Thursday, January 18th, 2007...3:11 pm
Firefox or No?
Ewan McIntosh posted a very simple question today, asking why schools don’t use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Prior to IE7, this was a no-brainer. I ran it by our network tech folks today, and the response I got was that I basically needed to justify it. In other words, what did not work in IE7 that did in Firefox? I have uninstalled IE7 on my machine, due to some compatability problems with software and my computer’s image, so I’ll have to get on another to do some testing. I have to admit, I couldn’t answer right off, other than to say that I am a big fan of the plugins available for running web 2.0 apps on Firefox. Of course, most, if not more, are now available on IE7, so, the question is, how do I sell them on Firefox? (and Flock, and Opera…)
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3 Comments
January 18th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Don’t pressure them to replace IE7, rather add Firefox as an option. Every computer at the college I attend has a Firefox shortcut directly below the standard IE shortcut on the desktop. Every computer.
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January 19th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Hello from California,
Our district, PVUSD,which is located about 40 miles from Silicon Valley, uses Firefox with great success. Myself and our tech liason take the responsibilty for making sure that the staff and students know that is the browser we use and that it is installed on our school computers. Our district has also made a push to use it and installs it automatically on all new pc’s that are purchased. The liason and myself really see the benefits of Firefox with less spyware and popups than IE7. The only concern is that some educational software, such as EDUSOFT and ETruancy are not writing their programs to maximize Firefox, so you have to switch to IE7, which can be a pain. With the big push for WEB 2.0 to become part of schools it would seem that an open source browser with the capabilities of Firefox should be accepted with open arms by education.
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January 19th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I agree with Stephen as well. I failed to mention that our computers also have an IE shortcut,however we strongly encourage our teachers to use firefox and we do all of our demonstrations and handouts using Firefox. This seems to work well us modeling the use. The teachers feel very comfortable with using Firefox instead of IE and it has saved us headaches with spyware and such.
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