Sep 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Firefox Workaround
Reader T.L. writes in with some important advice that’s relevant to this morning’s exhortations against Internet Explorer:
Important issues of the day. As one commenter noted, I bet many of your IE users are people at work without admin rights. Likely not an issue for the free-wheeling journalist types but many don’t get to choose. But, there is a solution you can post for you readers:FIREFOX PORTABLE. I installed it on a USB drive and ran Firefox on my admin computer at my last job. Link below:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Do yourself a favor.
67 Responses to “Firefox Workaround”
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September 25th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Way to get a lot of people reprimanded
September 25th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
That’s a lot of effort for a browser, people.
It’s. A. Browser.
Get over your bad selves.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Your hatred for Microsoft, like your Apple boosterism, is frequently just hysterics, and usually unsupported by any kind of evidence aside from “Microsoft is evil”. (Of course, much of the reason why Microsoft is considered evil by some is because of a very unsophisticated notion of what a monopoly entails; when Microsoft would spread into a new software venture, they would say “Aha! There they go again!” Of course, with Apple now branching out into phones, the music business, handheld gaming and television, they are doing precisely the thing that made Microsoft-haters so angry in the past. But then, Mac vs. PC has always been about culture anyway.)
Luckily, some of us know that a computer can’t make you cool, so purchase based on more pragmatic factors. Sometimes this means buying a PC, sometimes a Mac. Now, you could defuse my snark, here, if you’d tell us why you find Firefox so preferable to Internet Explorer. Not a lot to ask.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Is FF worth getting fired over? Not in my book.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
perhaps if you are going to make such strong statements you ought to help everyone who dosent know why you feel so sure of your position (i use both ie and firefox)
September 25th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Add me to chorus of people saying that this is very bad advice. Like recommending a subprime loan for those who could qualify a regular one. (to use a topical simile)
There’s very little upside and a whole lot of downside.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
unsupported by any kind of evidence aside from “Microsoft is evil”
Well, of course Microsoft is evil. No argument there.
That just doesn’t explain why I should give a shit whose browser I’m stuck using at work.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I use IE at work not because I have to, but because some of the applications I need only run correctly on IE. I’ve even written to the application owners asking them to make these applications runnable on Firefox or Chrome. No go…
I use Firefox at home though. In my experience, it is a jillion times faster than IE, which is my main reason for prefering it.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Matt, what gives? I mean, I think Bill Gates is almost as liberal as Steve Jobs.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Matt, no one needs “saving” from IE. Get that Macbook Pro out of your ass and start talking some politics/policy/basketball.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
But after you’ve used FF3, IE tends to just…suck. Of course, if your work really does not want you to use anything else, then that’s fine, because being fired sucks even more.
But I’m willing to lay reasonable odds that Firefox is what the tech guys at your work are using, or possibly even Opera or Safari (or even a homebrew), but not IE.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Uh, yeah, I don’t like IE, and thankfully don’t have to use it, but I don’t think I could possibly be bothered to do that if confronted with a problem with admin privileges. You’re being condescending again, Matt.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Fired for using a USB key? Huh?
September 25th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
But after you’ve used FF3, IE tends to just…suck.
I use ‘em both and prefer the rendering of text in IE. FF just looks kind of unpolished. FF3, with it’s download addons and better security, though, is a lot nicer for downloading movies and music and stuff.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Well, I for one use my verizon web explorer on my lg chocolate phone…can you say booyah? (Actually on Firefox right now, but I usually peep this site on my phone)
September 25th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Fired for using a USB key? Huh?
Yeah, it’s not like anyone has been fired for using loading illicit software, possibly “stealing” data or introducing a security risk (real or imagined).
September 25th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Matt, I need another workaround. I’ll check back later. kthxbye.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
On election night of 2006, I was at a national lab trying to look up election results. The internet was filtered and Daily Kos and Wonkette were blocked while Free Republic wasn’t. How about you find a workaround for that bullshit and then get back to us.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
My suggestion: Find new employment. Any job that forces you to use a PC with IE is not worth having.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
My suggestion: Find new employment. Any job that forces you to use a PC with IE is not worth having.
