Mozilla Firefox

The article from Wired Magazine about Firefox was interesting to me because I know so little about firfox. I have used it at work, but it is not my default browser. Prior to this article I have heard that firefox is better, but was never clear about why.

My sense, from this article, is that firefox is better because of it's security and speed. The security may be better in part (as this article mentions) becuase it is new and hackers haven't had as much time to work on it. It also get the impression that the speed is in part due to a simpler design.

I get the sense that annother part of the appeal of firefox is that it isn't from Microsoft. There is something more noble about software that is free and not controlled by the one corporation that rules the software market today.

Site Development Process

I found the Lynch & Horton article to be a nice overview of the process of creating a website. They seem to emphasize planning at the beginning. It makes sense that you would want to know the purpose of your site and who will design and maintain the site before you begin designing, but it would be really easy to get caught up in the design first. That is the fun part. Choosing pictures and colors, etc. Their suggestions about creating a template for future development was also interesting. It indicates the importance of consistency throughout the site. They also mention tracking the traffic on the site. From a library standpoint you would want to be careful of the type of information collected. A simple count of the number of visitors to the site would seem to be find, but anything more detailed is bordering on invasion of privacy. Their article ends with good advice about keeping a site updated, don't forget about it; and backing it up frequently in case there is some error and information is lost. This is an article to file away for any future web design projects.