The Fox is in the Henhouse
I’ve been meaning to do this for a couple of days, but better late than never: if you are still using Internet Explorer, go download Firefox now. That link should be the last one you ever click with IE.
“But hold on,” you say, “I’m just a mindless follower, and IE still has over 90% of the browser market. Shouldn’t I just use what everyone else does?”
Yes, you might think that, but you’d be wrong. Over 90% of people don’t drive a new BMW, but if I offered you one in exchange for your ‘99 Taurus, would you turn me down? That’s the deal here. You can continue to use an outdated browser so beholden to commercial interests that it can’t even be bothered to block unrequested pop-up windows, or you can use a free, fast, open source browser that you can customize with any combination of thousands of extensions that seamlessly improve your browsing experience. If you’ve ever valued any computer advice I’ve given you, go install Firefox now. Then go install some of these extensions. I’ve found all of them useful, I bet you’ll at least like a couple:
Adblock
Almost as bad as pop-up ads are the enormous Flash banners that take up half the page. Adblock lets you block specific banner ads or entire ad servers, however you like. You can import my block list if you like, it blocks many of the most annoying servers.
Webmail Compose
Will reroute all those “mailto:” email links to the webmail client of your choice: Gmail, Yahoo, etc. If you’re using GMail, though, that can be accomplished with the official Gmail Notifier on Windows, or with the Gmail Notfier extension for any other situation.
fireFTP
You’ve all probably had cause to use FTP at some point, and found it a little difficult to find a good free client. Here’s one that’s integrated into the browser, easy as you please.
Bloglines Toolkit
If you’re not using Bloglines, give it a shot. It’s changed the way I approach the internet for the better. If you are, the Bloglines Toolkit lets you know when the new hotness has arrived. The LiveLines extension could be great, too, but I’m happy with my “Sub with Bloglines” bookmarklet.
Furl Tools
Furl is my other favorite internet tool. For anyone who uses more than one machine, or even more than one browser, it’s the best way to have all your bookmarks available to you, wherever you are and whatever you’re using. It’s even better than just bookmarks, though. Don’t take my word for it, ask Luke.
A9 Toolbar
Does some of the same things as Furl, and also other stuff. I’m still a little new to it, haven’t quite figured out how comfortable I am with Amazon tracking my every move, but if I tweak it properly, I bet it could be really useful.
User Agent Switcher
It’s not exactly fun, but every once in a while you’ll find a website which thinks you have to use IE for Windows and only IE for Windows to access their site. They’ll sniff the User Agent string from your browser and use that to make a decision about whether you should get in. Now, 9 times out of 10 they’re wrong, and the site will work just fine in Firefox, but the sniffing script is way too stupid to know that. For times like that, when you absolutely have to use their site (yeah, I’m glaring at you, LSACD On The Web), User Agent Switcher comes to the rescue. A simple submenu selection lets you front like Windows IE for as long as you need.
evan :: Nov.11.2004 :: Notices :: 6 Comments »
Try my extension called “LookAhead”. It opens a variable number of tabs with the URLs corresponding to the search string you enter in the Search Bar in the upper right of the browser.
I think it’s worth trying!
Get it here:
http://downloads.mozdev.org/lookahead/lookahead_1.2.xpi
I’ve been a Safari fanatic ever since it came out. How does Firefox stack up?
The big difference between Safari and Firefox is the extensions. Safari does almost everything right, but if you want it to do something else, all you can do is beg Apple to roll it in. Firefox can be extended in every which way, and it manages the extensions very well, allowing you to update and uninstall easily. Poke around Mozilla Update to see how you might want to browse in the future.
Flattered, Evan.
Furl is great. I have two work computers (two jobs) and two home computers (a mac and a pc) and bookmarks are useless.
Also, you don’t want to bookmark every interesting thing you read–only those you’re going to access regularly. I wouldn’t bookmark this blog post, but I will furl it.
Take it easy, all.
Sounds cool. I’ll have to try it one of these days. At work, I actually have a good pop-up blocker. I think it’s Symantic. Word.
Mozilla Firefox is fantastic, and I have secretly replaced IE with it on all the PC’s at work (part of its customizability is the ability to use skins; in this case I use an IE lookalike skin that fools most semi-computer-literate users). For us Mac users who adore Safari, though, there are plugins out there for it that do what the Firefox plugins do. Click here to try a few.
R