I’m sure my wife and children will understand that perfectly.
Wife: “Any husband who quits his job because of the web browser is not worth having.”
September 25th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
@xbj
While a lot of corporate jobs require a PC with IE, I heard that if you’re a blogger or a freelance graphic designer you have to use a Mac (and look down your nose at folks using PCs). True story.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I’m not a Windows expert, but in my own limited experience, it’s perfectly possible to install Firefox on a Windows XP box without administrative rights. I’ve been told that this is because it doesn’t use the registry.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
FYI, FF is not as buggy and is much faster than IE. However, Chrome is faster than either – even in beta. Oh, and why does Microsoft suck? Because anyone that doesn’t have the time or knowledge to fix their own computer every three months can’t afford it!
September 25th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
My suggestion: Find new employment. Any job that forces you to use a PC with IE is not worth having.
Why are so many computer geeks closet religious fanatics?
September 25th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Why are so many computer geeks closet religious fanatics?
So long as they’re not McCainites.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
well my job not only requires that IE be used, they only use IE 6. they refuse to upgrade. no tabbed browsing for me, it seems.
also, this little USB fix wouldn’t work, since USB drives are banned from the premises – unless they are owned by the company and encrypted.
who do I work for? oh, just the federal government.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
@meg
You should quit. No job is worth having to use passé browser.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Steve writes that Microsoft sucks because “anyone that doesn’t have the time or knowledge to fix their own computer every three months can’t afford it!” Although, given the obsolescence designed into every Mac, they need to afford a shiny new Mac every year.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I don’t use IE because they won’t release a version for my operating system. Maybe I should quit my job so that I can use Windows.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
My Firefox always ramps up to using 100% of my processor power when I view certain pages. Think Progress pages are among them. Anyone know what the story behind that might be?
September 25th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
My Firefox always ramps up to using 100% of my processor power when I view certain pages. Think Progress pages are among them. Anyone know what the story behind that might be?
The system redlines trying to correct Yglesias’s spelling.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Bookmarking in the newest FF is ugly and cluncky. And I’ve always hated the term “bookmark” anyways….”webmark” anyone? Maybe I’ll go get Opera or try out Safari on PC. Any comments there?
September 25th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Freddie, shut the fuck up. Microsoft IS evil. Period. Not to mention that their software is SHIT. Microsoft doesn’t even sell software – it sells lies. Gates and every other member of that company authorized to talk to the public – and many who aren’t – are lying sacks of shit and nothing they say is true. They’re the epitome, next to Enron, of scumbag corporate types.
Hayden: It’s not the problem that Firefox needs admin rights to install, it’s that in a corporate Windows domain environment, the users can be locked down so they can’t install ANYTHING. Many companies do this despite the irritation and inefficiency this frequently causes the end users.
Flounder: Probably crappy JavaScript. The Firefox JavaScript engine is not the greatest, although probably not the worst. But if the Web site’s JavaScript code sucks, there not much you can do about that since it’s a Web site problem.
As for Mac obsolescence, that’s highly exaggerated.
If you want both reliability and security and ease of use and the ability to run on both new and older hardware with good speed, Linux is the only option. Forget the “command line” bugaboo. You almost never need to use it on a modern Linux distro (and you have a choice of desktops, not just one). To fix Windows you frequently have to use the command line anyway. Windows techs use the command line just like Linux techs do, if somewhat less since the Windows command line isn’t as powerful (prior to Vista’s PowerShell anyway.)
