I Heart Firefox

I needed to take a minutes to profess my love for this "new" browser, called Firefox.  It's actually the distant relative of the original Mozilla before it was made into Netscape and commercialized.  The Mozilla browser did stay around and continue to be developed, but when I last looked at it a year or two ago, it didn't really impress me much.  But Mozilla has been on a tear.  They have been developing Firefox in an open environment similar to how Linux was developed.  The vast cadre of talented programmers have reshaped this browser into a fast and highly customizable tool.

It was probably four years ago when I finally got tired of waiting for Netscape to update their browser and switched to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  As a web developer, I had to stay current with the tools that allowed for the latest web standards, including a reliable DOM, CSS2 support, XML, etc.  Netscape's browser was built on old technology and the newer version was being developed so slowly that it allowed MS to take the lead.  When Netscape finally did come out with their completely redesigned browser, it was buggy and frankly too late as many people had switched to IE.  I still strove to develop for as many browsers as possible, but with IE consuming 90% or more of the market, there wasn't a lot of motivation to spend huge amounts of time on testing in other browsers. 

Up until a month ago, I probably would have told you that Internet Explorer, just like many MS products over the years, had completely and permanently squashed all competition save for the rebel hold-outs that refuse to use anything from MS on principle.  But I had started hearing things by other bloggers about something called "Firefox"  I wasn't quite sure what it was but made a mental note to check it out at some point.  That point came maybe two weeks ago.  At first I was not so amazed.  It is after all, a web browser.  It doesn't do anything completely new.  What it does do, though, is to do what a lot of other programs do but in one interface, and with great speed and agility.

Here are the main things that I've come to love about the browser and why:

• Speed:  I never thought of IE as slow, but when you run Firefox for the first time, you will notice a big jump in how fast a page loads.  This may not really be noticeable for slower-speed connections, but anyone who's on a higher speed should immediately feel like a veil has been lifted.

• Tabbed browsing: user interfaces are a funny thing.  Although there are certain obvious rules that you must adhere to in order not to make something unusable, so much of it is just subjective.  For example, I know some people who use the mouse for most things whereas I like to use the keyboard for as much as possible.  Similarly, some people like having lots of  programs running and lots of windows on their screen at the same time, where others like a much cleaner look.  Firefox is actually somewhat flexible in this, but the main point is that unlike IE (or other browsers I've used), you can contain all your "windows" within one, and just tab through them using the control key and the tab key in the same way that you would tab through separate windows with the alt key and tab key.  This may seem like six of one half dozen of another, but at least for me it provides a much cleaner interface.  I think one could make it even more useful by changing how tabs are displayed, but the way they are in Firefox is still a huge step up from none at all!

• Extensions:  a great feature of Firefox is that it can be supplemented by add on functionality.  Currently there are over 150 of these "extension" add-ons.  You can pick and choose which ones are most useful to you, or not use any, but I¡¯ve found some very useful!  Here are the ones that I currently use:

• Linkification: sometimes people who are writing for the web neglect to actually create a link for an address.  For example, I might just say – "Check out Mozilla.org."  Linkification actually makes "Mozilla.org" into a link, which saves a lot of time from having to type it in manually or even cut and past into your browser's address bar.

• Copy Plain Text: this is a nifty utility that allows you to copy a portion of text on a page as plain text.  Often I will write things in MS Word or a web-based tool that carries all the formatting from the original text, which I don't want, I just want the text itself to conform to whatever formatting I'm using in the destination.

• Image Zoom:  some people when posting images on the web have this idea that making it too big will slow things down too much, and so you get images that you have to squint at.  This lets you easily increase (or decrease) the size of a given image on the page itself.

• StockTicker:  I used to have to go to a Yahoo Quotes page to look up the current price of stocks, but now I just have to look at the bottom edge of my browser to know how poor I am!

• WeatherFox:  I can glance at the corner of my browser and see what the current weather conditions are, and the forecast for as many days as I want, no more going to different sites and looking it up by zip code.

