Called Firebird and renamed to Firefox (which means Red Panda according to the developers) , this is the latest addition to browser scene from Mozilla developers. The best thing about this browser is the ability to customise it. You can keep the browser as light as you want, or add as many new functions as you want by downloading free add-ons called ’’extensions’’.
Here are some of the features I like in Firefox:
Tabs:
One of the basic claim of superiority by any non-IE browser is based on tabbed browsing and Firefox is no different. A lot has been said on this, so suffice it to say that if you are the kind who is browsing a lot of sites together, tabbed browsing is a blessing. It keeps the taskbar clean, uncluttered and also gives easy access to the various opened sites.
Download Manager:
The download manager of Firefox is better than IE since it can pause and resume downloads. But it does not come anywhere near the functionality of full fledged download mangers because it cannot break and download a file in multiple segments or search for mirror sites etc. (like Download Accelerator Plus e.g.). Another thing that puzzled me was that though you can pause and resume a download, if you pause the download and close the browser, it is equivalent to cancelling the download and the partial download till then is lost. So this is no true download manager and if you are a heavy downloader it will not be sufficient for your needs.
Privacy:
The cookie handling is also better than IE since there is an option that cookies should be stored only for the current session or no third party cookies etc. In addition, there are also IE styled advanced rules (always allow/always block from a particular domain) to manage cookie behavior. So bye bye to those 99 year lifespan, spying cookies from Google.
Another great feature is the special rules for javascript handling. The options are provided to prevent javascript from modifying windows behavior (like forcibly staying on top, closing one windows spawning ten others etc.) or status bar etc.
Search Toolbar:
It comes with a search toolbar of its own so there is no need to install third-party spyware loaded search toolbars (like Google search toolbar). By default this searchbar searches on Google but you can add many other search engines to it very easily.
Extensions:
Now we come to the meatiest part of the browser which are its Extensions. These are pieces of code written by independent developers or enthusiasts that add functionalities to the browser. Here Ive described some of the most useful extensions that I have found.
Adblocker: Adblocker works something like any proxy such as Admuncher (a standalone adblocking program), which looks for certain keywords in a image tagline and removes the image whose tagline contains those keywords. These keywords are to be provided by the user. But it is very simple to specify the image you want to block. Just right click on the image and select ’’Adblock image’’. Or else you can give wildcard keywords e.g. add ’’ad’’ to block list and any image with this word in the tagline will be removed. The block lists can be easily exported-imported so you can easily back them up or share with friends.
Flashblocker: Huge flash banner containing sites is something that always annoyed me because my net connection is nothing great. The
Flash blocker extension can take care of this and remove the flash items from a page, at the same time giving you a link to activate every flash banner it has blocked.
’’Download With’’ :Another extension can straight away forward a link to your download manager to take care of integration of download mangers with the browser. These are just a very small part of all the extensions on offer. There’s a lot more for everybody’s needs and choices.
Support:
Some users have reported experiencing performance issues with Firefox but it worked great for me in Windows XP with lots of tabs opened. In any case there is a very active and helpful forum behind Firefox which is better than any customer support and where you can find answers to almost every question you ask.
Drawbacks:
The drawback with using a non IE browser like Firefox is that some sites optimized for Internet Explorer only (or meant to screw non-IE browsers) are not displayed correctly in Firefox. So you have to keep IE as a backup for these sites and occasionally resort to it. Thankfully another extension (’’IE View’’) makes this a bit less painful. This extension creates a item in right click menu called ’’open in IE’’ . Any link, or page already loaded in Firefox, can be quickly loaded in IE using this.
The pop-up blocker does a decent job of blocking unwanted popups but occasionally it errs on the side of caution i.e. it blocks even a legitimate, click induced pop-up and you are left waiting for minutes wondering why there is no activity on clicking a link :D
Also, unlike IE you cannot sort the bookmarks alphabetically by simply right clicking on the open, bookmarks drop-down-menu. But this is saved by an extension made for this purpose only (’’Sort Bookmarks’’). Firefox does not have a mail client (not that it bother me...still... :).
Conclusion
Give it a try and this browser will grow on you till you ditch IE and dont even know. The keyboard shortcuts are also mostly same as IE so migrating will be easier. But dont think of removing IE from your system just yet since there are some cross-browser compatibility problems.