The problem with Linux is that most software designed for Windows doesn’t run on it. You can get around that to some degree either by using the WINE reversed engineered Windows API utility (which will run Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint – but not Access, as well as a number of other common Windows programs and even some Windows games), or better, by having a fairly fast machine and 2-4GB of RAM and running Windows in a “virtual machine” on top of Linux. The latter approach gives a certain performance hit, but it’s not that noticeable if your machine is dual core and over 3GHz in total speed and you’re a hyperspeed user of your apps. You still need a valid Windows license, but you probably already have that.
Remember what I always say: Windows is CRAP. Linux is ALSO CRAP. BUT Linux is FREE crap: free as in beer and free as in freedom.
I do all my daily stuff in openSUSE Linux and only boot Windows when I need to support my clients from Windows. When my new machine comes in, Windows will be either relegated to the old dual-boot machine or installed in a virtual machine on top of openSUSE 11.0.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
People. I think Matt would discourage from using Firefox anyone who thinks that doing so might cost them their job.
However! For the vast majority of people, whose livelihood and families’ subsistence don’t hinge precariously on whether they dare to install a piece of software being used successfully by millions of people: IE really is worse. Not only is the user experience inferior — ActiveX-related vulnerabilities alone are reason enough not to use it, although that’s certainly not the only reason — but its existence exerts a pernicious effect on the state of the technologies that power the web. SVG, PNG, the CANVAS element, CSS compliance — I could go on. They deserve credit for jump-starting AJAX, but that’s about it.
By continuing to use IE you are not only making your online experience worse, you’re helping to prevent everyone else’s from getting better.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
By the way, with regard to what software runs on Linux, I should note for people not aware that when you get Linux, you don’t just get an OS like Windows. You get TONS of FREE software that will do pretty much everything you normally do with a computer: graphics viewing, image editing, multimedia playing and recording, Internet browsing, databases, office suites, personal information managers, remote access, CD/DVD burning, file management, printing, security, you name it – it’s almost all INCLUDED.
And 20,000 more packages are usually available for immediate download and installation from the Linux distributor’s repositories. Browse the available stuff right from your machine’s cache of the repository lists – no need to search the Net in most cases, although not everything may be in any given distro’s repositories.
The quality of the software varies from crappy – like the stuff you might get from a Windows freeware or shareware site – to entirely commercial grade. If you follow the 80/20 rule – that 80 percent of users only use 20 percent of the available features of any given software, you’re usually good.
If you want to spend money on commercial software for Linux, you can. However, if you’re used to PhotoShop, Adobe multimedia products like Premiere, QuickBooks, etc., you might find it hard to find exactly equivalent products. You can probably find something that does most of the job, and if that’s all you need, you’re good. But some people need a specific piece of Windows software to do their jobs, and in that case, your best bet is running Windows in a VM on top of Linux. You still get better reliability because if the Windows VM craps out, you just load a new image instead of wasting half a day reinstalling everything.
Most people can’t get Windows to stay up and running correctly for more than a few weeks, a few months tops. Linux users regularly have their machines up and running for six months to a year with no reboots unless a new kernel is updated. Installing new software updates almost never requires a reboot.
And NO – I mean NO – viruses and almost no spyware (if you’re not the type who clicks on EVERYTHING you see on the Net.) Windows and especially IE and Outlook are malware magnets compared to Linux and Firefox.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I’m here with Chrome. I use firefox for every other site, but it won’t open thinkprogress.org sites for me.
I think thinkprogress has a specific firefox problem. I was hoping to read about a workaround.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
For the vast majority of people, whose livelihood and families’ subsistence don’t hinge precariously on whether they dare to install a piece of software being used successfully by millions of people
People keep saying “install”. You don’t “install” portable software. That’s why it’s portable. I use Opera under U3 from a USB drive at work for a number of reasons. One, I don’t like IE. Two, it’s not possible to screw anything up, if you did actually do something stupid and get some malware or virus, in order to be a U3 compliant the program needs to erase every last thing it did on the computers hard drive when the USB is ejected. Three, there is no real way to cover your tracks using that IE browser at work. Delete your history and cookies, and whatever but if you know what you are doing someone can come along behind you and tell you exactly what you were doing at your desk all day long.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
You use a Mac, and you’re giving computer advice. OK.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
“My Firefox always ramps up to using 100% of my processor power when I view certain pages. Think Progress pages are among them. Anyone know what the story behind that might be?”
