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Dear Firefox, you're the best!

I finally got around to installing Firefox on my system, and I have to say it's pretty cool. What with the ability to add as many plugins and extensions as you like and skin your browser as well it's pretty nifty. The skinning kind of reminds me of the NeoPlanet IE wrapper but more stable (you can't get it anymore).

So here are a few things that I like about Firefox:
  • You can skin it so it looks pretty
  • You can import cookies and bookmarks from IE so you don't have to manually try to port things over.
  • You can add multiple fun and often useful plugins to make your browser more customized to you and your needs.
  • The page find, now here's something that I really enjoy, it checks the page for the word you're looking for as you type it, the minute you start typing a word that's not on the page it makes a sound at you and lets you know. It'll even highlight the word on the screen for you in a different colour. No more of this half working finder crap in IE that can only search down or up or sometimes nowhere it would seem.
Now as for some of the plugins that I would highly recommend getting are these which can be found on the main Firefox website:
  • Cookie Culler - I like this one for it's ability for you to check all the cookies that you have on your system, you can delete 'em, or save 'em... the only thing you can't do is eat 'em :(
  • No Script - This one's pretty cool in that you can block javascript from running on your system. Only those sites that are whitelisted can execute javascript on your page. No more annoying popups or tracking programs! :D
  • Googlebar - Ok, you can get one just like this for IE, but hey, if it worked in one why not bring it into the other?
  • FireFTP - Finally a decent FTP client that I don't have to pay for or look at annoying ads.
  • StumbleUpon - Ahh yes, the only useless plugin I installed. This one basically sets up a button that you can use to "channel surf" the web based on interests that you specify. Basically, you click the button and it randomly selects a site based on your interests, once there you can view the site and either write a review for it, rate it (like/dislike) or just leave it and move on.
I'm sure there are many more great things about Firefox that I will discover in the future but that's about it for now. Please feel free to let me know of any features you like about Firefox.

Tabs!!

The number one reason for switching!

Ctrl-K to focus the Google search box at the top-right. I can't even begin to calculate the amount of time that saves me.

Hmm, what else. You use Bloglines, but Firefox supports Livemarks - RSS feeds in the links bar below the address entry box (which Safari shamelessly ripped off).

And it's the little things that make it better. Like if I want to set an image in a webpage as a background, Firefox lets me customize stretching, tiling, etc instead of the mystery meat you get with IE.


Having said that, Firefox isn't so great when it starts massacring your harddrive. IE pops up a lot quicker. You'll notice this especially if it ever crashes on you. I swear to God it recompiles itself 10 times or something before loading again.

So that's what it's doing! I was beginning to wonder if it was just my computer or what.

And oh yes the tabbing is pretty good stuff even though I had to tinker with it (i.e. create user.js file) in order to get the setting so it would stop behaving like IE.

As for the RSS feeds in the links bar, that's ok, I don't need it, I already have about 40 feeds and don't need them cluttering up my bar. The little link button that I've created to go directly to Bloglines is enough.

Oh and one last thing, the fact that Hotmail doesn't load properly 80% of the time really bugs me.

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