Mozilla Firefox is undoubtedly the leader in the much touted ’browser wars’. It is fast and stable. It has a neat user interface and good looks. But what makes it stand apart is its customizability . The user is the owner of the way s/he wants to experience the web. The countless add-ons that cover a wide variety of fields and functionalities make surfing the web a pleasurable experience. Certainly, the add-ons make it difficult to beat.
Mozilla Firefox 3 was launched earlier this year with much hype and fanfare. Thankfully, it lived up to expectations. The most powerful innovation introduced in the new version is ’The Awesome Bar’ which lets the user conveniently select previously visited pages from a drop-down menu, which saves you the trouble of typing in web addresses. So revolutionary was this new feature that Opera immediately updated to a new version to include this.
The bookmarks feature has been streamlined and should prove to be of help to those who use it frequently. Also, the browser now lets you subscribe to feeds by clicking an icon in the address bar. But what hands Mozilla Firefox an unassailable lead over other browsers is the myriad and diverse add-ons -- small pieces of software that integrate with the browser to increase its functionality manifold.
For instance, AdBlock Plus blocks out all unwanted advertisements, and thus increases the loading speed of web pages. Dictionary ToolTip lets you look up the meaning of a word by simply double-clicking it. TabMix Plus enables you to manage and optimize the use of the revolutionary ’tabs’.
Most importantly, a lot of bugs have been patched up to beef up security and put it on par with the highly secure Internet Explorer 7.
How does it fare against the other browsers?
IE simply pales in comparison to Firefox -- even IE7 comes nowhere near. Though AOL has now abandoned Netscape Navigator and won’t release updates, it remains a reasonably good alternative, but lacks the customizability of Firefox . Opera is great -- sleek, fast and innovative. But once again, the limited availability of plug-ins renders it a close second for me. And all those lower rung browsers such as Slim Browser and Avant aren’t even in the reckoning!
Of course, there are a few cons amidst the sea of virtues! Zealously installing many add-ons may lead to crashes, as some of them have been reported to have had such ’crashing effects’. Also, the smooth scrolling feature is not as ’smooth’ as Opera’s. Moreover, the browser taxes system resources heavily, which may cause the system to freeze once in a while.
Notwithstanding the small glitches, it’s the best you can have!