Firefox
February 10, 2004
Alright, I'm not going to blather on a whole lot about this one. I've been using Firefox for about a year now. (it was previously named Firebird, and before that Phoenix.. but now they're saying Firefox is definiitely the final name for the browser) I recommend it to everyone with no hesitation. If you use a computer, chances are you spend a lot of time with your web browser. For most people that's Internet Explorer, but there are much more productive and interesting products out there.
Why you should try it:
- Tabbed Browsing - Browse multiple sites at the same time in the same window. You really don't know how useful this feature is until you use it for a little while. Then you go back to a one-page-at-a-time browser (internet explorer) and it feels very restricting and slow.
- Extensions - Firefox is a lightweight browser because it includes only the bare essentials. However, if there's a feature you think is missing or you're just looking to customize your experience a little more, chances are someone has designed an extension to fit your needs. Extensions are like add-ons to the software. So you end up getting all the useful features you need without the things you never use. The main ones I use are Adblock, All-in-One Mouse Gestures, and Flash Click to View.
Mouse gestures allow you to control your browsing by holding a mouse button down and performing a gesture (for example, moving the cursur to the left and then down, or down then up then left, or whatever you want). Gestures can be assigned to pretty much any function the browser has. This is another case of not knowing what you're missing until you try it.
The flash click to view extension replaces all flash movies with an empty box. If you want to load the flash movie and see what it is, you just click the box and you can see it. If you're on a slow connection or you just don't want unnecessary distractions while browsing, this thing is really handy.
The adblock extension, obviously, blocks ads. You can block all images from whole servers (for example doubleclick.net hosts ads for many sites, so if you block that server you block ads on a bunch of different sites), or specific images that annoy you. Handy.
- It's free! - What have you got to lose, it's only a few megabytes to download, just try it. You'll probably find some things you like that I haven't mentioned.

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