A look back at my life with Firefox — Red Panda, the last independent browser of the world.
I was first introduced to the computer and world wide web at the end of 2005 to do Yahoo chat, downloading songs, checking mailbox to which no one will send even spam email. I used Internet Explorer for some time because of my theory that Internet Explorer will be very fast since it comes with the OS. I also wondered why people download another browser like Netscape Navigator when they have something already with them. I also think about the last part of the two browsers names was little bit same and also different on its own way. Explorer, Navigator Whats going on here 💭?
Thinking about it I stumbled upon some forum where they have explained about the Great Browser War, what it is and also they mentioned about Mozilla Firefox. The name looked different and I was intrigued. Either way I went to their website and installed their browser. When I open the browser, it started with the Home Page where there is a Google Search on it. It didn’t open some news site like Yahoo. There is no need to go to settings to configure Google as Home Page. Also there is a search bar in the top which is there always. I can search Google anytime I want. The speed was pretty good with the list of other features. I couldn’t believe that other browsers which came separately are faster than Internet Explorer.
On top of all these, there was a concept called tabs there in Firefox which was the very useful feature at that point of time 😉
As the time goes on I switched from Yahoo mail to Gmail, Yahoo Search to Google Search, Songs to movies download, windows media player to VLC, Flash to JavaScript and Orkut to Facebook. But I preferred Firefox when the world was moving towards Google Chrome. At the end of 2012, I got introduced to another world called Web Programming which is deep inside the World Wide Web.
When you are web programmer you have to use the developer console feature in the browser. That is the only way to debug the program at that time. The talk of the programming world at that time was the Firebug, the add on which helps Web Developer like me to debug my program. When I opened the Firebug in the Firefox for the first time, I was awestruck. It really increased my productivity and I was so used to it that I cannot think about using other browsers especially with my small machine.
Firefox with other extensions like Firebug, it will evolve into a beautiful butterfly and I unknowingly fell in love with it. Its a magic and it happened on its own.
There were lot of small nitty features that you won’t know that it is there. There are lot of things that we were able to do with Firefox which is not possible with other browsers at least with my 2GB memory laptop. The ability to run as single process with low memory consumption, simple and free from bloatware and tracker, the Firefox became the first to install on my computer whenever I reinstall Windows or Linux or Ubuntu. I just stayed as an old school Firefox Lover Boy.
There was lot of things changed in my life after that but the Firefox browser stayed with me. My machine got bigger, Chrome had better development tools, World moved to the JavaScript completely, I got better at Server side programming and I really got graduated, finally 😎 . With Firefox, it got lot of changes too like Firebug got merged with Firefox default developer tools, the tab border changed from rounded to sharp, Customizable UI toolbar, Integrated Screenshot feature, with more security and more privacy. I stayed with Firefox when it went through all of its changes and I will be forever. But when I heard the news about the lay offs, cost cut and financial troubles of Mozilla, I was bit worried.
Firefox is the last independent browser of the world which is a better alternative to the Add-Corp controlled Chromium and its band wagon of browsers.
I’m little bit skeptical about Chrome and its trackers always. Google always does crushing competitors silently in a long term. It will provide lot of things for free like Google Photos, Maps and crush the competitors silently. After that it will become the monopoly of that particular business and then starts to charge way higher. Even though Google contributed lot of things to the web standards and JavaScript, I don’t want them to take full control of our Open Web. we just need an alternative to Chromium and that is very important for the healthy competition. Browsers are the tools which we would do all the things with Internet and we seriously need some alternative from consumer point of view.
Right now few set of people are using Firefox. Even with the developer community the usage has shrunk because of Chrome’s better developer tools support for JavaScript. Firefox user base is chirping away slowly. Its right now around 8% from its glorious 30%. The World is leaving behind the Firefox and it’s slowly dying. I hope one day the World will turn around to Firefox to see and try at least what it has to offer. I don’t want the Firefox to become the number one browser in terms of usage. I just want it to stay here for ever as the guardian of Privacy and World Wide Web.
There is no harm in trying out new things especially with Firefox. Give it a try and who knows, You can also fell in love with it.
