Updated today, Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser that makes browsing more efficient than ever before. Firefox includes pop-up blocking; a tab-browsing; integrated Google searching; simplified privacy controls that let you cover your tracks more effectively; a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser; and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online.

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How do you browse the Web? With the arrival of browser extensions and relatively new browsers like Firefox, there are plenty of ways to use the Internet in new ways, but for most people, the process is still pretty much the same. If they know the specific URL of a site they want to visit, then they’ll type it in, but if they want to search for something, then they’ll use a search engine like Google. Obviously, this is Web Browsing 101, but what do you do when you want to find some more information on something specific? Usually you’ll manually go to a bunch of different sites to track this information down, but AdaptiveBlue has created a Firefox add-on called BlueOrganizer that will truly change the way you browse the Web.

With more than one million downloads, BlueOrganizer is obviously something worth paying attention to. While you’re browsing the Web like normal, BlueOrganizer will recognize music, movies, books, and an assortment of other things, and because it’s able to do this, it can then offer you additional relevant information about what you’re looking at from a variety of sources. In a sense, the research will have already been done for you. I love the fact that you can save what you like, and bloggers will want to use SmartLinks on their blogs to enhance their content.

A couple of days ago, I wrote glowingly of a little program called Darkroom, which is a simple text editor that blacks out my screen and gives me a non-distracting interface so that I can concentrate on my writing. Darkroom is an example of what’s coming to be known as “zenware,” an attempt to get us away from the clutter of our desktops and back to using computers as tools, rather than allowing them to control our lives and every thought.

I’ve run across an exception problem in Darkroom that involves the .NET framework and seems to make saving some documents problematic. (It may also have to do with the It’s All Text extension mentioned below.) So far I’ve been unable to work around it, despite removing and replacing the Darkroom program with a fresh download. When I get around to it, I may refresh .NET as well. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I can’t really continue to recommend it since it might be the cause of a data loss.

You can achieve a similar effect in many other editors by reversing the color scheme in the window and going to full screen. I really like the effect, and the removal of distractions. You might give it a try.

Anyway, I wanted to mention that and throw in the link about zenware before getting on to the subject of this column, which is the ever-popular Firefox extensions. (Oh no! Not THAT again!)

I recently uninstalled a whole bunch of the things, because while Firefox was doing its usual exemplary job of browsing and supporting me generally, it was taking waaaay too long to start up and shut down. Even with Google Browser Sync and several other add-ons disabled, it was the same deal — and we’re talking a fast computer with a lot of RAM.

I was brutal: if it wasn’t necessary to my online way of life, or if I used it so seldom that I could occasionally drag out something else, or go to a web page directly to accomplish the same thing, then it was a goner. There were a lot of goners, among those already disabled and those I’d been currently using. Unfortunately, I failed to write them down before I uninstalled, so I can’t tell you what they were. I can, however, tell you the survivors, and why I kept them.

del.iciou.us Bookmarks: Allows me to access my bookmarks online, and download them to Fx, on any computer running Firefox and the extension. That’s cool, but mostly it was because it puts buttons on the menu bar and commands on the context menu so that I can post any link I like with just a click or two.

Flashblock: Gets rid of all those annoying flash objects and replaces the. with a button you can click to view if you like (especially helpful if you have a slow connection — those suckers take forever to load over dialup).

Forecastfox Enhanced: Puts weather, including radar, a mouse-over away in the status bar. Be sure to get the enhanced; there’s also a plain old Forecast fox that has fewer features.

FoxClocks: The handiest multi-zone clock I’ve seen. The adjustments used to be a bit Byzantine, but they’ve improved. Now it even shows cute little country flag icons. The writer gets extra points for resisting the temptation of “FoxClox.”

Gmail Manager: Gmail-wise, the only way to fly.

Google Browser Synch: I use this for bookmarks only, although it will do a lot more. It’s handy when you move between computers, as I do twice a day.

Google Toolbar for Firefox: Get it off the Google site. If you don’t want the full toolbar, my article here explains how to customize your Firefox toolbars to save space and incorporate buttons from GooBar.

ImgLikeOpera Allows me to block images on web pages (see “Flashblock”), speeds surfing, and works extremely well. You can choose no images, cached images only, images native to the site, and all images. Excluded images appear with a click.

It’s All Text: A new one that I’ve only been using a few days. I have trouble imagining how I got along without it. When you’re replying to a blog, commenting, or filling in any text field, you can click on a little icon that appears near the field (or right-click and use the more sophisticated drop-down menu). Either will open the text editor of your choice, so that you can write in comfort instead of trying to compose in one of those dumb little boxes.

When you’re done, you can save to both your hard drive and the text box, or to the text box alone. It’s convenient, fast, makes entering text ever so much more pleasant, and if you save to the HDD it avoids those glitches on websites that cause the hair-tearing at least once a week when you lose your post.

