November 11, 2004
Firefox 1.0 launched yesterday
After beta testing, preview releases and collecting donations for a full page ad in the New York Times, Firefox 1.0 - the next generation in web browsers - was finally been released yesterday (November 9th).
Just like Netscape Navigator, Firefox is based on Mozilla, an open-source browser. Firefox is "light" and starts up quickly - the install file is only 4.7MB and it works on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Over 1 million people have already downloaded version 1.0 and that's just the beginning ;)
There are a lot of features in Firefox that I like. One of the is the tabbed browsing. You can view several web pages inside the same window. That are many reasons why you would want to use tabbed browsing, one being that you can use it when you want to check out a few web pages at the same time - you continue reading your current page and when you see the other pages have fully loaded you can check them out. To view web pages in tabs you can just hold down [Ctrl] and click a link or if you have a scroll-button on your mouse you can just click that one when you're over a link. You can also go to the File menu -> New Tab or press [Ctrl] + [T] to open a blank tab. You can then use [Ctrl] + [Tab], [Ctrl] + [Page Up] or [Ctrl] + [Page Down] to switch between tabs and then there is a red X to the right of the tabs to close the current tab.
Firefox also has a built in popup blocker and ensures you won't get any spyware or other malicious software.
You can subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds with the Live Bookmarks feature. For example, if you are using Firefox to view this blog you should see a little, orange broadcast icon in the bottom right corner. You can click that and select "Subscribe to RSS...". Then you can, through the Bookmarks menu, open the last 15 entries of this blog in tabs by clicking "Open in Tabs" - You can actually do that with any bookmark folder.
You can also use several search engines within Firefox, just pick your engine of choice from a drop-down list and input your keywords - you can search Google, Amazon, imdb, Yahoo, Dictionary.com, etc - You can download many more if you want and you can even create your own search engine. And you don't need to install 17 toolbars that just take up screen space.
You don't even need to pick an engine from the drop-down list. With Smart Keywords you can just type into the Location bar something like "imdb Edward Norton" and then you'll get the page for Edward Norton on imdb.com - You can actually add any search engine you frequently use.
Firefox is also fully customizable with many themes, modifiable toolbars, etc.
Just check it out, you'll be glad you did:
http://www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=THBBff1
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