May 20th, 2003
Faster, Stronger, Better
Yesterday I made a discovery. Nothing major, mind you, but a discovery nonetheless. Oh sure, technically, it isn’t a discovery (kind of like Columbus) in the purest sense since someone else had already been using the product, but it was a discovery on behalf of my friends at work.
You may be thinking, "I ain’t got time for this jibba jabber already, tell me what you found!" and so I will. It is the fastest browser I have ever used, Mozilla Firebird and I love it. Sure, it has some problems – there are a few bugs, but that is expected in a product that is still in beta production. However, it’s benefits far outweigh it’s problems.
You may think IM making "Much Ado about Nothingt" here, but trust me, this browser screams it’s so fast. Take the espn challenge if you don’t believe me. Load ESPN in Internet Explorer (or any other browser for that matter). Then load it in Firebird. We’re talking an order of magnitude increase in the speed of the page render.
It’s crazy that ESPN’s site loads so fast in Firebird. ESPN.com is part of the MSN or Microsoft Network – IE is a Microsoft product – and we all know the MS takes advantage of its technologies to make experiences better for users of its products. So what gives?
Everything works fine in Firebird. Though I’m not entirely sure about the ESPNMotion stuff. I will keep IE, you never know when you will need it. but Firebird is my default browser for now. It’s been a long time since someone dethroned IE on my desktop – will IE step up to the challenge and win back my support?