The Computer Guy

No two web browsers are created equally. Internet Explorer, shipped with Microsoft’s Windows, is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many many web browsers out there, but Internet Explorer, or IE, is the most popular. Firefox, from The Mozilla Foundation, is an open-source* web browser that is completely customizable. If you haven’t checked it out yet, try it for a day. I’m sure you’ll love it.

Back in the old days of the internet there were two main web browsers, IE and Netscape. Netscape was purchased by AOL in the 1990’s, and AOL made parts of it open-source. The Mozilla Foundation was created and used the openly available source code to create Firefox. Since, Firefox has gained a small portion of the market because of it’s customizability and price**.

I use Firefox 95%*** of the time. While I’m surfing, I can see the weather, current & forecast & animated radar, the amount time I have left to work today, the latest tech news, whether a page is valid, who signed off on the security of the site I’m on, and a Google/Yahoo/Wikipedia search box. I see this information no matter what page I am on because I have various extensions, or Add ons, installed.

My extensions include:

• Forecastfox Enhanced (larger radar loop than Forecastfox)
• Web Developer’s Toolbar
• WizzRSS
• Firebug
• Del.icio.us Buttons
• Adblock Plus
• HTML Validator
• Server Spy

I have experimented with creating my own extensions as well, that’s the one that tells me how long I have left to work today.

Beyond Add ons, there are themes. A theme is just a styling of the browser itself. There are tons of these readily, and freely, available. There’s even a Walnut theme which paints the status bar, menu bar, and all the toolbars to look like Walnut wood, grains and all. I just use the plain jane theme that came with Firefox.

If you feel like IE isn’t working for you anymore, or you just want to try something different, then give Firefox a try! Download it at http://www.getfirefox.com/.

*Open source is just netspeak, or technical jargon, for a piece of software whose source code is made available to the public.

**All open source software is free.

***This would be 100% of the time if I didn’t care about the people who use IE.