Overview

Continuing my open-source software reviews, I've turned my attention to the brilliant Firefox. I'm writing this review for a few reasons, mainly because I'm getting tired of telling people the same thing again and again, in spreading the word on Firefox. This makes my life a whole lot easier.

Easily my favourite and most used application. What’s Firefox? I’m always surprised when people still look at me with a blank stare when I mention Firefox, but I guess you’ve got to be a heavy internet user to know or even care about these things. Most people I know don’t even realise that there are alternatives to Internet Explorer. Microsoft have done their job well in making it all seem that they won the browser war and that there really is only one way to surf the web. Oh but that’s not true. Nothing could be further from the truth. Enter Firefox by the Mozilla Foundation.

There’s a fantastic article on that tells the story behind Firefox and it’s co-creator, Blake Ross. For me Firefox opened my eyes to the world of Open Source code, and what a wonderful thing a community building software can actually be. So let’s get down to why I think Firefox is what you should be using to browse and surf the world wide web.

Features No Pop-ups This has been updated for Windows Service Pack 2, however this wasn’t the case before, and Firefox hit that little annoying thing of multiple pop-ups and what not on the head. It’s a simple thing, but essential to browsing, even trusted sites such as www.comicbookresources.com will be prone to using these annoying things. Job done with Firefox, no more of these things.

Tabbed Web Browsing Ah, I can’t live without this feature. Simple idea, but one of the best things about the program. Check out the picture below. Rather than opening 15 IE windows, they’re all housed neatly in one window and I can click quickly to whatever page I want to, without any problems whatsoever.

Password Manager Everything is housed here. All my passwords tucked away safely. I can control which sites I don’t want it to have the passwords, while others I’ll let it have them in there. Full control, which is essential to my usage of something as sensitive as this.

Themes Soo many to choose from. I’ve currently got about 10 downloaded, although I’m using Plastikfox Crystal since it’s a very colourful theme. If you want it to look like an Apple application you’ve got that option as well, and a plethora of other really well put together themes as well.

Bookmarks Manager Such a nice way of moving things up and down, add separators, but them in folders, all from any view you want. Either while it’s as a sidebar, or from it’s own window manager area. I remember the days of IE where I would HAVE to go to the special bookmarks window and sorting them out was not very simple.

Extensions One of the things that makes Firefox so powerful is the fact that there is a massive community out there, make extensions to better the functionality of the core code. What this brings is an absolutely EMMENSE amount of extensions that cater to just about every single need you might have, to customise this browser to whatever you want it to do. These are just the extensions I use on a regular basis. Going to the extensions library shows you just how small a slither these one are, but just to get you started here’s a couple:

Web Development When designing and testing a website, this extension is something I can’t do without. It’s simple it’s effective and gives me a much better appreciation of the design of the website. It’s got everything from div highlights, size of the actual divs, CSS markup, names the images, and oh so much more. I’ve not even scratched the surface of all the features but it’s a very powerful addition to anyone playing around with web design in any capacity. Download Web Developer extension here.

AdBlock Simple idea, as with most things in Firefox. Go around to all your favourite websites. Chances are there are ads. Don’t like them? Fine, right click, BLOCK AD. Oh look at that the ad’s disappeared. Continue to a few more websites, by the end of the week, any website you visit won’t have any ads since they come from roughly the same place. Hell it even takes care of the Flash ads if you really want! Details can be found here.

Gmail Notifier Well for those in the dark, Gmail, is Google’s e-mail service. It’s got a massive 1G storage space capacity, so seriously you never need to bloody delete any e-mails, ever. It looks ugly as sin, but hey it makes sending e-mail more fun. This little extension sits at the top next to everything else and once you’ve clicked it and logged in, will basically act as your watchdog for any new mail you might receive. Download Gmail notifier here.

Sage RSS reader My most used extension. RSS is a system where this little application will check all your favourite websites and see if they’ve updated since the last time that you visited. Not all websites have and RSS feed, however it’s something that is slowly but surely getting picked up by the major websites more and more. Again it’s fully customisable as with all other managers in Firefox. Download the Sage extension here.

Scrapbook This is a fantastic extension. I stumbled on it via Scripty Goddess. What we have here is a truly useful little addition, where if you find a particular page with content you’d like to keep, like online receipts, embedded quicktime movies etc, all you have to do is right click ‘Capture page’ and it simply saves the entire page AS IT IS onto a designated area on your hard disc. It then catalogues it and you get to sort everything out as the bookmark manager. I can’t live without this addition now, as I’ve collected some serious internet gems because of this. Download the Scrapbook extension here.

ColorZilla Trust me I hate spelling it that way, but anyway. This little addition sits in the bottom left hand corner of your browser. If you see a colour on screen you’d like the details of click and point the crosshair on the colour and bam you’ve got the exact colour details. Download it here.

Rating: 6/5. That’s how highly I rate this application.

Pros - So many. Apart from all the things I mentioned above, add that the development on this is constant and ongoing. It’s not like IE which hasn’t been updated in a few years. It’s completely compliant with Web Standards. The extensions keep coming from the community and are keep getting better and better. It’s got a great icon and it’s all COMPLETELY free. What’s not to like?

Cons - Trying hard to think of what I don’t like about Firefox. My only thought is the fact that it can’t search text fields. Having said that I can live with that. Honestly I really can.