McAfee SiteAdvisor: Available for both Firefox and that other browser. You should have it. Period.

NoScript: Disables JavaScript, Java, and other plugins for all but domains that you trust and approve. Don’t leave your desktop without it.

Notefish: The best online note-saving system I’ve tried. For larger documents I like Google Notebook and Google Documents, but for speed and ease of use, Notefish is da bomb!

Scribefire: Integrated blogging editor and posting agent. Takes care of an easy 95% of my posting, without opening the blog site. Handles most common hosted blogs such as Blogger, WordPress, etc.

Tab Mix Plus: Takes tabbed browsing out of the dark ages and makes it the only way to go. (Several features are in the newer editions of Firefox, and several more will be in Fx 3.0, but for now…)

Tiny Menu: Combined with a lightweight theme, it saves a bunch of browser real estate. Takes all the menu selections from the top bar and combines them into one drop-down, freeing the bar for other customization. See the article on Firefox Real Estate.

TinyUrl creator: Integrates the TinyUrl URL-shortening tool into the browser. Messes like

http://www.google.com/search?q=zenware& sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8& rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-19,GGGL:en

become: http://tinyurl.com/24yrct

These are extensions that I use every day. The dozen or so that I uninstalled were either used very seldom or, essentially, unnecessary answers to nonexistent problems, as my friend the late Col. Jeff Cooper used to say about unrelated issues. You might want to check out your Add-ons menu. Disable the things you don’t often use, and if you haven’t missed them after a week or so, uninstall. Firefox will load faster and be more responsive.

Extensions for Firefox and other Mozilla products are available here.

Note: a friend who is testing Firefox v. 3 says that it is much faster than 2.x.x and uses fewer resources. That’s a good thing. People are always complaining about Fx being a memory hog, and slow in comparison to Internet Explorer. It’s necessary to remember, in that regard, that IE is a part of Windows; thus, much of its engine is already running when you invoke the browser. Firefox, being a stand-alone program, is slower to load and — yes — uses more RAM, but probably no more than Internet Explorer would if it didn’t have Windows to lean on. When it comes to rendering speed, the servers make far more difference than the browser.

Gnomie Luke Blowes writes:

5. Microsoft Internet Explorer. The most stable and developed supported Internet browser, Internet Explorer introduces many great features and upgrades for Microsoft Internet Explorer users, borrowing several great features from its competitors over at Firefox and Opera.

4. Mozilla Firefox. Firefox has become quite famous over the last couple of years and it keeps picking up traction. This is mostly due to its better security features and Open Source nature that allows it to rapidly grow.

3. Apple Safari. The Safari browser is best known for its blazing performance on the Mac, but now it is also available for use on any platform. Safari loads pages up to two times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox.

2. Opera. The Opera 9 Web browser is the most rugged and best cross-platform browser out there.

1. My favorite is Flock. Flock is by far the best social Web browser of its kind, because it’s not just a powerful Web browser but it’s also a great publishing and social tool for any user.

While my favorite is Flock, there is no best Web browser; in the end it comes down to which one suits you best.

Some folks don’t mind losing a little screen space. I resent every square centimeter, every lost pixel. It probably goes back to my VGA days…or maybe I’m just stingy in general. Whatever the case, I don’t want my browser’s controls taking up any more room than they have to. If they’re big enough to see and not too small to mouse — that’s big enough. For me, a browser is a workspace where I spend a great deal of time, not a playhouse.

One of the many reasons I don’t like Internet Explorer is because it doesn’t give me this amount of control — or, if it does, I haven’t taken the trouble to find out how to do it, having opened IE precisely once a month for the past several years. It might be possible with a shell extension of some kind. I don’t really care, but if someone wants to write an article about it I’ll think about publishing it here — with credit, of course.

However, I’ve managed to get Firefox down to the point where I feel as though I’m getting my money’s worth, screen-wise. I did that through use of a couple of extensions and themes, and a bit of tweaking. Here’s essentially what I did, but I’m leaving the details up to you.

If you’ll click on the small screenshot, it will take you to a full-size version at 1024×768, to give you an idea of the actual amount of space saved.

First of all, I installed the miniFox theme. That reduced the toolbars and other controls down about as far as you can get them while keeping a useful size. Then I installed the Tiny Menu extension. This handy little number takes the menu that normally occupies the left side of the menu bar and turns it into a drop-down which I positioned at the upper left.

With the menu bar clear, I opened the navigation and Google toolbars, and with Firefox in Customize mode (right-click the top bar) I dragged the tools I wanted to the top bar. Then I cleared all the other stuff off the navigation toolbar by dragging them to the Customize window, and dragged the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder up to the navigation bar. (I keep all my bookmarks in that folder, arranged in sub-folders.)

