Mozilla Firebird 0.8 is coming out soon. Getting one step closer to leaving beta with 1.0. I've been doing some thinking about how to persuade people to switch to Firebird. It is easy to say, "you should use Firebird because Microsoft is an evil corporation and it is dangerous for novice users to use Internet Explorer because security holes are ignored until they get publicity, and then they over-react in a stupid manner." But that kind of scare tactic isn't what my parents would want to hear. Change is difficult, especially for novice users who are at the most risk when using Internet Explorer. For example, my mom is still running Windows ME, a bloated piece of crap tacked onto Windows 98 and even more unstable. But has she asked my stepfather to upgrade her to win2k, or even his stable copy of win98? Nope.
So here are my thoughts thus far about positive reasons to get novice computer users to switch.
- You can increase the text size of any website.
- The download is only 6mb, but even then I'm going to mail out CD-ROMs when it hits 1.0. Modems are slow in Maine.
- Tabbed browsing is a powerful tool for surfing over a slow connection. You can Ctrl + click on a link and let it load in the background while reading the current page.
- Popup ads are blocked, but not popup windows that are functional parts of a website.
- There are accessibility features like Type-Ahead Find that allows you to follow links without a mouse.
- The Google toolbar lets you search the web, as well as images, news, the current site, and even your local college libraries.
The browser wars have reached a new era. Now it is time for web developers to make their move and convert everyone they know so that the web remains an open environment and doesn't become a proprietary tool of the evil empire.
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