Margin Note: Mozilla the better browser?

The new Mozilla 1.2 release continues to knock on Microsoft's dominant door, offering a real alternative to the Internet Explorer steamroller, and performing a number of functions better than any other browser on the Macintosh platform.

Speed and stability enhancements, and some innovative new features like keyboard link access continue to render Mozilla a real contender. Some initial observations from the latest release:

• Mozilla sometimes does not display an indicator that links have been clicked. For instance, while Internet Explorer turns links to grey on VersionTracker (or another color selected in Preferences) after they have been clicked, Mozilla keeps the black shade even after a link has been visited.
• The contextual menus in Mozilla often don't respond as quickly as IE's, and sometimes options are not accessible, with the menu appearing but no selection bar following suit.
• Mozilla can undo the accidental deletion of a URL and other mistakes, while Internet Explorer offers no such functionality.
• Mozilla has some irritating issues with filling out forms, often refusing the accept pasted text, or any input at all. However, Mozilla can also accept much larger chunks of text. It appears Internet Explorer has a crippling limitation on the amount of text that can be pasted into text boxes, making working with remote database entry and other applications a much more tedious process. In addition, Internet Explorer erroneously limits the amount of text in certain fields - even though no limit has been set by the author of the page.
• Some enterprise applications, including the WebTrends traffic tracking tool, are still not compatible with Mozilla, requiring a version of Netscape prior to 6.0 or virtually any recent release of Internet Explorer.
• Mozilla allows users to access any link on a page by typing the first few letters of the link's title and pressing "return." It will take most avid surfers some time to get acclimated with this feature, but it can save time on pages with a confusing multitude of links.

Feedback on this issue? Drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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