Why I LOVE Firefox

IE [not deserving of a link] may be the most widely used, and Opera may be the fastest, but Firefox is the best browser. I can't comment on Safari seeing as I don't have a Mac.

I first stumbled on Firefox in campus, when it was still called Firebird. Apparently there was a DBMS already using that name, so they had to rename. Simple. Just replace the bird with a fox. The rest is history.

The first and most important reason why I love this browser is the tabs. It's the same reason I liked Netcaptor, until it stopped being free. Of course once you discover tabbed browsing, there's no going back. I just couldn't go back to using IE and went on to download and use Netscape. [I'm not sure why they have a new version]. Tabbed browsing and popup blocking as essential if you spend significant time googling, or surfing for porn. Oh. IE7 will have tabbed browsing, whenever it comes out.

The other reason has to be the extensions. Right now, I have one showing the weather outlook and forecast of Nairobi on the status bar, one which allows selection of a tab simply by placing your mouse over it and one to undoclosetab. Close a tab by mistake? Just right click and undo. Then there's sessionsaver. Need to close down your browser but don't want to lose those links/web pages, just save the session. Did the browser crush, or had a blackout or some moron switched off your computer? No problem. Session saver reloads all your pages as they were. No need to write URL's in some notepad file.

I'm not so big on themes, but I really enjoyed noia extreme when I had that as my theme.

The integrated seach bar is another essential if you need to look up stuff. Apart from the build in search engines like google and, answers.com, you can add your own and searching WebMD or dictionary.com is just a Ctrl+K away.

Live bookmarks are another thing I really like, especially in this age of blogs and RSS.

Overall, I really like Firefox, and I'm not an anti-MSFT fundamentalist. [Just for the record, I really really loathe IE.] It's simple, small [5MB] and is user oriented. MSFT like to beat their users to submission. Firefox has really useful features, that you actually want to use.