h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just got Broadband at home, and the sheer amount of pop-ups I have to fight through is getting me down.

I'm currently using Explorer (not sure which release, but I'm running XP) and I hear that Mozilla has pop-up blockers, and other benefits. What I would like to know is:

1. Is it worth downloading Mozilla as a replacement? Is it an improvement?
2. Am I likely to have any compatability issues with either sites or hardware?
3. Where can I get it from?

Mozilla does have a pop-up blocker.

It is very similar to IE, but there are subtle differences:

1. It is unicode compliant, which means it displays international characters better, so if you are interested in sites with Greek, Arabic or ancient alphabets, mathematics etc, it is more likely to give you the proper symbol instead of the square that IE gives.

2. It behaves slightly differently in some places on h2g2: When editing a Guide Entry, you can search the content of the Entry box, so you can't search for text within the entry.

3. It doesn't work with my bank's online transactions site at all.

4. It gives the impression of slower loading when looking at conversations, because it shows you the postings as it loads them, instead of waiting and giving you the whole page at the end as IE does. I think it actually takes about the same.

5. There's a mail reader included that can flag junk mails.

There's nothing to stop you having both IE and Mozilla on your machine as I do and choosing which you want to use.

You can download it from: http://www.mozilla.org/

That should read: "you can't search the content of the Entry box"

Cheers Gnomon!

Which do you prefer?

I prefer Mozilla, but I have to revert to Internet Explorer if I want to talk to my bank or if I want to edit h2g2 Entries.

I upgraded to broadband about a month ago and got mozilla last week, it's so much better than IE, definetly recommend it!

Mozilla has lots of nifty features that I haven't mentioned. If you have IE or Netscape or both on your machine, Mozilla will import all the bookmarks/favourites from them into Mozilla. It will also import all mail and newsgroups from Netscape into Mozilla.

Sounds like i'm on to a winner. Downloading shall commence tonight.

You may prefer FireFox, from the same "Stable" as Mozilla - and which will soon form the browser component of Mozilla

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Uses the same engine underneath, but has been stripped of stuff you may not need (email, chat etc) which can be added in by the user as extensions.

It is (IMHO) slightly better than the current Mozilla.

Another advantage of both browsers is their constant evolution - if new features are required or glitches discovered it isn't long before hanges are made.

Plus you can change the theme 9like you can change the h2g2 skin) to your own choice.

There's a thought - anyone up for writing a Mozilla Goo theme?

CHawke

Looks interesting CHawke, cheers.

Is it still free?

yep totally free - but not quite as "Open Source" as Mozilla - a tighter developer comunity and less "development by comititee"

To quote the main developer

"Firefox is not a community driven project. While it gets a lot of benefit from testing, ideas, patches, etc, the prerogative for deciding what will and will not go into the product has always been held by the development group. This is not a new thing, this was in fact the reason this project was created"

But it is good and I like it and is my default browser at home and at work.

CHawke

Sounds like the business CH... smashing.

Any more opinions? Anything else I should consider? Please don't mention Linux...

Woo. I am now at home and running Firefox. Any computer program named after a Clint Eastwood movie has to be worth a quick download.

It seems to be pretty good at downloading hootoo and most other things but then I am running quite a fast connection over here nowadays.

I don't seem to have been struck down by any pop-ups yet either. Hurrah.

Thanks for your advice, everyone!

Hmm... a whole thread about alternative browsers, and not a single plug for...

http://www.opera.com

Darn ... nearly made it.

Mozilla is lovely, and a lot better than IE (virtually anything is -- IE is quite a few years behind the times and horribly insecure)... but my personal preference is for Opera.

It's free to try, and if you don't want to send 'em money then all you have to put up with is a little advert in the corner. Worth a try. Hey, use whichever browser your mood dictates at the time

(The concept of paying for a web browser in this day and age is an odd one... but if you like it more than the others, well, why not)

Just the thread I need...

Anyone here know how to tweak Mozilla's preferences (apart from 'Middle Click' [as this mouse can't do that] or 'Ctrl+Click' etc) so that:

1. A 'regular, single click' will 'Open Link in New Tab' rather than 'Open Link in New Window'?
(like Opera does by default)

2. The tabs are arranged along the bottom of a window?

PS #1 (above) is specifically in reference to the gadget

Off hand I've no idea, but if it is possible it would probably involve having to edit the preferences file by hand or something.

Even though I am currently using Firefox just in the interests of equality

For people using IE6 (The default browser with XP) you can download the google toolbar which has a fairly nifty popup stopper.


What is the name of the plugin that allows the my conversations popup to be embedded in the sidebar of Mozilla?