Random Synapses

I’m joining the crowd which announces that Mozilla Firefox, the lightweight yet ultra-powerful web browser from Mozilla, has finally reached version 1.0. It has a load of improvements and bug fixes (even if not all known bugs were actually fixed yet), it makes surfing more productive and more secure, and I can’t think of any reason why someone would use any other browser, especially Internet Explorer.

Firefox uses “extensions” to enhance its functions with third party software, and “themes” to change its appearance (like “skins” in Winamp). Note that older extensions and themes will probably not work with the newest version, so you will need to get the updated versions of those as well if you have used an older version of Firefox. The best way to upgrade is still saving the bookmarks (Bookmarks menu, Manage bookmarks, File menu, Export), uninstall the old version, then install the new one on the clean drive and import back the bookmarks (if needed).

To make tabbed browsing more efficient than the default tab behaviour, consider getting the Tabbrowser Extensions extension. The author’s website has the most recent version, unlike Mozilla Update site. Another useful extension is Download Manager Tweak which improves the download manager built into Firefox, but this extension has not been updated yet to work under Firefox 1.0 final. Keep an eye out for it, though.

As for the user interface, I like a clean appearance, not too colorful or intrusive; that’s why I settled for Bernie Zimmermann’s version of GrayModern theme. It’s simply a pleasure to look at, and it works under Firefox 1.0.

Give Firefox a try. It might seem “different” at first, but after you start to get used to it you will love the extra features over other browsers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 11th, 2004 at 4:00 pm and is filed under General, PC stuff, Tips & tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.