My Life and Technology

What makes Firefox apart from the rest? Let’s have a small overview of the different browsers out there in the wild

• Internet Explorer:  IE6 stinks! IE7 was good, still light years behind the latest browsers. Heard about IE8 final which shows respect for web standards. Let’s wait to see whether it is able to changes it’s image

• Safari: Safari 4 is available and is touted as the fastest browser in the market. Now, what’s the problem with it? It’s Mac version is good, but windows version? Nothing extraordinary and has no Linux version(my primary OS). I get comments like “Safari doesn’t have a Linux version since Linux market is very small”. I reply “Like Mac has a majority market share!”

• Google Chrome: Love it It’s very fast and worked on wine with a few glitches. It has no native version for Linux though an Alpha has been released and I heard its unstable. Let’s wait and watch!

• Opera: I have it on my computer installed since it has a Linux version. Thanks for it. It’s fast, but it’s not as customizable as Firefox. I have even heard that Mobile Opera is great! Well, we are talking about the Desktop/Laptop edition.

Now enters Firefox:

Awesome browsing speed! It hogs the memory, no problem - I have 2Gigs to spare. Since Firefox is my mini OS in itself, I have no qualms in giving it even 500MB of memory. It’s addon feature is great! I can even have an FTP client, IRC Client, Mail notifiers, Twitter Clients, Ad -blocker, DownloadManager, Password Manager etc.

My list of favorite Firefox addons go on as, with decreasing importance:

• Ad-Block Plus - Heh! There are any ads on the web?
• Firebug - The best thing a web developer can have
• TwitterFox - The zero-bloat Twitter Client. My favorite
• Sxipper - Don’t find Firefox’s inbuilt password manager apt? Extend its functionality
• DownThemAll - Download Manager for Firefox
• GoogleGears - now web pages are displayed more quickly.
• is.gd Creator - Creates a reduced size link for any long long links or permalinks
• DownloadHelper - Download embedded flash videos

Some of them didnt find place even though they might be great! The reason is simple - I don’t need them.

Tags: downthemall, firebug, firefox, ie, opera, safari, sxipper, twitterfox

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 2:13 am and is filed under Personal, Technical. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.