And it’s open source, which means if you have the knowledge and don’t like something, you can go and re-write it.
Result is a huge developer community – the core functionalities are a tiny install and relatively easy to debug if something isn’t working properly, and most of the “features” that you find in closed monolithic codebases (the kind that cause companies to release service pack after service pack to address bugs not found until it has been let loose on the public) are contained in a standardised extensions system that you can choose to download and use or not as you choose.
Every one can be disabled in the tools bar if it causes a problem or turns out to be just plain junk, and is excluded at start if you do so.
I’ve been running firefox since it was called firebird (and was still in pre release on version 0.2), and wouldn’t ever go back to IE – the only time I use IE is when a website is badly programmed, and will only support IE browsers (at which point I use an extension called “open in IE tab” to open it in firefox and then go and send an email to the site webmaster telling them to get their act together:weee:)
Open source software is the way forward – You only need to take a look through http://www.sourceforge.net to get a good idea why.
