Firefox: not just for geeks anymore
Posted by twotalents on February 27, 2006
I’ve been using Mozilla’s Firefox browser for quite some time. It was love at first sight. Or use. It began with tabbed browsing and culminated with the increased security (versus Internet Explorer), a multitude of plug-ins and other add-ons and the little things that set it apart. I just learned another of those little things a short time ago. Did you know that if you click on a link using your mouse scroll whell button (push down on the scroll wheel) that link will open in a new tab? No more having to right click and decide if you want the page to open in a new window or tab (I almost always choose new tab, so this is a great feature). If you want the page to open in a new tab just use the scroll wheel button.
I also installed two new extensions (a.k.a. plug-ins) this morning and love them. Actually, let me list the extensions I’ve installed:
- Fasterfox (optimizes the browser so pages open faster)
- Nuke Anything Enhanced (allows you to remove any image, block of text, etc. from a page–poof, it’s gone)
- Colorful Tabs (each tab is a different color; looks nice and gives a minor usability improvement)
- Tabs Mix Plus (offers even more options for how tabs are displayed, recovering closed tabs, tab display and improvement, and more)
I also have 6 different themes installed (counting the default one). Themes are how the browser displays. This means not just the color, but the size, shape and actual image of buttons, tool bars…pretty much everything you see. If anyone cares, here are the themes I’ve installed (a simple click of the mouse can change from one to the other):
- Noia 2.0 Extreme (my favorite)
- Black Japan
- Aquatint
- Netscape Aluminum
- Brushed
- Default theme (which is itself better than IE)
If you are someone not real familiar with computers and technology (sort of an anti-geek) you might find Firefox confusing and intimidating. Don’t. I got my wife to start using it by making it the default browser in her profile. Why force it on her? Because it is more secure than IE. However, she found she likes it, it’s easy to use (if you can use IE you can use Firefox) and she’s now interested in the enhancements available. Firefox is good stuff that geeks (me) and non-geeks (wife) go for. Just think, if the majority of Internet users users used Firefox life would be better for all of us. I bet world peace would even break out. For all we know the Muslims are angry about seemingly everything because they are stuck with Internet Explorer. If you haven’t tried Firefox, give it a shot. It’s free and you can always switch back to IE, although I would have to question your sanity if you did.
I’ve tried Opera too (they now offer a free version). It’s nice, better than IE, but there were a couple of bugs in it that annoyed me. It gave me no reason to switch to it over Firefox. In summation:
IE is deficient, staid and boring
Opera is good
Firefox is wonderful
