Firefox - A bloggers best friend

If you are used to Internet Explorer (and I believe you are really stuck in there for a long time), you should now, give Firefox a try. Not only is it a lot more compliant to the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) than the IE, it’s got a lot more advantages that will make it a lot more easier for your browsing experience and if you do ‘Blog’ a lot then ‘Firefox’ is the way to go by a far margin of difference to IE..

At this moment, you may ask - What makes Firefox stand out so significantly?

Well, here are the few easy access tools visible in Firefox

Faster Response – First conspicuous difference you will see is SPEED, A typical webpage will load faster on Mozilla Firefox than Internet Explorer (It’s proven that it is the FASTEST browser to date)

Security - Because many of those malicious plug-in ’s that cause your everyday web surfing into a trip to hell and back are mostly programmed for Internet Explorer, having Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser can save you tons of headaches.

Open Source Advantage – Clearly a positive reinforcement to the browsers advantage, The Mozilla project is an Open Source project where thousands of independent programmers can work on finding security holes before they are exploited.

Cleaner Interface - Firefox isn’t filled with clutter such as a history button or other buttons that take up most of the area in Internet Explorer. Firefox offers 2% more space to web pages than Mozilla, 4% more than Internet Explorer, and a whopping 10% more than Opera.

Smaller Download - Ignoring the fact that Internet Explorer comes integrated with Windows, Firefox is almost half the size of Internet Explorer meaning half the time downloading.

Block Images - When right clicking on an image, the user is given the option to block all images from that webpage. This feature comes in handing when visiting a site that holds many pictures, many due to ads, which can be disabled for faster surfing.

Tabbed browsing - Once you’ve been accustomed to it, you will never want to let it go and can’t do without it.

Integrated search Engine and page search- Without the cumbersome task of installing any toolbars you have a search field and the choices are there for you to decide. The page searches felid also does not annoyingly pop-up but is tucked in to the browser interface in the bottom, above the status bar and makes it a more pleasing and useful assist.

Session Restore - Ever had you computer crash and you had several pages open, most of which you hadn’t bookmarked yet? Simply open Firefox and it’ll ask you, whether you want to continue where you left of or start a new session with an empty browser. Unlike IE where you have to download a ‘third-party’ tool , like “IE7Pro v0.9.14” and it too does not do it perfect all the time (I’ve checked it multiple times with more than 14 tabs open and crashing IE, which by the way is very easy to do a crash test”

Highly customizable - Through chrome.css, about:config and theme support, you can customize appearance and behavior of your Firefox to a great extent.

png alpha bending - If your using IE < 7.0, I apologize for the screwed up transparency your browser is showing you.

Popup Blocking - In this day in age, an internet browser without a popup blocker is like having a broadband connection without a fireball. “Firefox stops annoying popup windows dead in their tracks”, according to Mozilla.org, and that’s exactly what it does. Visiting a popup blocker test page, Firefox’s built in popup blocker was able to close all popup windows while the page loaded and during the page's on load event. At http://www.popup-blocker.info test page, several test can be ran to prove your popup blocker’s power. Mozilla Firefox built in popup blocker was able to handle the “Stress Test”, which according to pop-up blocker.info… “[Stress tests] attempts to overcome your pop-up killer by trying to spawn large numbers of windows as quickly as possible.” Firefox popup blocker was able to close all 200 popup windows without even breaking a sweat. Trying this with IE and no popup blocker would probably bring your pc to its knee’s. You can also easily access the list of websites that the popup blocker blocks and altering its state by a simple click.

Download Manager - A feature which I thought was going to be integrated in Internet Explorer 6 was a download manager. Download managers allow you to manipulate and take control of your downloaded files. Mozilla Firefox’s download manager contains just the essentials to allow you to control your downloads. You can pause your download and continue it a later time, something which is not possible with IE’s download manager. Apart from sporting a nice look, the download manager stores the information such as size and location of your downloaded file. When the download is complete, a small notification is displayed in the lower right side of the screen.

Options - Less confusing and cluttered than IE’s Internet Options is another factor in Mozilla Firefox. You can easily navigate through each setting. Deleting saved passwords is a snap and clearing any saved history. The “Downloads” section of the options allows the user to choose which program will automatically open a downloaded file.

Live Titles - Possibly the coolest new feature is Live Titles, formerly Microsummaries, which allows Web sites to stream updated data to your bookmarks. You can add the Live Titles functionality to the Merriam-Webster dictionary site, for example, and once you have done so, when you bookmark a page, you can choose the Live Title option to display the word of the day in your bookmark. When you drop down the bookmark menu or open the bookmark side panel, you'll see the Merriam-Webster logo followed by the word of the day. For news sites such as the BBC's, you'll see the latest headline. Think of Live Titles as RSS-like feeds for your otherwise static bookmarks.

Web rendering engine - The underlying Web rendering engine within Firefox 2 is Gecko 1.8, and it is largely unchanged from the previous release, Firefox 1.5. The next release of Firefox should include a new rendering engine.

Antiphishing technology – Within Firefox 2 is good, and the technology has steadily improved throughout the various betas I've seen. While testing Firefox 2 on a fraudulent Bank of America site less than one hour old; the program caught the page immediately. For comparison, IE 7 also flagged the same fraudulent banking site. Most phishing sites are removed after their initial 72 hours of existence. In general though, it was found that stand-alone antiphishing filters, such as Netcraft's, perform far better at flagging brand-new phishing sites than antiphishing filters bundled with Internet browsers.

Then there are a Add-On ’s galore - There is a lot of Add-On for Firefox that will be a great support on your bloggers journey. These are just my favorites. I’m sure you will discover others while you browse around. (And you can check the Mozilla Firefox add-on site for more)

SearchStatus - Shows Google PR, Alexa Rank and Compete Rank of the site your looking at. It has some other features as well, but is especially useful because with it installed, visitors to your site get counted by Alexa, without the need to use the Alexa toolbar (which is only available for the IE).

Screen Grab! - A great, really easy to use tool to take screenshots.

Firebug - A great help for web development.

ColorZilla - A nice colorpicker (amongst other things).

Adsense Notifier - Do you use Adsense? This Add-On gives you a constantly updated status report in your browser’s status bar. No need to check the site.

Better GReader - If you use the Google Reader, this provides some very useful tweaks.

Snap Links - Got a list with links you want to open? Draw a rectangle around it, and Snap Links opens every link in a new tab. (Alternatively you can use Mouse Gestures. Thanks to TheMightyBlad for the tip)

The StumbleUpon Toolbar - The toolbar for my favorite social media site.

Fine, let’s evaluate what I have discussed so far…

The good: Firefox 2 adds built-in antiphishing protection, search engine suggestions, session restore, inline spell-checking, and Live Titles; the browser is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux; localized versions available in many different languages.

The bad: The Firefox 2 uninstall leaves behind a mess; some 1.5 version add-ons will break in 2.0; there are no thumbnail previews of open tabs; the browser doesn't yet pass the Web Standards Project Acid2 test.

There are many enhancements within Firefox 2, making it a worthy upgrade for existing users and a fine introduction for new users. Firefox is truly innovative, yet it's also very practical for everyday use.

These are just a few reasons to switch to Firefox. I’m sure I could have come up with a lot more, but since I’ve been using it for a long time now; I don’t know the newest IE working within ‘Vista’ though it is still the same v7.0.5730.11 , But if it peaked your interest, browse around, and I’m sure you’ll find even more reasons. I like my Firefox, and so does a vast majority of the bloggers I know.

Now, If you haven’t already - Go and get Firefox.

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