Browser Know How – Firefox

Firefox is generally accepted at the browser which caused Mircosoft to have to restart development of Internet Explorer. Rising from the ashes of the former Netscape Navigator project, Mozilla‘s Firefox provided improved standards, and new features that are now known as standards in for the modern browser.  This would inlcude things like improved speed of displaying pages, improved support for web standards, tabbed browsing, and others.

However, Firefox’s biggest advantage comes from its extensiblity.  Where some browsers try to add everything in themselves, Firefox has kept it’s core fairly small, and allows third party developers to extend its ability, so users can add features they want, but not have features they don’t want.

The shear number of free extensions is why Firefox is the second most popular browser on the Internet, and the most popular browser that doesn’t come preinstalled with an operating system.

Some of the most popular free extensions include:

• FoxyTunes – an addon to control and play music within your browser
• AdBlock Plus – tool to block ads from websites.  Also blocks tracking scripts and pop-ups.  I find this one blocks about 95% of all ads.
• NoScript – blocks javascript from running – to speed up pages, reduce ads, and add a layer of security.
• Video DownloadHelper – To help you download FLV video files to your local computer.
• Firebug – for web development
• Foxforecast – for checking the weather in your browser quickly

Add to the list of add-ons, is that Firefox is continuously being updated with security patches as they are found, and new features, and no wonder Firefox is being used so often by so many people.

It has been my browser of choice for a while now (since version 1) and the only browser that comes close to its capabilities in regards to speed and stability if Google’s chrome.

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