Many people use Internet explorer(IE) because IE comes bundled with the windows operating system. Because of this popularity and because of lots of vulnerabilities in IE, there are a lot of malware on the internet aimed specifically at IE. For example most IE users must have seen unnecessary toolbars being installed and the homepage (page which opens when you start IE initially) being reset to some search page or some page related to adult content all without the user’s intervention or any kind of notification. Some of the toolbars are very very hard to remove and involves editing the registry. Some of the homepage changes can be rectified using the internet options in IE. But some of the worst changes keep coming back on rebooting the system and require editing of the registry to bring back the system to its old state.
Because of many such problems I decided to check for alternate browsers. Out of many alternatives I now use firefox browser most frequently.
The installer is a small download (around 5 MB) from ’’ https://mozilla.org ’’.One of the things I like about firefox is that it is open-source.
It does not become the default browser unless you want it to be the default browser.
After installation it is a good idea to go through the tools ->options menu and adjust everything according to your preference.
A technically-oriented user can control firefox much more by typing about:config and then enter key in the address bar of firefox to get more configuration options.(you have to be very careful with what you change in that window).
It is also useful to go through ’’ https://mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips ’’
IE and firefox share many shortcut keys The bookmarks from IE can also be transferred to firefox using ’’manage bookmarks’’ under the bookmarks menu.Organising bookmarks in easier in firefox than in IE.
It is possible to set up different profiles for different users for browsing with firefox.
Firefox has tabbed browsing (different web pages are opened in different tabs within the same browser window).
The functionality of firefox can be further enhanced by using ’extensions’which can be obtained from ’’ addons.mozilla.org ’’. (but be careful with extensions). The extensions can usually be uninstalled from the tools->extensions menu if they cause problems.
There is a search box in the top right corner of the browser window which allows you to access some five or six search engines directly.
More search engines of our choice can also be added.
Another useful feature is ’’Find As You Type’’ useful to find words on the webpage you are viewing.This is better than the ’’Ctrl+F’’ in IE.
Another useful feature is that of ’live bookmarks’which allow you to read news feeds (RSS feeds). News from BBC website comes as default, but more RSS feeds of your choice can be added.
Now the download managers like DAP and ’download express’ provide extensions on their respective website for integrating thier download managers into firefox.
A pop-up blocker is integrated with firefox.
Firefox does not support activeX and vbscripts which are the source of some security vulnerabilities.Firefox takes a bit longer to load initially than IE since firefox is not built into the operating system like IE. But once firefox is loaded, it is faster than IE in rendering web pages.Some of the websites which do not strictly adhere to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards may not display properly in firefox. But such sites are very few in number.
I think that when a security flaw is discovered in firefox it is patched a lot sooner than with IE.
At present I think firefox is much better than IE. But when firefox becomes more popular the troublemakers (virus-writers, spywares, malware etc) are likely to try to target firefox users also.
(I am sorry , but I do know how to use hyperlinks in mouthshut.)
Thank you for reading.
Please give a rating for the review