On Wednesday, I explained what a browser was and told you I’d be telling you about my favourite browser today. And here we are. My favourite browser is Firefox. I haven’t used Internet Explorer, except for work-related stuff, since I first found Firefox. The reasons are many. For me, I like the tabbed sessions (where you can open multiple websites on tabs inside one browser window) and the fact that if Windows crashes for some reason, you can restart all those tabs just where you were; one-click bookmarks; built in search engine; and a built-in spell checker to mention a few. My two favourite reasons are safety and add-ons. Firefox comes with lots of safety features: anti-malware (to stop viruses, torjan horses, spyware and other Internet uglies); anti-phishing(which you know about because you read my post about phishing); popup blocker, and a download manager. But I think the top security feature might be that it’s not Internet Explorer. If you are someone who wants to make a virus and do maximum damage, you are going to target that virus for the most used browser around like, say, one that comes with Windows as Internet Explorer does. That doesn’t mean that Firefox is 100% safe and you’ll never get a virus, but I feel more secure when using Firefox.
Add-ons are probably the coolest thing about Firefox. There are thousands of them you can add to Firefox to do anything from opening all of your favourite websites in tabs within one browser with the click of one button to tracking how much time you spend surfing the net, to previewing web pages before you open them. Since add-ons can be developed by anyone (but they are tested as experimental first), you can find a huge variety of add-ons that will make your tech life much easier.
Now, some argue that Firefox is not as safe as Internet Explorer and Microsoft has adapted some of the great parts of Firefox for Internet Explorer (gasp, I know, hard to believe, hey?) and IE 8 was just released last week so it may even have more Firefox features on it, but I love the little fox. Maybe you will too, so if you’d like to try it click on the fox.
