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Incase you haven't already heard of it, Firefox is an alternative browser that has been created from the Mozilla project.
It was previously known as Firebird, but changed it's name due to legal issues with another piece of software.
I have been a Firefox user since 2002, and find it hard to believe people still choose to use Internet Explorer over Firefox.
Initially you get the basics with Firefox, a browser that does exactly the same as all the others, save for the search box that has Yahoo, Google and some others by default and you can add any others you like (I have the Cambridge dictionary in it) and it has an intelligent pop-up blocker (I forget pop-ups exist until I view a site in IE), oh, and tabbed-browsing (bliss!).
• Due to the masses of badly-written sites out there, Firefox can't always handle the site as it was intended to be viewed.
This is by no means a fault of the browser, it's just that IE led the way for sloppy HTML and JavaScript code, so it's difficult for other browsers to handle them all.
• There are a few bugs and annoyances, but the opensource community is always improving its own and extensions and updates are often available to tweak the browser the way you like it.
• On the plus side (and there are many), it does have a completely valid CSS2 and XHTML parser. Unlike IE.
One reason my site is best viewed in Firefox, is that I've used CSS2 techniques that IE has clearly ignored. Since CSS2 has been an official W3C recommendation since 1998 (Shown here), it can only be assumed that Microsoft have decided to ignore it as an official specification and continue to only support the original CSS (with a few parts of CSS2, it should be mentioned).
A major part of CSS2 that IE hasn't implemented is the use of multiple stylesheets. Firefox users will be able to see a 'T' symbol in the bottom-left of their window that will enable them to change the colour of the site (and even turn off styles altogether). IE users, however, are stuck with the default colour scheme I chose.
• Tabbed browsing. Whilst in IE you can shift-click to open a link in a new window, in Firefox you can also ctrl-click to open the link in a tab. Basically, a Firefox window can have many tabs, each with it's own URL... can't really explain it better than that, other than to say I can't browse without them anymore.
• Firefox can be extended. Oh boy, can it! For the uneducated, an extension is something that Mozilla users can do to improve/personalise the way their browser functions.
I have quite a few extensions installed including:
• Conforms to other standards. As well as CSS2 and XHTML standards, the Firefox team have put effort in to conforming to other standards, including the full PNG standards (as far as I've been able to tell).
The 'Get Firefox' image on the left uses alpha-transparency on it's background. In IE (which doesn't fully support PNG at time of writing) this appears as a greyish area.
• It's actually a faster browser, due to its more efficient HTTP requests and parser.
There are many more advantages to Firefox, and probably some disadvantages I've forgotten, but all-in-all I consider IE to be a poor browser in comparison.
The problem mainly comes down to people not having enough enthusiasm to change their browser, most people are set in their ways and think it wouldn't be worth learning how to use another browser. That's fine by me... I'm not here to change your mind, just to explain why my site (and increasingly more) looks better in other browsers that actually listen to W3C.
You can check out Firefox at the following location: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/