Significantly less.

In version 1.0.6 (I cannot speak about other versions, but I imagine they're similar) you can arrange your bookmarks however you want. If you then choose to view them sorted (a-z, z-a, date added, and so on) you can do so... but then you can choose to go back to viewing them in the original order.

Darn handy, that.

I can't imagine anyone still using IE. Firefox is light years ahead. Once you try it, you will never to back. I only use IE when forced to; during upgrades, for instance.

It sits on top of your window program, and doesn't cause problems. You can use or not use it. Upload it and try. Once you have it, be sure to open your "tools" window, open "extensions," then open "get more extensions" at the bottom of that window. Then upload all the favorites.

You're still using IE? I take it you've got on a pair of Underoos underneath those bell bottoms you wear. How's the Farrah Fawcett poster holding up? Does your mommy still make you a snack after nappie time? Hey Jay Tea! What do ya wanna be when you grow up? A policeman or a fireman? Or an astronaut?

Seriously Jay Tea, it's time to enter the new millennium and get a real browser. A manly browser. A browser that doesn't eff you over everytime you open it up. A browser not designed for the lowest common denominator. A browser that treats you like a grown-up, not a little kid who might not be able to find his website if the bookmarks aren't alphabetized. Of course there's the whole security/virus/spyware/automatic installation of trojan horses thing too.

BTW, all teasing done in a good-natured manner :)

Firefox has done no such thing to me. I've had no issues with it at all. And I love the tabbed browsing. The "find" feature is much better as well. I use it all the time.

All the above, and I add my vote to at least try it. I love the Tabs feature. In the mornings I run one copy with all my blogs I read and another one with all my news links loaded.

Why are you using IE? Doh.

Firefox has only one problem with bookmarks that I have ever seen, and that is eating them all during an upgrade. Apparently not uncommon, as I got a lot of search hits for Firefox ate my bookmarks when that was what I wrote about.

What happens is they are all stored in a file, IIRC with an HTM extension, rather than each being stored as a .URL file in a Favorites folder. IE's menu is essentially acting as an extension of Windows Explorer, so if with an accidental flick of the mouse you tell it to sort alphabetically, that is what it will do. I have been known to do so intentionally to find things better and move the folders (submenus) to the top.

Firefox uses "profiles" or identities. You will notice this if Firefox ever barfs and leaves a hidden instance of itself in memory. When you try to start a visible instance, it will ask you which profile you want to use and will not let you use the default and, for most of us, only one, until you kill the rogue process.

If an upgrade of Firefox somehow creates a new profile, it will create a new, empty file in a different location on the drive for the bookmarks. Because the old one remains, it's super easy to recover. The file is named bookmarks.html and can be copied to the new location, or presumably Firefox can be directed to use the old profile. These are under something like C:\Documents and Settings\jay\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and then a directory with a funky name like default.j2x or default.w8r.

But I digress. Firefox is way better. Tabbed browsing seems weird for the first little while - surprisingly little - but you become rabid once used to it. The built-in popup blocking is incomplete but nice, and there are extensions of you want to try improving it. I like the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder for my most important stuff, and folders can be created in that to give organized drop-downs.

Hi Jay, North Carolina Steve here from the battleship discussion a while back. I can only add to what's been said in previous comments. Get Firefox and you'll never look back. On top of everything else, now that Microsoft is blocking Chinese bloggers, etc., why give their products any more use than necessary? Windoze you HAVE to use (more or less), but IE, Office, and Outlook can be replaced by free open-source software (Firefox, Open Office, and Thunderbird).

I hear you. IE does it to me every time I boot. Frustrating to look for a blog where you put it to find it not there. Waste of time!
Bill Gates = Big Brother
War is Peace
Democrats are Smart
BS!

When Microsoft finally makes a product that doesn't suck, it will be a vacuum cleaner.

After trying Fire Fox - I was never going back to IE. I have had no such reorganization of my bookmarks. It's features are great. I open all of my must read blogs in separate tabs, right click on the tab bar and update everyone at the same time! I have 14 tabs open right now.

Fire Fox also has less security problems (I'm told) than IE. Go for it - you wont go back!

I use both, because some sites seem to display better on one or the other, but I have also noticed a problem with Firefox eating my bookmarks. Only this doesn't happen during an upgrade, I don't even think I have to restart the computer for it to happen. I just bring up the browser and all the bookmarks are gone. Even a search for "bookmark.htm" doesn't yield anything.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable using Firefox if this did keep happening. Any ideas?