Yeah, Firefox is not very good at dealing with memory. If this is your top concern, switch to Chrome.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
You use a Mac, and you’re giving computer advice. OK.
The Windows user, sneering at the Mac user….
I’m so big a geek I’ve got a NeXT cube in my bathroom to piss around with while I brush my teeth, my most used workstations are mostly linux. The exception is an older sun server that I let run Solaris. I’ve got an ancient machine running HP-UX and I can’t remember what it’s doing now.
I’ll say this for the Mac people: They always know alot about something, it’s probably not computers. However, they WILL be more savvy even on that subject than your average Windows luser. I’ve never figured this out but your serious computer person who likes windows is a programmer. You will never, ever, ever, get a good network guy who likes windows.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I’ll add that among the programmers I respect the most, many of them jumped ship from windows to mac after OS X. I can see why programmers hated working with macs before that. I think it’s just inertia keeping them with windows now.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
ZOMG! MattY said something about browsers!
We should totally re-enact the MAC/PC wars! Fabulous!
Jeebus. The only thing I can take out of this is that we’re a bunch of losers. You know, like the Democrats and Republicans. Great, geekdom has finally devolved… only into something utterly stupid.
Thanks folks.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Waldman: “I think thinkprogress has a specific firefox problem”
I’m here with Firefox 2.0.0.16. What problems do you have with Matt’s blog with Firefox? I’ve never had any problems here.
55: Firefox 3.0 is much better with memory, in terms of less memory leaks and less memory fragmentation than the 2.x series. Unfortunately it has other bugs that prevent me from using it until they get to maybe V3.1. However, memory has little to do with CPU consumption (unless you really are very low on the RAM you need and the OS has to constantly swap to disk). The OP was complaining about that. That strikes me as a JavaScript issue. A lot of JavaScript “programmers” aren’t “real” programmers and suck at program design.
Ed Marshall is right about Windows being a lousy networking OS. Most of the time, Windows XP can’t even keep its Computer Browser service – the service that tracks network connections to other machines so you can use your “Network Neighborhood” – running. Mac OS X is based on UNIX, with the Mac user interface bolted on top. UNIX is a world class networking OS. UNIX was a networked OS almost from day one. Windows had networking bolted on sometime around Windows 3,1 or 95, IIRC. Linux inherits UNIX’s skills in that area.
Here’s another factoid about Windows: “corrupt drivers”. Every time Windows craps out, people blame it on “corrupt drivers”.
Newsflash: there is no such thing.
What’s being “corrupted” is the Windows Registry. The drivers are just software programs – they don’t usually update themselves, and you don’t get data corruption of programs unless your RAM or hard drive are going bad. You NEVER hear about “corrupt drivers” on Linux troubleshooting forums. Buggy drivers, sure. But never “corrupt drivers”. That’s a euphemism for the crappy design of Windows, slotting everything into a piss-poor “database” called the Registry – the major single point of failure in Windows.
In Linux, you might have trouble figuring out how to configure your peripherals to work properly. But once you do, odds are they will continue to work exactly the same way consistently. On Windows – not so much.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Windows had networking bolted on sometime around Windows 3,1 or 95, IIRC
Windows 3.11 was billed as networking software. TCP/IP wasn’t a native option. They were still in denial and pushing netbios. You had to use trumpet winsock to make an IP connection. I remember spending two weeks in total frustration trying to understand what I was doing wrong trying to make the windows machine do anything but cough out garbage on my PPP connection via modem.
The garbage turned out to be trumpet winsocks ascii equivalent of the conversation and the whole two weeks I was actually hooked up to the internet and too silly to realize it.
