I've been using Firefox for about a year and the experience has been breathtaking. It changed my surfing style on the net. I want to share the experiences i've had with IE and Firefox with you.
When i first used firefox, it felt like a new and fresh browsing experience. I became interested in it because IE hasn't showed any progress since 2001 and its drawbacks were limiting. First, it lacks tabs. I liked firefox's tabs so much that if i have to use IE, i miss the comfort of useful firefox tabs. Second, the security problems with IE was driving me crazy. Some spyware infected IE and i have lost hours of productivity trying to get rid of them. The most disturbing one was the home page changer. It changes your home page whilst you use a antivirus software. One time it took me a whole day to clean my PC from it. That day I searched for anti-spyware products and installed a few including Microsoft Anti Spyware(MAS). MAS was developed because of rising complaints about IE and its vulnerability to spyware. MAS resolved these problems but i didn't forget that days.
Another disturbing problem with IE was pop-up menus. Nearly all web sites tend to have one on their main pages, and were generally advertisements. Pop-ups slow page loads, gobble up bandwidth, and take time to close. Since i use firefox my pop-up problems vanished. When
I started to use firefox I realized what I lost with IE pop-ups, however with firefox 1.5, it usually tells me if there is a popup, and if its a useful one it knows to open it. Although IE in SP2 has the option to block popups, there still exists spyware and websites that can circumvent the protection.
After I met
Firefox all of these problems have gone away. Yes there are some oddities but the advantages outweigh these. Beside solving these annoying IE issues, Firefox brings some very cool and new tools.
Tabbed BrowsingThis is the most important reason why I switched to Firefox from Internet Explorer.
Tabbed browsing is a godsend. I'm browsing the internet up to 7 hours a day, so i need a fast and
easy way to navigate. Internet Explorer is fine for 2-4 pages, however when it comes to viewing 10 or more pages simultaneously it becomes cumbersome. More pages means decrease in performance. Another problem i experienced with IE is when I want to open an empty new
window while viewing a web page it opens the same page and not an empty one. With Firefox tabs, i can open a new tab by pressing Ctrl + T. Firefox overcame all of these problems with tabbed browsing. It is a very simple and efficient solution.
Download ManagerThe download manager is a very basic but powerful tool. It took some time to become familiar with it. There is a small window that shows current and completed downloads, allowing me to watch the download status and quickly open completed files. After clicking the link we
wanted to download this window appears with two options. They are "open it with x application" and "save it to hard drive". I use both of them. This is not something new; IE has the same option. But in firefox if you choose to save it on the hard drive, the download manager window does not disappear. When a download finishes it alerts you by flashing. You can open any file that hasn't been cleaned up. This way it is easier to download a lot of files simultaneously and
open any of them.
Its default target directory is Desktop. To make it more useful I created a new folder in the desktop directory named Download. Then changed its icon to a disk image. When i download something it places the file to my download directory. When i want to delete some redundant
file to open some empty space first i look at my download folder. If this is not enough for you and you need further control over your downloads there is another option. You can install *the
flashget extension. Flashget is a professional download tool you may know already. It uses all of your bandwidth to download files. You can change this by hand, by playing with its options. I used it for awhile but nowadays Firefox's basic Download manager is enough for me.
Extensions like flashget, can be very useful. For example when i open a lot of tabs in a firefox window and need to save them all, i go one by one and save them. This is waste of time. I say "I wish there was a button named "Save All Tabs" to do this job for me". Recently i learned
about an extension which serves this wish, named "Session Saver". I did not install it because every extension you install means new security risks. But perhaps i will try it someday. While i was reading about extensions I realized that most popular ones integrated to basic firefox setup. This shows firefox is growing by adding new features nevertheless staying stable and secure. This is why i like this Fox!
Searching With FirefoxSearch ToolbarFirefox has a built in search engine toolbar. This basic toolbar involves Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Msn and some
others . It brings you nearly all major search engines and some services that have search engines like Technorati and IMDB. While surfing on the net, reading articles, blogs or anything else if there is a phrase that you don't know type it in this toolbar and hopefully you will find the answer. This toolbar supports drag-and-drop. Select the text you want to search then drag and drop it to search toolbar text area and press enter. That is it! This feature makes things much easier. Now there are 6 different search options in my search toolbar. You are free to add more by the link "Add Engines" at the bottom of this list.