One turn offs of Firefox for most people is that you need to download and configure extensions. It really isn't that hard, but Firefox needs to incorporate the tabs functionality by default.

Otherwise its great if you don't mind some very minor tinkering. It's a mixed blessing, you get customizability (is that word?) in exchange for some minor tinkering.

TomB,

Are they disappearing from the Bookmarks sidebar or toolbar (or both)?

I've had only one problem w/ Firefox, and it happens only on my work computer. Every so often my Firefox profile will disappear, but it will find another profile--the one I had before this one. Every four or five months, I essentially toggle between my first profile and my second (the second created the first time my profile disappeared). I'd go to the forums for help, but it's kind of neet seeing all those old and all but forgotten bookmarks.

jpm100: Say What? You need to download an extension for Tabs? Sorry, that is completely incorrect. The base build of FireFox 1.5 now includes drag & drop tab reorder positioning. You can bookmark a group of tabs so they all open when you click a single bookmark. You only need extensions to extend the browser beyond the basics. Tabs are basic and included. You may be thinking of a very very old build of Mozilla.

As far as bookmarks, there are a ton of FireFox extensions to do more with your bookmarks. Syncronize your bookmarks across multiple computers, use Technorati tags, Delicious Bookmark toolbar, digg.com toolbar, google toolbar, etc. All cutting edge web 2.0 features.

List of handy extensions that I use:
FireFox 1.5 Win32/Linux/MacOSX
- DOM Inspector (available during a custom install not standard)
- Web Developer toolbar (a must for any web dev head)
- ViewSourceWith (use the editor of your choice to view source)
- ColorZilla (color picker, eyedropper, palettes, etc)
- Live HTTP Headers (figure out that POST form or cookie problem)
- Download Manager Tweak (enhance the download manager)
- Sage (RSS Feed Reader extension)
- Google Toolbar (because I love all things Google)

I've never had any issue with losing my bookmarks with either Mozilla nor FireFox. However, it's a good idea to backup your FireFox user settings that include bookmarks when testing nightly builds, alpha, or beta releases. Under Windows, this is in your user profile under Documents & Settings.

Also MSIE is full of security holes, the latest big hole in Windows and MISE won't get fixed till Jan 16th. So users are stuck running a third party hack to close the hole or risk getting infected with Spyware, Trojan, or Virus as all three are currently in the wild using the exploit! I generally tell people to only run MSIE if they have to and only on sites they trust. Otherwise, run FireFox for everything else.

FYI, if you are on a Mac there are optimized versions of FireFox for the G4 and G5 PowerPC processor that will run FireFox a whole lot faster. These are simply compiled using the most optimum settings so the compiler will take advantage of the individual processors features. Most common builds do not do this because they want to ensure it runs on all processors. i.e. G3/G4/G5 from a single distribution. But you can get quite a performance boost by getting an optimized distribution.
G4: http://homepage.mac.com/thenonsuch/firefox/firefox-ppc7450-15.dmg
G5: http://homepage.mac.com/thenonsuch/firefox/firefox-ppc970-15.dmg

There have been some Intel/AMD optimized builds but I am not that familiar with them. Try searching Google for them. Moox.ws is under construction at the moment, but they had several builds in the past.

Big time FF user here. Up to v1.5 and have never - repeat NEVER - had that happen to me. I only use IE at work because the dorks in the Helpless Desk refuse to write internal web pages that support anything other than Gates' Garbage. They just pushed out an "upgrade" to the Office Suite and... you guessed it... my Favorites are back in alph order.

Argh!

Get a Mac.

;-)

The tabbed browsing alone is enough reason to switch.

Once you go with Firefox, along with Adblock, you will never go back. My blog browsing and ever so much more pleasant (and Drudge is actually easy to look at).
BC

Next you're going to tell us that you stuffed your hand down a Doberman's throat while pulling his tail and he bit you.

Remember to also download Thunderbird with Firefox. The only problem might be that you cannot edit a web page like you did in Mozilla suite. Of course, you could not do that in Internet Exploder anyway.

>One turn offs of Firefox for most people is that you need to download and configure extensions. It really isn't that hard, but Firefox needs to incorporate the tabs functionality by default.

