Firefox Beta 2
The latest Beta for Firefox is out, and I’ve been using it for a day or so. Gotta say it is going to be hard to go back to IE if work ever locks out Firefox (rumored to happen).
Things about Firefox I love (and aren’t just part of the Beta):
1. Tabbed Browsing. Instead of having three of four IE windows going, I do the same within the Firefox browser. I think the new version of IE is supposed to do this as well, but Firefox has had it for quite some time now. Click picture to enlarge and note the tabbed windows in the upper part of the image.
2. Browser attacks, or lack thereof. Since the vast majority of people use IE, malicious sites focus on breaking exploits in IE. Since switching to Firefox, I’ve had zero instances of problems. (not to say that Firefox is free of problems…I don’t know. I merely suspect that people aren’t focusing on it yet).
3. Google Browser Sync. So far, I don’t think this is available for IE. Since discovering it, my life is so much easier. I have a large collection of bookmarks on my work machine, my laptop (counting it twice since I have both XP and Linux on it and haven’t quiet figured out how to share that information across operating systems on the same drive), and two desktop systems in the house. Invariably, a needed bookmark was on the wrong machine.
Now with Browser Sync, every instance of the browser shares the same collection of bookmarks. Change something at work, and my laptop mirrors it. Change it on the laptop, it gets changed on the desktop. I can’t live without this feature.
4. Extensions. Like any open source project, Firefox can be modified. I use a half-dozen extensions that improve the quality of my browsing life. FireFTP integrates a very usable FTP client in a tabbed window. Adsense Notifier displays my current Adsense data in the system bar at the bottom of the screen in real time. Googlepedia splits the screen on my Google searches, providing the traditional Google results on the left side, while the right side shows the Wikipedia page of whatever search item I’ve Googled.
The new Beta has incorporated an in-line spell checker to the browser, so now as I type blog entries, I’ll finally have a simple means to check my horrible spelling (my apologies to you for suffering through it for so long).
Firefox has simply been a superior product. I can’t recommend it enough.
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Filed under: Science and Technology
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