Location BarLocation Bar is another search engine. This can sound funny but it is absolutely true. It uses google's "I'm Feeling Lucky"TM search tool. When you type for example "Yahoo Mail" and press enter it directly opens Yahoo Mail web site. It has drag and drop property too.
Search in a Web PageTo search within a web page just press ctrl + F and type the phrase. This search tool is a very basic but effective one. You can go forward or backward by "Find Next" and "Find Previous" buttons. There is a radio button near "Match Case". It used to narrow search to exact word.
"Highlight all" button highlights all the words in the page that it finds. Additionally, there is a preference to allow to 'Search while you type'. This means that you can just start typing the word you're looking for and a toolbar at the bottom of the browser will popup with
a find dialog. You can find this by going to Preferences->Advanced->"Begin finding when you begin typing".
SupportFirefox has a unique feature that IE does not have. You can reset it to default when you have a problem. To do this go to Start menu and Click "All programs". Find Mozilla Firefox. There is two options there. Choose Safe mode. I used it recently. Because i have some problems with my bookmarks.I searched the net for a solution and come up with this "safe mode" property and give it a try. But it did not work the way I expected. At the end i had to reinstall Firefox. This was my fault. I restarted my PC *with the reset button. When i opened it on the next day all my bookmarks were gone! So reinstalling it seemed last chance for me. This Safe Mode tool needs some more improvements.
Mozilla has a brilliant and informative support web site. You can find nearly any information about Firefox there. What it brings new to browser space, how to install firefox, Help pages, Extension and Plug-in download pages, developer help pages and Spread Firefox fun center. If
you visit
Spread Firefox, you will understand how much people like Firefox and support it!
Firefox Logo and Browser DesignGenerally Open Source softwares lacks of the quality design and good looking user interface. This is not true for Firefox. It is a masterpiece from a design point of view. Its logo, browser, and support web page design are top-notch. Eye candy buttons and icons, simple but nice interfaces are some of the good design samples.
ProblemsThere are some problems i experienced with firefox. First while viewing some pages (i can only remember nba.com but there is a few more) Firefox crashed suddenly. This didn't happen until i installed version 1.5 so this could be an outdated bug. Secondly some site's menus don't work
on it. For example the site that the soccer team i support has have this issue. I view it with IE when i wanted to use its menu.
ConclusionI can say firefox is the best browser you can use nowadays. It has some problems but i expect developers to solve them. If you are a IT pro or Computer Scientist (Like Me) you can help to improve Firefox. I hope this guide helps you to think about why to switch firefox. Above i described why i
switched to Firefox and its main properties. Here i want to list some tips that i'm using regularly.
10 Most Useful Tips1- Switch Between TabsCtrl + tab goes next tab, Ctrl + shift + tab goes previous tab.
Ctlr 1 selects first tab, Ctrl selects second tab.
2- Changing Font Sizectrl + mouse wheel up or down
ctrl + (+,-)
3- Open/Close New Window, TabOpen new Tab Ctrl + T, Close tab Ctrl + W or click it with mouse middle button.
Open new window Ctrl + N , Close window Alt + F4.
4- SearchingSearch within current page Ctrl + F .
Switch to Search Toolbar Ctrl + K .
Switch to Location Bar ctrl + L .
5- Stop/Reload/SaveReload f5
Stop Esc .
Save Page As ctrl + S .
Reload (override cache) ctrl + f5 .
6- Toggle Full ScreenToggle Full Screen F11 .
Bookmark This Page Ctrl + D .
Open Bookmarks Ctrl + B .
Open History Ctrl + H .
7- Clear Cache/Download ManagerGo to Tools -> Options -> Privacy
8- Customize ToolbarsChoose View, Toolbars, Customize .
9- Opening Links in New Window/TabPress Ctrl while clicking a link to open it in a new tab.
Press Shift while clicking a link to open it in a new window.
10- MozBackupUse
MozBackup to Backup your profiles.
Note: I want to thank
Jakob Perry for his help with this article. He helped to proofread it. English is not my first language. It took huge amount of time to complete this long article. If you want to help proofreading my articles or help me to learn how to write good English articles please contact me at technewsblog at yahoo dot com . You can use comment link below this article to tell us your experiments about Firefox and other browsers.
Some times ago i discovered nvidia's "Display Optimization Tool". You can double your display's quality by this simple tool.