[You could accomplish the same thing by disappearing the nav bar and using the bookmarks toolbar instead, with one difference: at least when I did it, you couldn’t put any other buttons on the bookmark bar, when by using the nav bar I had that option. That could have changed a few versions back though, since I’ve had this arrangement for a year or so. You could try it out.]

After getting the top and navigation bars the way I wanted them, I right-clicked the top bar again, and closed the Bookmarks and Google toolbars. This left me with the arrangement you see, which works for me. If you’re a screen space freak like me, the same or a similar arrangement may be what you’re looking for. Just think what I’ll be able to do with a widescreen monitor!

Gnomie Dill Wells writes:

Hey Chris, I’m a newer viewer, but I love your YouTube videos and tech tips. I have assembled a short and sweet list of the top five software items to purchase online to be read from 5 to 1.

5. Fraps: Fraps is is a program that records the action while you’re playing PC games. You can download a free trial version, and if you like it, you can purchase a license for $40, I think.

4. WinRAR: WinRAR is similar to WinZip, but allows you to open a larger variety of files. It also allows you to compress files and it’s, in my opinion, easier to work with. You can download a trial version, which lasts 40 days, but I would highly recommend you purchase a license if you are into downloading stuff or managing files a lot.

3. America’s Army: This is a computer game that you can download for free! It is put out buy the U.S. government to get people interested in joining the army. It is the best PC FPS that I have ever played. It is around 2.8 GB. Register your account here.

2. SUPER: SUPER is a program that I found not too long ago that pretty much allows you to convert any video format or audio format to any video format or audio format. It is absolutely magnificent. It is a little slow to convert but it wont leave you disappointed. It is a little difficult to get to the actual download link, because it goes through, like, four pages that keep saying “download here,” but it is worth it.

1. I’ve put much thought into my #1 and, if you don’t have it already, then it would be Mozilla Firefox. I have both Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox and I like Firefox much, much better. One of the main reasons why I like Firefox is because you can easily use add-ons, such as an add-on I have that allows me to download any video off the Internet.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing with Interclue, a browser helper that gives me previews of links on the pages I visit. There are a number of similar programs (Snap and the now-defunct Browster comes to mind), but none implemented as well or usefully, in my opinion. Most of them create more disturbance and give less control of the experience than I care to deal with, opening pop-ups and other distractions without a by-your-leave. Interclue is far more civilized.

In a nutshell, Interclue creates a little icon next to a link when I mouse over it. I can control how long it takes it to appear, so that it and its brethren (sistren?) don’t bug me too much. If I want to see what the link’s about, I just mouse over the icon, and a synopsis of the page with beaucoup options too numerous to mention appears in a separate window. I can cruise the window, click on links therein, open the original page or, by simply removing my cursor, cause it to go away — or, if I want, I can “pin” the window where I want it (it’s resizeable, of course) and all further mouse-overs will open there.

Interclue resides in my status bar to whatever degree I desire. I’ve found that the options button and a couple of others are all I want there, or need. My Firefox status bar is stuffed with tools I use every day, such as Foxclocks, Google Notebooks, SiteAdvisor, the Daily Dilbert, and so forth. I don’t have room to spare, and Interclue is highly solicitous of my workspace.

The degree to which this application can be customized is astounding! I’ve got it the way I like it, and haven’t even begun to explore all the possibilities. I tend to be a sort of default guy when it comes to this sort of thing, figuring the folks who wrote the code have a better idea of what works best than I’m likely to. I do plan to experiment more as time passes, though, since I can envision myself using this tool more and more as I find out more about its features.

Interclue is available only for Firefox, at present. Those of you who are hampered by Internet Explorer will have to do without for the time being. I don’t know if the Kiwis who developed it will be able to monetize it and keep going (I plan to send ‘em a few bucks), but even if they don’t get rich I hope they’ll keep up with the Fx version updates, because I envision myself using Interclue for a long time to come.

Chris Papaioannou writes:

Heya,

Just watched the video about Firefox 3 beta 1 and you said to let you know what browser we’re using, so thought I’d chip in from the Opera side of things.

Apologies if you know any of the following — but no harm in pointing it out, I feel.

Opera currently has a beta version out also, which can be found here.

More up to date ‘weeklies’ can be found here in the desktop blog.

They are the latest releases, though only alpha.

At current there are crashes, though each release brings that number down noticeably.

You mentioned the malware protection, which was awesome; this is available in the current stable release of Opera and has been for a while now. It presents you with a warning dialog if you try and go on a blacklisted site, which includes sites such as fake banking Web sites, sites with known malware downloads, and more. So yeah, a browser does do that today!

The beta version of Opera also allows the password saving after you have submitted the form, allowing you to see if it was the right details before saving.

Resumeable downloading has been in Opera for ages also — one of the main things I love about the browser. No need for an external download manager; it can pause, resume, and restart them all within. Not sure when this was introduced, but I’m sure has been for many many versions.

