Suddenly Snatched by the Fox

I've been faithful for years. I never understood why, even though it was free, users would bother downloading an alternative browser. MS Internet Explorer, although not groundbreaking, is always updated just frequently enough to keep it from becoming irrelevant. I have been a computer user long enough to remember first using Netscape and then eventually settling on whatever was the current version of IE. Most recently, I remember downloading IE 7 while it was still in beta.

For some reason, still unknown even to me, I just switched to Firefox 3. I had the older version on my computer and it recently updated itself. I had always kept two browsers on my system primarily to see how my site looks in both screens. I am always surprised that pages rarely render identically. For example, I like how IE 7 shows my picture in the right column of this blog. For some reason, when one makes the screen smaller using Firefox, my photo can appear larger than the column. Something small like that doesn't really interfere with usability; yet, it's annoying nevertheless.

On a lark, I wanted a change. I completely made the switch, insofar as I see a new icon wherever I used to see the familiar old one for IE. I weeded out and exported my favorites, ahem, bookmarks. Anyway, I've endured the hour of pain involved in learning how to accomplish familiar things in a slightly different way. Firefox seems faster. I have to admit open source software can implement browser changes more quickly than can be done with the staid, old albatross of Microsoft.

I crave venturing away from the routine with computers and this was much cheaper than buying a new laptop.