Mozilla Firefox: The "Must-have" Browser

Here's a little note to tell you why you should switch over to Mozilla Firefox.

Note: I'm still trying to figure out how to have my blog template underline links. Till I do that, just mouse-over (move the mouse pointer over) bold, yellow entries and you'll see that they are links.

It happened again. A friend sent me a panic email saying Internet Explorer wasn't working properly. Like most "help!" emails I get, the problem wasn't very clearly explained, but I gathered that Internet Explorer did nothing when links were clicked and was shutting down on its own at various points.

I asked her to run AdAware to check for spyware. She found over 800 of the blighters (I'll explain in a new post soon what spyware is and what AdAware does). Internet Explorer, however still wasn't working.

Then I did what I should have in the first place; asked her to go download Mozilla Firefox, install it and use it instead of IE. She was up and running in literally minutes.

I've been using Firefox for a long time now, so long that I can't even recall a time when I was using IE. Despite its occasional crashes - which are because of my Operating System, I think - it's just one of the BEST browsers out there. On every occasion that it has crashed, I've simply reinstalled it and I'm up and running again. Of course, I also regularly export my bookmarks to a file so I can import them into Firefox if it, or the Operating System, crashes. Incidentally, my Operating System crashes far more often than Firefox does.

Here are four reasons why I strongly recommend Firefox:

Security

Firefox just doesn't allow the baddies to install adware, spyware and malware on your computer. These are programs that some sites install - unbeknownst to you - on your computer to track your surfing habits or even to trap your username and password.

The occasional fellas do get through, but AdAware takes care of them.

Speed

I won't go into the details of the how and why of it here but EVERY user who switches from IE to Firefox is instantly thrilled at the speed with which it loads pages. Once you get used to that speed and you have to use IE for some reason - at a net café, say - you'll chafe at the loooooong wait while pages load in IE.

Smooth Switch-over

When you install Firefox, it automatically imports your surfing history and favorites (Firefox calls them "bookmarks") from IE. You don't have to do a thing, apart from download Firefox, install it and start using it.

Pop-up Blocker

Firefox automatically blocks those annoying pop-ups that some sites have. It also tells you that it has blocked a pop-up and gives you the option to allow pop-ups from that site, so you can still comment on blogs that have set comments to open in a pop-up window. From my experience, it's very good at telling a "good" pop-up from a "bad" one, so it might not even block pop-ups from legitimate sites.

Over the next few days I'll be telling you more about Firefox and its really cool features. For now, head over to Mozilla.com and download Firefox. You'll wonder how you ever did without it.

Deepak