Genii Weblog
Finally getting around to trying Firefox
Fri 5 Nov 2004, 11:07 AM
Tweetby Ben Langhinrichs
My daughter couldn't believe I still use Internet Explorer as my main browser, so I am trying to pry my Luddite head out of the technological swamp and give Firefox a try. It was easy to download, and the install only had a couple of odd glitches. Everything looks good so far, but I wonder if anybody has hints or tips about what to look for that I didn't have in IE (besides a really good popup blocker, which worked immediately)?
Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.
What has been said:
229.1. Duffbert (11/05/2004 08:37 AM)
People seem to be hooked on the tabbed interface feature. Instead of launching separate windows, they end up launching new tabs in the same browser window.
I've been using Firefox at home for awhile now, and it's nice. It may be more just the knowledge that I'm trying something new, supporting open source, and also protecting against potential IE exploits. But whatever the reason, I feel good about making the switch.
229.2. Rob McDonagh (11/05/2004 08:47 AM)
Tabs, tabs, and tabs. My top 3 favorite features of FireFox. That plus the additional control I have over the way it behaves, in general.
229.3. David Bockes (11/05/2004 10:37 AM)
A couple of handy extensions that I use are Super DragAndGo and IEView. Super DragAndGo gives you a quick way to launch sites by letting you drag a link in a page to an open area of the page and it will open the new link in it's own tab. The tab stays in the back ground so if you want to reference something later and keep reading the page you're on. This is great when Googling. The IEView extension adds an option in the context menu to open a page in Internet Explorer. Handy for testing browser compatibility.
229.4. lee (11/05/2004 10:41 AM)
And more tabs. Get "tabbrowser extensions".
Other Extensions I load include
image zoom
bloglines toolkit
linkiifcation
DOM inspector
Web Developer
ieview
229.5. Colin Pretorius (11/05/2004 04:39 PM)
Tabs and pop-up blocking makes it for me, but I also like that all settings, bookmarks, cache etc for a user profile branch off a single directory.
Upsides:
1) simplicity: a single directory to back up. A single html file for bookmarks. A handful of settings files - doesn't touch the registry (yay!)
2) the profile directories are configurable so you can move your data outside of the dreaded "application data" folders and shuffle them around to your heart's content, much like you can with a Notes data directory.
3) if you ever get a dual-boot machine, you can run Firefox in both Windows and Linux, AND you can even share your profiles across both systems with a bit of tweaking.
229.6. David Bailey (11/05/2004 05:35 PM)
Ctrl+ to increase font size and Ctrl- to decrease font size. Gettin' old is tough.
229.7. Bruce Elgort (11/05/2004 09:20 PM)
Hey - doesn't Notes use a tabbed UI too? :-)
229.8. Josef (10.11.2004 00:18)
Plus:
- Mouse Gestures
- WeatherFox
Cheers