox doesn't support the embedded objects.

I use Cognos, Firefox handling of Cognos report is poor. Many applications were developed with IE in mind. Microsoft's JavaScript is different from standard.

Another problem is firewalls. Ours is configured for MS IE, so I can't download large files with Firefox.

By the way, displaying Chinese text shouldn't be a problem using any browser if Chinese language support is installed on the computer. Browsers allow to change the page encoding (View menu) if the one used is incorrect.

Anyway, Mozilla Firefox is excellent but it's better to keep both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem is not chinese fonts. The problem is that Chinese banks use custom ActiveX controls that only work in IE. Using any other browser, you are unable to even enter your password. I use boot camp with parallels.

@cnd_in_bj I guess you've bought a Mac then? :mrgreen:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...