I know many of my more far-flung readers have, like me, been using Firefox for a very long time. When I saw the features list, I almost didn’t make the move to version 1.0, because everything was working so well. I’m glad I did. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems even faster. It still shocks me that people are using IE when there is such a good alternative out there. You might not think what browser you use matters much, but having recently tried to rescue a computer that had been pretty much rendered nonfunctional by Internet Explorer, the fix was easy enough: I installed Firefox on their machine and suggested that they forget IE ever existed. In other words, go download it.
Firefox, at its basic level, has a great set of features. I don’t know how I ever lived without tabbed browsing! But the extensions make it even more powerful. In my setup, I have the spellbound tool, which lets me spell check my forms (very helpful for blogging), and an Autofill extension that mimics IE’s utility. To help my language impairment, I have Translate Page, and I am eagerly awaiting an update to Moji so it will work with the new Firefox. I have a small extension that saves me keystrokes in using the Wayback machine. But the killer extension has to be Web Developer, which lets me edit CSS on the fly, on any web page, among other very useful things.
I am also using the excellent Mozilla Calendar, both at home and at work. They are linked using regular old ftp (no fancy webdav for me) to my web page, and I have a copy of PHP iCalendar displaying it to the public here. Except for an annoying bug that makes sharing my “to do” list a bit problematical, I have been very pleased with this set up. I only wish I could get my colleagues to both keep and share their calendars, but I doubt this will happen any time soon.
5 Comments
I’ve tried using Firefox, but it freezes when I try to open PDFs. By chance, do you know a solution?
Acrobat doesn’t play well with browsers sometimes. My IE/Acrobat combo went bad at one point, and that’s why I initially *switched* to Firefox. I’d suggest taking a shot at installing Firefox 1.0 (if you tried an earlier version) since it seems to be relatively bug-free, and then (re)install the acrobat plugin on top of that. I’ve had no difficulties in my setup on Firefox.
I love the tabbed browsing too. I see other people using IE with 20+ windows open (including pop up ads) and think “NO! It doesn’t have to be that way!”
I have problems with opening Adobe PDFs too, but usually if I wait a minute or 5 it straightens itself out.
Given that it is a program we definitely have open on our computers most of the time, web browsers need to be seriously considered. It’s like the “car” we drive on the information superhighway. Would you like to drive in an old Toyota, or a spanking new Lexus?
Acrobat 6.0 is far slower than previous version, in part because of the optional plug-ins. Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\plug_ins and move everything except EWH32.api and Search.api into the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\optional folder. The functions will still be available, but you won’t have to wait for them to load every time.
PS: I’ve been using Firefox since version .8, and I love it!
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