Why Does Firefox Look Like Internet Explorer? ...

[l337 Nurse Pedestrian 0]

I've noticed how much Mozilla Firefox looks really like Internet Explorer. It seems that the only thing they did was change the buttons, add RSS, and tabs. What's going on here? Even when you right click, it looks the same as in IE. What do you know about this? Is this built off of IE or something? How is that legal?

[MajesticTreeFrog 0]

I've noticed how much Mozilla Firefox looks really like Internet Explorer. It seems that the only thing they did was change the buttons, add RSS, and tabs. What's going on here? Even when you right click, it looks the same as in IE.  What do you know about this? Is this built off of IE or something? How is that legal?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Things like menu items and such are totally legal. Microsoft is actually the one who made that the case when they won a case vs. apple in terms of the look and feal of their OS.

 

As to answer your questions, Firefox is not based on IE. It uses a different HTML rendering engine and such.

 

As for adding the buttons, RSS and tabs...well, what do you expect? Its a web browser. Thats really ALL IE does right now.

 

The other thing may be that FF tries to follow the useability conventions of whatever OS it is running on. Therefore, it will behave like other windows browsers on windows, linux browsers on linux, and mac browsers on mac. Or at least, that is their ideal.

[vizskywalker 0]

However, both Firefox and IE are based off of a Mozilla browser. Firefox is based off of a more recent Mozilla browser than IE is, but they are both based on Mozilla. At least I am assuming that that is why, when doing a browser check with environment variables in CGI that IE shows up as being a Mozilla 4 browser. If I am wrong, please correct me. If I am right, than lazy programmers not wanting to change a GUI that works could account for the similarities between Firefox and IE.

[qwijibow 0]

Yeah, you are wrong :)In the beginning there was MS's IE and Netscape Navigator.the browser wars !Ms won, some think they competed unfaily, and the courts agree'd but lets not start anouther flame war over that.Probably to to p1ss MS off, Netscape released its source code to the Open Source community, and the non profit organisation "Mozilla" was formed.Mozilla has all the features of IE, and outlook express combined, along with alot of bloat.Firefox was completely rebuilt.however most browsers are built on the Geko engine.The Graphical User interface is only a very very very small part of any program. so although they look similar, the guts of the browsers are very different.

[vizskywalker 0]

Thanks for letting me know, but can you explain why when doing a CGI environment variable printout on a webpage it says "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)" for HTTP_USER_AGENT?

[NilsC 0]

Here is a link to useragents by OS:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Nils

[vizskywalker 0]

Thanks, NilsC, but what do they each mean?

[NilsC 0]

They are supposed to be a way of telling the different browsers and what OS they are using. In reality thay are all lying and not conforming to standard, including the ones that can be user defined or changed.I just ignore it for mow, IE fakes it and say "mozilla" compatible etc... I have not found one solid answer to back the user agent up :)Nils

[rkage 0]

Firefox is like I.E. except it FF misses a few things like Pop ups and slow rendering. Not to mention Firefox has better security, Supports correct CSS standards, browsed tabbing, and optional extensions that allow you to hide unwanted adds, validate pages, edit css of pages etc etcThe difference between Firefox and I.E. is that FF is not trying to make loads of money and force their browser to people, they are simply giving people an alternative. And the basic layout is the same because people expect this type of layout, it is a browser. The best way to attract new people is to improve something, not confuse them with a hi-tech, interface with over the top graphics. I.E. Browsers were not the first browser but at one point they occupied about 90% of all computers, people became used to it...

[MajesticTreeFrog 0]

Hopefully microsoft's dominance will be broken, and Mac will come to power. Then, instead of OSS copying MS's crap (only minus some security issues), the OSS people will copy mac, and actually make their software userfriendly.I can only hope...

[vizskywalker 0]

Why do we need to have one OS or browser or whatever in power. What's wrong with equal market share among many different OSes. Then people could choose based on personal preference from many choices.

[jcguy 0]

that would be bad for software developers, because they would then have to make sure that their software is compatible with all the many OSes and browsers. Thia in turns leads to higher software prices for us!

[Spog 0]

btw : for those who still works with iexplorer, switch to firefox. much more safer, you dont get hundreds of windows with tab systems too. great tool for everyone.

[qwijibow 0]

that would be bad for software developers, because they would then have to make sure that their software is compatible with all the many OSes and browsers. Thia in turns leads to higher software prices for us!

Not really, take KDE for example. its a very complicated Graphical user envoronment, it works under FreeBSD, OpenBSD, netBSD, GNU/Linux, UNIX, Solaris. with little more than a simply re-compile.

its onlt hard to port applications between these OS's and windows because windows is so alien (does not conform to POSIX standards)

if any other OS was dominent, then there would be no problems.

[Tweak37 0]

You can skin firefox! At least, I think you can... You can skin Opera, that's for sure... All switch to Opera!