Using Firefox

I’ve been using Uzbl Web browser for a couple of years. But I’ve recently switched to Firefox. Why?

I was using various Gecko based Web browsers before switching to Uzbl, most notably Conkeror. Being annoyed by Gecko problems, switching to a flexible WebKit-based Web browser was a big relief. But things have changed through the time.

The first problem is that I’ve actually never managed to fully utilize Uzbl flexibility. Uzbl hasn’t become popular enough so far to get proper mainstream support so the user ends up basically in a do-and-fix-it-all-yourself situation. This is time consuming and I couldn’t catch up.

The other (and more important) problems are the current Uzbl/WebKit limitations. The number of problems with Web page handling in Uzbl has increased recently (for reasons unknown to me) and I’ve been using Firefox as a backup browser more and more. So when I started to experiment with display color management, which is not supported by Uzbl at all, I decided to try using Firefox as my primary Web browser. Why not to take relief from Uzbl/WebKit bugs and enjoy the Gecko ones again? 🙂

I’m positively surprised by Firefox so far. I can see a big progress. Firefox works well enough (although not perfectly) and there are many useful free software add-ons available. The add-ons are crucial, I couldn’t use Firefox without them as its basic functionality is too limited. But with a few basic add-ons Firefox looks like a relatively comfortable, stable and secure Web browser.