Firefox

Firefox
Download the latest version here: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

In Internet Explorer, you do not have to save the installer. If you click “download Firefox” and Internet Explorer asks what you want to do with it, “Run” will work just fine. Once you’ve got the installer program started, instructions, complete with pictures, are here: http://opensourcearticles.com/articles/introduction_to_firefox

Search Bar

On the top right is an easy way to search major search engines. By default it is set to Google, with a few more pre-installed. Enter your search text in the box and it will take you to the results page. Click on the logo of the current search engine to change it, or to add a new one with “Add Engines”. This takes you to a page where you can click to add more search engines to this menu.

Customizing The Navigation Toolbar

Right-clicking on the Navigation Toolbar (the one with the web address and forward/back buttons) and selecting “Customize” brings up a menu with many other options. You can click and drag anything you want up to the Navigation Toolbar, or drag it back into the Customize window to get rid of it. I strongly suggest you try the History button - it lets you search any titles of pages you have viewed in the past week.

Tabbed Browsing

In Internet Explorer, when you want to see more than one page at once, you must open more than one window. With Firefox, you can open multiple windows in the same window using tabs. Go to File -> New Tab to open an empty one, or right click on a link and select “Open Link in New Tab”.

Themes

Themes are the way you customize the look of Firefox. You can make it look like another browser you’re already familiar with to ease the transition, or just make it look different for the fun of it. Go to the Tools menu and select Themes(“Add-Ons” in version 2.0), which brings up your list of themes. Click “Get More Themes” in the bottom right corner of this window, and browse the site for new and interesting themes. When you’ve installed one, go back to the Themes window and double click it. It should say it “will be activated upon restart”. Restart Firefox to use the new theme. Note you can have multiple themes installed but you can only use one at a time.

Extensions

Extensions are ways to give Firefox additional power to enhance your browsing experience. After installing an extension, you must restart Firefox for it to take effect. Go to the Tools menu and selecting Extensions (“Add-Ons” in version 2.0) will bring up a list of the extensions you have installed. At the bottom right is a “Get More Extensions” button which will take you to the Mozilla page of extensions. (Note: Extensions can also be found elsewhere on the web, but this is the biggest collection and the best place to start.) (Also note: some extensions and themes are incompatible with some versions of Firefox. Firefox will tell you this and will not let you use anything that is not compatible.)

There are so many extensions to choose from, and often several different extensions will do the same basic thing with minor differences. Here are some of my favories:

ForecastFox Enhanced: This will display a customized forecast in the bottom bar of the Firefox window, complete with weather radar. It can be customized to provide just the data you want, and it can also cycle through different cities if you choose.

Adblock Plus: This extension, plus the Adblock Filterset.G Updater, removes most of the advertisements on most web sites. The Filterset.G Updater regularly retrieves the latest list of what to block for Adblock Plus to use.

NoScript: JavaScript is a type of programming language which can make web pages do things they otherwise couldn’t - for good or ill. Many web pages have Java elements but function fine without them. NoScript blocks all Java by default, but shows a little bar at the bottom of the screen telling you that it has done so. Use the “Options” button on this bar to tell it to allow the site (either permanently or temporarily). This is called “whitelisting”, the opposite of blacklisting - you create a list of allowed sites. Sometimes, you will see Java coming from more than one site, and/or a different site than the one in your address bar. If the page works fine with the Java blocked, then leave it blocked - if it doesn’t do what you want, whitelist it either temporarily (until Firefox is quit) or permanently (if it’s a site you trust and plan to return to). If there are multiple sites listed, start with the one that matches the address bar - that ought to be enough to enable what you need, the rest are probably advertising-related.

Nuke Anything Enhanced: For when Adblock doesn’t work, or for things that you wouldn’t want to permanently block. Simply right-click on the offending item and select “Remove this object”, and it’s gone - for now. Reloading the page brings it back. Great for removing annoying ads as well as cleaning up a page for printing.

Tab Mix Plus: If you like Firefox’s tabbed browsing feature, Tab Mix Plus enhances it greatly. You can re-order your tabs by dragging them around the tab bar, and you can specify that links that want to open in a new window will instead open in a new tab. Tabs that have not been looked at yet can be colored differently than tabs you have looked at. Note that the functions provided by this extension are built in to Firefox 2.0.

Customize Google and BetterSearch: Together, these extensions allow you to search much more efficiently. See a preview of the page before you click. With one click, send the same search to one of several different search engines. See the way the page used to look with a quick link to the Wayback Machine at Archive.org, which stores old versions of many web sites. Speed up Google’s Image Search function.

FasterFox: This extension has the power to grab every link on the page you’re looking at so when you click it won’t have to load. This power is a little much, however - FasterFox recommends leaving itself on the “Courteous” setting which speeds up the time it takes to display a page without using unneeded network resources. In addition, FasterFox puts a timer at the bottom of the window (next to the ForecastFox info) telling you how quickly the page loaded.

If you decide that any of the extensions and/or themes are not what you want after all, the “Uninstall” button on the lower left of the Extensions or Themes window will help you get rid of them. And since many of them are regularly updated, clicking on “Find Updates” will check each one, and prompt you if a newer version is found. What’s new in Firefox 2.0?

Phishing Protection - “Phishing” is the act of scamming money via false email and websites. A phishing email will appear to be from your bank or other service, asking you to log in via a link in the email. When you click on the link in the email, however, you are sent to what looks like the regular site but isn’t. Firefox 2.0 checks to make sure the address in the address bar is actually the site you think you’re visiting. For more information, see: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/phishing-protection/

Resuming your browser session - Restarting Firefox no longer means starting over at the beginning. When you install a new extension, or when Firefox crashes, restarting gives you the choice of re-loading the page (or multiple pages) you had been viewing.

Add-On Manager - Instead of separate menus for Extensions and Themes, they are now grouped under “Add-Ons” in the Tools menu. This seems like a good opportunity to point out that some extensions and themes which worked under 1.5 may not work under 2.0 until the developer updates them. Firefox will keep them disabled but check regularly to see if new 2.0-compatible versions become available.

Searching upgrades - now you can re-arrange and delete search engines in the search window. And when searching in Yahoo!, Google or Answers, the browser will show you several choices of things it thinks you might like to search for, based on what you’ve typed so far.

There are many more under-the-hood changes, for all the details see:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releasenotes/

Also note that as of this writing Firefox is actually at version 2.0.0.2