chaud
Master Poster
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 235
|
 Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:34 am Post subject: Firefox Review |
 |
|
Hey, just wanted to post my firefox review.
Okay, the first thing you need to know about Firefox is, it is a browser. It is similar to Internet Explorer, but so much safer and flexible. Any type of popups that Internet Explorer plagued you with can be gone. A small list of Firefox features is below:
- Tabbed Browsing
- Update Notifications
- Extentions
- Themes
- Popup Blocker
- Information Bar
- Find toolbar
- RSS Bookmarks
- Cross Platform
- Much more secure
- No ActiveX support
- Open Source
I'll start with tabbed browsing. Take a look at how it works below.
Each tab is like a single window in Internet Explorer. This method of browsing allows you to switch pages faster, and it also takes up less room on your taskbar. You can arrange bookmarks into folders, and open each folder of bookmarks into tabs by choosing one item. I enjoy the ability to switch pages right there near all the other controls.
Quick Tip: To switch tabs hit Ctrl+Tab, to close a tab hit Ctrl+W, to make a new tab hit Ctrl+T
Onto my next topic, Update Notifications. These pop up when something in Firefox has been updated. Now, I know, you may be comparing them to windows updates when they popped up a box every hour or so, but they are much less intrusive. Below I have taken a picture of the update icon. When Firefox detects that an update is available, it flashes the icon there every once in a while, a gentle reminder compared to the annoying windows box.
When you click on the icon, it give you the options of which part to update, then gives you a list, and you can choose which updates you want to install. The update engine then downloads the updates, and installs them. After that process is complete, it gives you the opportunity to restart Firefox. You can find more extentions here.
One of the things that gives Firefox so much functionality and flexibility, is Extentions. Below is a list of popular extentions and a short description.
- Dictionary Search Allows you to select a word, right click on it, and look it up in the dictionary. Offers a choice of where to search for the word.
- Mouse Gestures This is one of the hottest extentions in use today, with similar features in other browsers. They allow you to press a certain button on your mouse, and drag a certain shape or pattern, and ann action will be automatically performed. For example, dragging right goes forward, dragging left goes back, going up then right switches tabs. These allow you to save time, and have very flexible options.
- ForecastFox is one of my favorite extentions. When I wake up in the morning, or anytime during the day, I can glance down at the Firefox status bar, and see the current temperature, and the forecast for the rest of the day, and tomorrow. I can mouse over a radar icon, and see a mini radar picture of my state. You can set a certain amount of time to refresh, and every certain amount of refreshes, a small bar can pop up with the current temperature and conditions outside. This extension gets its data from weather.com
Quick Tip: ForcastFox will NOT work until you configure it
- Adblock is another popular extension. Firefox has a built in popup blocker, and it does a decent job, but this takes adblocking to the next level. Click on an ad and select an option, and you will never see that ad again. Adblock can also block flash ads, and floating ads. It does a great job of blocking things, but does have a few small bugs.
- IEView comes in handy every once in a while. You can right click on a page and hit view in IE, and IE will open and load the page. This is useful for sites that use ActiveX. (On a side note, there is an retention that you can install that enables ActiveX)
- Foxytunes is another favorite of mine. In the status bar, controls are added to control your favorite media players. Play, pause, stop, next song, previous song, volume, and the title are displayed. Foxytunes supports WinAmp, iTunes, foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Musicmatch, Quintessential, J. River, jetAudio, XMPlay, MediaMonkey, Media Player Classic, Sonique, wxMusik, Real Player, XMMS, Noatun, Juk, Amarok, Music Player Daemon, Rhythmbox and many other players.
Themes are another important part of Firefox. Before, with Internet Explorer, you had one look, unless you installed a 3rs party program, most likely loaded with malware. Firefox gives users the ability to change the look of the browser at the click of a button. I enjoy the theme called Charmel. Below is a picture comparing the default to Charmel.
You can find more themes here.
Quick Tip: New skins will not work until Firefox is restarted
Firefox also features a very good built in popup blocker. It can handle almost any kind of popup advertisement that someone can throw at you. The default blocker with default settings passed all but two tests on popuptest.com. Internet Explorer failed five of the tests.
In Firefox, when a popup is blocked, the icon circled in red appears on the status bar, giving you the options listed.
Firefox also has an Information bar, just like Internet Explorer, I wonder which had it first.  It tells you when Firefox takes action in blocking something or changing something.
Quick Tip: To stop the information bar from popping up when something happens, remember to check "Don't show this message when popups are blocked"
One thing I love, much better than what Internet Explorer has, is the find feature. As you type in the letters to search for, Firefox is constantly looking for the first word that matches, and highlights it, and changes dynamically. To find the next ,all you have to do is hit enter, and it doesn't even cover half the screen.
Quick Tip: When searching, if you go to the next page, Firefox will not automatically search the page for you, you need to hit enter
The RSS bookmarks are one of the best features of Firefox, because they allow you to have fresh info right in your booksmarks. Any site that offers a RSS feed can be added to the bookmarks. RSS feeds are also automatically detected, so that adding them becomes much easier. Pictured below, circled in red is the icon that automatically pops up when a RSS feed is detected, after clicking subscribe, it is added to your bookmarks.
Quick Tip: To add an RSS feed to your bookmarks, hit "Subscribe to "FEED NAME", and it will appear in your bookmarks.
Quick Tip: If you right click the Live Bookmark, and hit properties, you can use the URL in other RSS readers
The next picture shows what you can read in your bookmarks.
Installing Firefox is a snap, it even has a wizzard that helps you to move your bookmarks, cookies, history, and settings from Internet Explorer to Firefox.
Firefox is a cross platform program, it will work on Windows and Linux. It is also open source, so any bugs are fixed quickly, and it is much more flexible than Internet Explorer. If it doesn't have something you want, you can actually change it, provided that you know what you are doing. Firefox's lack of ActiveX support makes it much better at blocking malware. Firefox renders just as fast as IE, and has every feature and more.
The address bar has a feature that comes in very handy to me. If you type in a search term, and hit enter, Firefox automatically uses Google's, "I'm feeling lucky" tool, and takes you to the first site. You can also highlight some words or phrases, and then right click to hit search for. This opens a new tab behind your current one, and allows you to keep reading while the search loads.
Another wonderful feature of Firefox is the Google Search bar. This is a handy little tool. To search google, you type in what you want to search for, and hit enter. If you click on the Google logo, you can choose from a variety of other engines to search, including Amazon.com, Dictionary.com, Yahoo.com, Ebay.com, and more. If that isn't enough for you, you can always go to the Firefox site and add more engines. This is the smallest, most useful searching tool that I have ever seen in a browser. The Internet Explorer equivilent is the Google Bar, and to add all of the engines that Firefox has, you would need 10+ bars. I say claim some screen real
Firefox also notifies you of what plugins you need to properly view a page. If there is an automatic install, you can just click next and install it. If not, it helpfully points you towards the manuall install download. This brings up a small point, with Firefox, you must install Java and Flash, and any other plugin before they will display correctly in Firefox. While Internet Explorer already has these features built in, this does not even near outweigh the features Firefox has over it.
The review with all of the pictures can be found at http://chaudx.info |
|
Forum FAQs 
Knowledge Base 
Memberlist 
Usergroups 
Hosting
Register
Donate 
Profile 
Log in 