• CuteMenus:  this tool simply adds small graphical icons next to most of the menu items in Firefox, which helps make things easier and more visually interesting

• DictionarySearch:  don't know the meaning of a word?  Just highlight, right-click, and choose "Dictionary Search" and you will get the definition from Dictionary.com by default, or whatever other reference sites you might want – you can specify up to four with the current version.

• Ieview:  alas there are pages that I use that still don't work quite right in Firefox (more on this below), and this tool lets you quickly open a page you might be having a problem with in IE.

• McSearchPreview:  for Google (and other search engines) searches, this extension puts a small thumbnail of each search results so that you can get a quick preview before actually clicking on a link

• Gcache:  Google "caches" web pages all the time, meaning that it saves a representation of them to its site.  The main usefulness of this feature is that if a site has been taken down, or is down for maintenance, or whatever reason, one can still look at this cache, although it may be a little dated compared to the current content on the site.

• Tabbrowser Preferences: while you can control a few features of how tabbing works in Firefox, there are a lot of ways that you might want to customize tabbing behavior and functionality.  There are several tools that let you do this, but I've found this one to be the best so far.

• Customization: if it wasn't obvious from what I've already mentioned, Firefox is highly customizable both with its extensions as well as "Themes" which are basically different looks (they are sometimes called "skins") you can put on the browser to make it take on very different looks.
• RSS:  given its open development environment, I'm surprised that there aren't more RSS and blogging tools available, but at least "out of the box" one can create bookmarks as RSS feeds.
• Search: Firefox comes with an additional area that you can type into right next to where you would type a web address, but instead here you type a search term and hit enter and you will get your results in Google.  Or, you can choose to search for the term in Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, and other places.  In addition to this type of search, the interface to search for a word on the current web page is very nice.  You just hit Control-F, after which a search form appears at the bottom of the browser.  As you type a word, it will find the first instance of it on the page and highlight it.  If it doesn't find anything, it beeps at you, but you don't have to type the entire term, just as many characters as gives you a "hit" and it will update after each letter is typed.  You don't have to hist a submit button or the enter key or anything else.  It just makes searching for something a lot faster.  In addition you can opt to highlight every instance of the term on the page, which makes it even faster to quickly scan through a page for the pertinant information you're looking for.

So, don't download Firefox just because you hate Microsoft and their monopolizing ways, or just because you admire the principles around the open software development environment.  Download it because it is the best damn web browser out there right now, and one that will save you time, energy, make your surfing more fun, and more organized.  Download some extensions, play around with the tabbed browsing.  I think it's safe to say that you'll very quickly fall head over heals like me.

One caveat that I've found is that, as I mentioned, there are a couple of sites that don't work well in Firefox.  One is the map in mapblast/Yahoo Maps, which i can't get to resize to a larger map as I can in IE.  I think this is a Java thing and maybe I just need to tweak some settings, but at least with the defaults I can't use it the way I want.  The other site that doesn't work quite right is Outlook Web Access.  This is a tool that is offered with MS Exchange so that you can access your data (email, Appointments, etc.) remotely via the web.  It really is designed specifically for IE, and emulates how Outlook 2003 operates very closely, so it makes sense that it's not going to work perfectly in a browser that's not designed with all the same proprietary hooks that IE probably has been loading up on as MS aims for web-based client-server applications (ASP's) as a new computer architecture model.  You CAN use Outlook Web Access on Firefox currently, but it is a bit clunky compared to IE.  I do love OWA because it allows for a lot more mobility, but I am so enamored with Firefox right now that this situation has compelled me to consider other options, although right now I'm fine with running IE just for OWA when I need it, alongside Firefox for all other browsing.  IE is on all Windows machines anyway, so it's not like I have to make a choice, although it would be nice if I only had to use one application...

So, don’t download Firefox just because you hate Microsoft and their monopolizing ways, or just because you admire the principles around the open software development environment.  Download it because it is the best damn web browser out there right now, and one that will save you time, energy, make your surfing more fun, and more organized.  Download some extensions, play around with the tabbed browsing.  I think it’s safe to say that you’ll very quickly fall head over heals like me.

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