Time to Fire IE??. Review on Mozilla Firefox

I was required to use two browsers because I had to make some adjustments in proxy settings whenever there was a need to logon to client m/c's and different settings when accessing the intranet.

At this time I thought of using two browsers for two types of settings and Firefox 1.5(the latest release) was the obvious choice.

Firefox can be downloaded from https://mozilla.com.(Use View -> Source on the browser to copy the links)

The simultaneous switch was quite smooth.Install firefox browser from Mozilla's homepage.All the favorites(called bookmarks in FF),options and settings can be directly imported from IE.Just selece File->Import on the firefox browser.

The tabbed browsing feature does really make switching different websites faster and when minimized,it constitutes only one window.In office,one can google for some ''official'' sites and in different tabs, all the mails , mouthshut can be kept open so that when minimized, only the official site will be visible!!!

SOME SALIENT FEATURES:

@SPEED:

Firefox is faster than IE no doubt, but when it comes to loading Microsoft specific components or Activex controls,firefox is little slow(Activex is still not supported) as compared to IE.That is not much of an issue for the speed is slow for only specific websites using latest IE 6 features and numerically such sites are far and few.

INTEGRATED SEARCH ENGINES:

Firefox comes up with integrated search engines making the search faster,just select the word,right click and select any of the search engines integrated.In FF 1.5 google,answers.com and wikipedia quick searches are integrated for faster access

to search engines.

PLUGINS OR EXTENSIONS:

This is the favorite part.Plugins are softwares that enhance the work done by the browser.The extensions can be found @

https://addons.mozilla.org/?application=firefox .

The plugins recommended are

1) FOXYTUNES :

This is the best feature for music lovers,from the browser web page itself one can control any of the 15 available players(Winamp,wim MP,iTunes,Yahoo Music Engine and

others).Once selected, the player can be hidden and controlled from within the browser.All the options available for a generic media player are available on all the browser pages.No need for maximizing the player for FF,REW or playing next,prev song.

2) ADBLOCK :

The google Ads have become a real nuisance.These ads are shown in between the reviews on mouthshut too.Just install the Adblock plugin and automatically the google ads are blocked!!.One sees blank space instead of the google ads!.

It is good to see blank space in between reviews and comments rather than reading those nonsense?? ads.Adblock also comes with features to block specific banner ads

for specific websites!!

3) NOSCRIPT :

The NoScript extension blocks JavaScripts from running when a page is loaded.JavaScripts are not much of a potential threat even then , there is no harm in having this extension.

4) DOM INSPECTOR: For the technically inclined the DOM

Inspector plugin comes in quite handy in checking the front end design of a website, the tables used , their width.Also JavaScript outline used and the type of stylesheets used can be known.

There are many more plugins which I havent used and hence not listed.

IN CONCLUSION :

Firefox is a good browser, an alternative for IE.However as some websites are designed specifically for IE and the market for Firefox is not much for

most vendors to support and back it up.IE still has the job and its not fired by Firefox yet.