HUH? You must not use the product. Tabs have been default for as long as I've been using it and that's been almost since the beginning. - Admittedly, I'm a minimalist but I don't have a single extension running. Never had the need.

>When Microsoft finally makes a product that doesn't suck, it will be a vacuum cleaner.

LOL - I was half asleep and didn't get that one at first. too funny.

Firefox has never rearranged anything for me that I didn't want it to and I've never lost my bookmarks during an upgrade. I did lose my bookmarks when I fully uninstalled a previous version before I installed a new one, but that was my bad for deleting everything.

And the extensions and themes that are available are just plain cool.

I much prefer Firefox, but one irritating thing I find is that I can not get it to retain account passwords for more than one session!

IE? pffft...so last millenium.

Firefox rocks the 2006 casbah. (sp?)

Just sayin' and firefox remembers my passwords for me. I haven't had a single problem with it and LOVE all the extensions you can add to it.

Switched to Firefox about 6 months ago - love the tabbed browsing. Still having a hard time getting used to not using IE shortcuts vs FF shortcuts.

Wish I could try out the Developer Toolbar extension but - and this is my only complaint so far - I can't install any Firefox extensions. It simply won't let me - tells me software installation is disabled even though it is not and Mozilla support is no help. So I guess I just won't be installing extensions.

Other than that - I like it much better than IE and have had far fewer lock-ups since I switched.

Are they disappearing from the Bookmarks sidebar or toolbar (or both)?

Both Jed.

I've never used IE. I used Netscape for many years, and I switched to Firefox about 10 months ago. I've upgraded Firefox 3 or 4 times, and added several extensions. I've never had a problem with bookmarks or any other function. Join the 21st century and ditch IE.

Install. Firefox. Now.

Tabs rock. 1.5 lets you reorder them ad-hoc. There's also a plugin called IEView that will let you open a captive IE process in a FF tab, if you need to. There's an FTP tab, mass downloader, even a quickie SMS sender.

I haven't touched real IE in months.

I quickly tired of using a lot of brower bookmarks. Possible alternate suggestion: Put URLs you would normally bookmark on an HTML page-of-links on your website. (Firefox, at least, lets you export your bookmarks to an HTML file, which is a start.) Protect the page with a password if you don't want to share it. Format the link page however you want. You can bookmark this page on your frequently-used machines, but you should be able to access the page from any machine, from any browser, without "synchronization". Big win, IMHO. Might work for you.

But, yeah, even if this works for you: ditch IE, use Firefox, like just about everyone else is saying.

Bill Gates Must Die

All in good time.

Firefox user since version 0.98....which was still better than any version of IE. Microsoft actually claims not supporting ActiveX is a flaw in Firefox...hehe, considering 99% of spyware uses ActiveX as a vector for infection I think non-support of it is a feature.

Ditto on the Adblock extension. A right mouse click and clicking "Block this image" and banner ads are gone...as well as overly large signature block pics etc.

TomB,

This is a common problem with Firefox. There are several possible causes and possible solutions.

Start here, here, and here.

jdavenport is the only smart person here. And I agree with him:

"Get a Mac."

Enjoy your viruses, glitches, stalls, , freezes, reboots and whatever else you encounter on your PCs, kiddies.

Here's to Steven Jobs!

I'm sensing a general consensus that Firefox is the way to go. I concur. IE = the date rape of the computer world.

I love Firefox, it did lose all bookmarks once after the only crash I have experienced with it, and I get an error message when I close it almost every day - unable to find some file (usually after media player for radio or video files have been used).

But I have to agree, with the adblock it is WONDERFUL!!! I mentally blocked the ads anyway, but now I don't even have to wait for them to load and do the flashing some of them did.
DKK

Why don't you try one of the IE alternatives with tabbed browsing and pop-up blockers like Maxthon or Avant? I love the Maxthon browser! It uses the IE engine but doesn't have any of the vulnerability problems that IE has.

I've been using Maxthon for almost 2 years now and to me it's much better than FireFox, which I also have installed and use from time to time because of two plugins that make downloading easier.

According to Secunia (www.secunia.com)Maxthon has also had far less security advisories and vulnerabilities over the past couple years. Secunia shows 26 advisories for FireFox with 3 remaining unpatched. Maxthon shows 3 with 0 unpatched. Avant had 1 advisory with 0 unpatched.

If you like IE but don't want it's problems check out MAxthon or Avant.