nodalpoint.org - Why Firefox is the best browser for bioinformatics... - Comments

Firefox promotion

Neil — Wed, 11 May 2005 09:27:56 -0400

Things move fast in the world of OSS - seems like Firefox has been with us for ages and we're almost blasé about it. It absolutely rocks as a browser and a great example of an OSS project.

I was in my boss's office last week. He had so many IE windows open that the Windows bottom toolbar was rendered useless. "I need a bigger screen", he sighed, gazing at his almost brand-new, shiny 19" LCD. I resisted the urge to smack him and gently pointed out that what he needed was a tabbed browser.

Firefox v IE

jaws — Wed, 11 May 2005 08:16:14 -0400

This post was something I wrote up for our internal pages here at the EBI, and then thought it would be good to share. There are all these IE-crazy people who will probably never move to any other browser, till such time *nix is the OS of choice...

I would be more than happy to help out in the maintainence of nodalpoint if you think it prudent. Would it also not be a good idea to get people to sign up before they can post ? Or do you think its too m uch hassle and goes against free access to information ?

Hey Jawahar, I'm sorry tha

Greg — Tue, 10 May 2005 00:03:25 -0400

Hey Jawahar,

I'm sorry that this post got stuck in the queue over the weekend. I turned off automatic posting to the front page, due to some rather dubious posts (companies, advertising etc.). The down side of this policy is that excellent posts like this one some times get stuck in the queue. One possible way around this problem is to give some of the more frequent posters, such as yourself, admin access to the content module (i.e. posting, promoting, editing and deleting). Thoughts ?

I agree that Firefox is the best browser for bioinformatics, I have biobar and various custom search plugins for our internal lab databases constantly in use. However, even though the usefulness (utility ?) of Firefox over IE is far greater (tabbed browsing), I still have a hard time convincing local users to switch.

Another advantage of Firefox is native RSS support (aka "Live bookmarks).

Why Firefox is the best browser for bioinformatics...

jaws — Thu, 05 May 2005 16:31:16 -0400

Firefox, the latest offering from the Mozilla Foundation is one of the best web browsers in the market at the moment. In addition to built-in extras like popup-blocking, tabbed browsing, smart searching capabilities, the mozilla development platform offers more than 200 add-ons in the form of extensions.
According to the mozilla update site, the official download home for all extensions:

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to your Mozilla program. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature.

Firefox offers the average biologist many advantages over Internet Explorer or Opera.