By Rick Castellini 2002. Revised by Adam Cochran 2007
Earlier this summer, my co-host, Adam, decided to do an 'on air' review of a product. The product he chose is Mozilla Firefox, an alternative web browser. Being on the radio and downloading, installing and reviewing software was a new experience for us, but the impression was instant and impressive for both of us.
Mozilla loads most web pages much faster than Internet Explorer and makes a dial-up connection seem snappier. Because Mozilla does not use any code from Internet Explorer, it is inherently less likely to be plagued by the various security holes that Internet Explorer fights against on a daily basis. The software is free and I've put together a list of features and tips that I like about this great little browser:
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Free
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Less likely to be prone to security woes of Internet Explorer
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Faster rendering of most web pages
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Built in Google search box
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Smart Bookmarks – Firefox will import all of your existing bookmarks or favorites from Netscape or Internet Explorer. You can also have Firefox automatically check for updates to a specific site and then notify you of those changes.
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Tabbed browsing. You may have heard us talk of another good alternative browser called Opera which first made use of tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing allows you to open up multiple web pages in the same window. Very convenient and intuitive.
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Smart Printing. By Default, Firefox allows you to print any web page on a standard piece of paper without cutting off the right side!
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Built in pop-up blocker that you can customize.
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Greater control over how pages display. You can easily override a pages font size to make it more readable for you.
Overall, the Mozilla Firefox browser is heads and tails above anything that I have preciously used. In fact, I now use it as my primary browser and rarely use Internet Explorer at all. If you want to try the full version of Mozilla which includes an email client, newsgroup reader and a HTML editor, use the same link at the beginning of this tip.
