Love For Firefox, Originally posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 on my now defunct Myspace blog.

20:48 - Love for Firefox Current mood: accomplished Category: Web, HTML, Tech I just want to sing out some praise for my new favorite web browser, Mozilla Firefox. Now, until just a while ago, I was still gasping for air from the death grip of Microsoft Internet Explorer. I've had Firefox on my computer for maybe a month now, and I never had it set as my default browser until now. I kind of used Internet Explorer and Firefox equally up until yesterday, when I finally said "I do" to the Firefox bandwagon. I love the fact that Firefox has the tabbed browsing, because I like to look up various different things, and I usually have at least 3 webpages open at one time. With Internet Explorer, you can group the windows on the taskbar, but it's a lot more inconvenient than what Firefox has got going on with the tabbed browsing. I also like the download feature. With Internet Explorer, I'm half afraid that if I download more than one thing at a time, my downloads will mess up on me. Firefox conveniently lets you download various files at the same time, with little worry that your downloads will fail.However, the download window is sometimes annoying, so I downloaded the Download Statusbar extension for Firefox, and it shows all my downloads down near the status bar, so I can 1) keep an eye on the progress of the downloads and 2) not be bothered by the download window. By the way, I really love all these extensions for Firefox. There are really a lot of them, some of them not as useful as others, but here's a list of my favorites so far: 1. Foxytunes – I like to listen to music sometimes while I'm surfing the net, and this little app in my status bar allows me to control my favorite music player right when I'm browsing, so I don't have to have to maximize my player to change the track. 2. PDF Download – I hate it in Internet Explorer when I have to wait for it to load the PDF before I can download it. It's usually much better for me to just download the PDF instead of view it in the browser. This lets me choose what to do with it, whether I want to download it or look at it in the browser. I've been waiting for something like this to come along for a long time. 3. Firefox Showcase – This is a relatively new one for me, I just got it yesterday, but I kind of like it because I sometimes have more than one Firefox window open with a bunch of tabs in each window, and this lets you see which tabs you have all in one window, and then lets you choose which tab to jump to. This is extrememly helpful when you know you have a tab open but just can't remember where you put it. 4. Mouse Gestures – This is a neat extension, one that I'm still learning. It lets you make commands by using your mouse to "draw" the commands. It's kind of cumbersome at times, and I have trouble making the right strokes for some commands, but the "Open New Tab" command has been a lifesaver for me. I was almost always doing File>New Tab. This is so much quicker. They also have a helpful sidebar that gives an example of all the "gestures" that you can make with your mouse in Firefox. I have a bunch of other extensions, but I've kind of found that they're not very useful. I guess the coolest thing about Firefox is that it's so customizable. I'm not sure if it can be customized for a specific user, like if you share your computer with other users, because I don't really share my computer with anybody that would customize their Firefox, but I'm sure that if it's not possible, it will be pretty soon. There's always new things coming out for Firefox, so I make sure I check back often.

Update: August 11, 2006

Well, I'm really still loving Firefox, although I'm not using Firefox Showcase or Mouse Gestures anymore. Both were great extensions, they just didn't fit in with my websurfing style. Here's some of my current favorites:

1. Blogger Web Comments - This is neat if you want to see who's blogging about a page that you're on. It runs in your status bar and looks like a little cartoon talk bubble. If there are blog entrys about that page, then a list of those blogs and a snippet of the entry will come up on a neat little menu. This is a cool way to find interesting blogs.

2. Colorful tabs - Before I had Colorful Tabs, the only way I could tell the difference between my tabs was the favicon (if it even had one). This extension makes each tab a different color. Really useful!

3. Diigo Toolbar - I've gotten really into bookmarking websites, and this little tool is the ultimate companion to my Diigo account.

4. Firefox Menu Buttons - These are some extra buttons for you to customize your toolbars with.

5. Forecastfox - This is a neat extension that runs in your status bar that tells you the current weather for your area and even includes a radar map.

6. Greasemonkey - This is a really neat one. You use this extension to add bits of DHTML and AJAX to different webpages to modify the page's behavior to your liking. You can remove ads, make the background a different color...there's literally thousands of different scripts that you can use.

7. Morning Coffee - This useful extension is for websites that you habitually check. You add the websites to your Morning Coffee, and then all you have to do from then on is click the toolbar button and voila! All your websites come up in their own tabs. I have websites like my email, news and diigo in my Morning Coffee.

8. Restart Firefox - This is great for when you install new extensions and themes.

9. Tab Mix Plus - This is a really cool one that allows you to customize how your tabs work, and there is a built in session saver that can really be a life saver if you r browser or computer crashes or if you accidentally close your window. As for some of the things you can do with tabs, you can do pretty much anything from showing a close button on the tab itself to changing the way links are opened in the tabs. Really a must have for the tabbed-browsing lover.