All that Work Just To Do Work?

My work computer died this week; I spent all of Tuesday and most of Wednesday reinstalling applications and configuring settings. Here is a partial list of all the crap I had to go through:

Configuration options:

• Set mouse speed
• Set keyboard repeat delay and repeat speed
• Set default browser
• Set up quick launch and add folders/files/app links
• Install printers
• Set homepages
• Set default applications

Developer applications:

• Visual Studio 6
• Visual Studio 2003
• Visual Studio 2005
• SQL Server 2000
• SQL Server 2005
• C1 Flexgrid
• HTML Helpworkshop

Non-developer applications:

• Firefox
• Chrome
• VLC
• Notepad2
• Launchy
• TweakUI
• 7-Zip
• Putty
• Foxit Reader
• Flickr Uploader
• Roboform
• Pidgin
• Songbird
  
• PSTools
• Filezilla
• Roboform

Not to mention all the Firefox extensions:

• Adblock Plus
• Roboform
• All-in-One Gestures
• Better GMail
• Download Statusbar
• Firebug
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
• Greasemonkey
• PDF Download
• SafeCache
• SafeHistory
• StumbleUpon
• Web Developer

And all the Greasemonkey scripts!

• Hoodwink'd
• Greased Lightbox
• Plus tons that I'm forgetting

I'm not even convinced I've got it all. What the crap, man?!

Why the Rabid Anti-Firefox-ism?

The big news in the nerd world today is the site WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com (WFIB). If you haven't already, check out the site. The site says that site owners are blocking Firefox because of the popular extension AdBlockPlus, and since site owners cannot opt-out of having their ads blocked, they've blocked Firefox all together. Hilariously, one of the articles WFIB links to is a paper from a IT-law college class.

Well, that's all fine and dandy. You own your site, and you can do whatever. O'Reillynet.com has a good article detailing why WFIB makes no sense, but whatever. You could check out the article for more info. Or you could check out today's AlertBox article from Jakob Nielsen; he basically says that users ignore advertisements, a fact which makes WFIB even more silly.

But what really shocks me is the anti-Firefox-ism (AF) furvor out there. Just look at these sites (linked to from WFIB):

• PopularTechnology.net (in a post from 2005) blasts Firefox as a new religion.
• A Comcast user's site, Optimize Guides, details a list of Firefox myths.
• A Google search turns up similar viewpoints (though many are individual users posting on forums).

I've seen some Firefox nuts out there; as with pretty much any new technology, people get excited about it. Firefox isn't new, but it's still different enough for people to get excited about. After spending hours every time I was at my parents' house fixing their computer from all the spyware IE downloaded (even with the latest patches), I installed Opera for them to use. It was too different looking, and they rejected it. Then I installed Firefox, and they didn't even notice (I noticed all the time I got to spend with them instead of their computer). I recently recommended it to a developer coworker of mine who had disregarded it out of hand as useless.

So why the venom towards Firefox? Use it or don't use it. But if you use IE and get spyware, don't ask me for help.