Meanwhile, the trust NeXTbox that now sits in my bathroom knew exactly what it was doing out of the box.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Yglesias, you and I are going to get along a lot better once you stop telling me what browser to use.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Zzzzzzzz…….
September 26th, 2008 at 3:21 am
For me, it’s simple, Firefox is faster and is not embedded into the operating system the way IE is. It had tabbed browsing long before IE did. Firefox Add-ons provides an easy way to selectively add features I want…and to top it off, Firefox isn’t as vulnerable to viruses and hacks. I do think that once Google works out all the bugs with Chrome it will become the best browser.
I’m still a PC guy though…not sure there’s anything you can do with a Mac that you can’t do with a PC, and I know there’s plenty you can do with a PC that you can’t do on a Mac (play games, software development, etc.). I can see where people that only browse the internet, send email, and edit movies and photos would be fine with a Mac, but I need to do more than that.
September 26th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Joe – Mac OS X is just the user interface to a version of UNIX. And there’s no better development machine than a UNIX machine, especially if you want to code to real standards instead of proprietary bullshit like Active X, Visual Basic (Christ – BASIC! Yeah I know it’s nothing like original BASIC – it’s the bastard child) and the rest of the Microsoft crap.
Give me open standards, C/C++/Java and scripting languages like the “Swiss Army Knife” of Perl, Python, etc., over anything Microsoft has. Stop mooning over their frickin’ IDE’s when the code produced is proprietary shit.
As for doing things with Mac over PC’s, try video editing. Adobe Premiere is crap. Final Cut Pro – not so much. I have a client that does extensive video editing, and his staff are all Mac users at home even though they have to work crappy PCs and Adobe shit at work. They just opened an LA store and decided to go all Mac down there for production – except for the PC running QuickBooks and their custom software.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:21 am
You go away for half a day, and this thread has turned into Slashdot!
September 26th, 2008 at 6:56 am
The extreme solution for Microsoft paranoiacs (not a fringe group) is to download Knoppix onto a CD: it’s a complete Linux operating system, with OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird pre-installed. The main snag is that getting a wireless or dial-up Internet connection to work is in my experience impossible without the right brand or anorak. It seems to work with a standard fixed-cable Ethernet-to-ADSL connection.
September 26th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Oops, sorry about the bad code but the link works. (Can we please have preview?) And the browser isn’t Firefox but Konqueror, which is good enough for an emergency.
September 26th, 2008 at 7:11 am
And if you still insist on Firefox, you can download the Linux version onto a USB flash drive.
September 26th, 2008 at 9:14 am
You people cling to PCs and IE because you’re squares. Admit it. You’re a bunch of bitter, clingy squares.
Well, that’s okay. Unimaginative, unattractive pencil-pushers such as yourselves are better off with an OS that suits your personality. You bitters deserve PCs, just like you deserve your guns and your religion.
September 26th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Most Linux dial-up connections don’t work because most motherboard on-board modems are “Windows modems” – they rely on the OS for full functionality. An external modem can be set up OK.
Wireless on Knoppix might be iffy – I haven’t tried it. But there are Live CDs for most of the Linux distros now, and wireless support is much better than it used to be, especially on the most recent releases.
In fact, you can even put entire Linux distros on USB keys these days. Some distros support that directly. That’s the best of all possible worlds – as long as your machine supports booting from a USB device. If it doesn’t, then you need a boot CD as well to boot the OS from the USB device.
September 26th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Well Richard, you’ve peeked my interest in OS X…I admit it’s been a long time since I even played around with a Mac, but I may need to give it another look now, especially with the debacle that is Windows Vista being forced upon us.
I’m perfectly happy with Windows XP though, and have never had any major issues with it (knock on wood). However, the number of calls I get from family members asking for tech help indicates that I may be in the minority. But I think most of their problems are caused by them using IE to visit sites that exploit its vulnerabilities.
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