‘Full page zoom,’ I’m assuming, means not just the text zooming in, but Flash elements, images, etc. If so, again it’s present in Opera’s current release.

Sessions saving is available in the current release too, saving the tabs and the position on the page. Just like Firefox is adding now.

Clicking twice on text will select the word, three times for the sentance, and four times for the paragraph. This will display a context menu offering options to search that text in a search engine, dictionary, encyclopedia, copy to note, clipboard, go to URL, send in an email, etc.

Bookmarks and history can be organised and searched, put into folders, etc. Not sure what this organization feature they’re adding is.

Autocomplete will also happen in the current release. Assuming you have told Opera your details, it will work out what data is likely to need to be entered and prompt you for this.

Also notes can be put in, which can be any text, and accessed with the down arrow on the keyboard in any field to enter the note.

Selecting which programs will open which files is also present already.

Now the above, unless already said, are already in Opera (before the beta, and these are only the ones I picked up on from your video).

Here are some advantages to Opera’s software, however — and where stated it’s new in the beta, which I haven’t mentioned above:

• (beta) ‘Link,’ allowing the browser to sync with Opera servers with speed dial, bookmarks, and personal bar data. So your info will follow you around to any Opera browser when you log in, be it on a PC, Mac, or mobile device. Or access it in another browser through a Web site based interface.

• (beta) History searching allows you to search the URL, title, and content of pages you’ve visited. Handy when looking for a term in a page you were on when neither the title or URL help you locate the page. Just pop it into search and it will find it.
• Built-in mail client (M2) code has been rewritten to improve performance and offer multithreading.
• Built-in Torrent client has been improved with new features such as peer exchange.
• (beta) Improved support for CSS, including many more CSS3 selectors and the CSS2 text-shadow property. Support for other Web standards will also be improved. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) implementation and built-in support for Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG), MathML and high-security Extended Validation Certificates.
• (Beta) Screen reader support.
• Built-in IRC client.
• Donwload manager, including ‘quick download’ support to download any inputted link.
• (Beta) Save entire pages into one archive for offline viewing.
• Speed dial - Opening a new tab will show thumbnails of your nine ’speed dial’ sites which can be clicked on to open, or via Ctrl-(number). These thumbnails can be refreshed automatically, or on command.
• One click to turn off all CSS. Handy for sites where the code is messy and you just want to turn it off and see the raw information. Also many other viewing options such as high contrast and having certain elements disabled.
• Automatic session saving.
• Trash can to retrieve closed tabs in previous state before closing.
• Mouse gestures and handy shortcuts such as right click left click, to go back a page. Speeds up use a lot.
• Built-in contact system.
• Widgets, custom buttons, and UserJS all available to add to the browser.
• When viewing source code, can make changes to it, and then ‘reload.’ To make changes to the webpage live.
• ‘Fast Forward’ will detect the most likely next page link to simplify navigation and speed up use.
• Tabbed browsing and MDI interface (first browser to support this).
• Password manager.
• Inline find on page system (and dialog).
• Integrated search, with customiseable search engines.
• Built-in RSS feed management.
• Page information lists URL of main page, MIME type, size of page, when opened, where the cache file is, encoding type, fraud check, links to all scripts on the page, information on the frames on the page, and more.

I’ll stop here because I’m sure I’ve already bored you to death, and annoyed you with the terrible spelling (forgive me, it’s 4:30 am).

If you haven’t given Opera a try in a long time, maybe you should? Try the stable, and the beta alongside each other maybe, and give it time to grow on you. Might end up liking it. Though I’m aware you obviously know of the browser, I’m not sure to what extent you’ve tried it, when, and for how long.

Even after this beta of 9.5, 10.0 will be released as alpha come the end of the year, or early January with much larger improvements to speed and features.

Keep up the vids, and hope to see something on Opera maybe in the near future!

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Beta 1 of Firefox 3 was released today. I found a few bugs, but overall it’s looking like there are some excellent new features and improvements. When it goes final, I may switch from Maxthon 1.0 to Firefox for my Windows machine. Let’s take a look at some of what’s new, thanks to Asa Dotzler from Mozilla. Asa is my kind of Geek, that’s for sure.

More Security

• One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand.
• Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware.
• New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown.
• New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
• Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
• Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
• Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.

Easier to Use

• Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
• Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
• New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files.
• Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
• Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
• Text selection improvements: Multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in “word-by-word” mode; Triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
• Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.

More Personal

• Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
• Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
• Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming from.
• Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as you more frequently visited pages with the new smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
• Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
• Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Performance

• Reliability: A user’s bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
• Speed: Major architectural changes put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
• Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use and reducing fragmentation.

So there you have it. A long list of reasons why you should be taking a look at the new Firefox version 3.0 when it is released. Excellent kudos to all of the dev team at Mozilla.

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