There are many good reasons to choose your browser carefully. Most of us have relied on Internet Explorer simply because it was all we new – and a different browser did not seem right – we wanted a native program running on our Windows machine – something that was compatible with our environment.

Ok, so some of us were of the thinking that the Windows world was perfect. We drooled over Windows 98, gritted our teeth as we bit into Millennium and decided there was peace on earth at the sound of XP running on our hard drive. Well, perhaps that was only me:-)

Several virus attacks on the XP system later and we begin to rethink the idea of peace, perfect and drooling in regards to anything remotely related to “Windows”. To think that someone sits behind the screen and dreams up how to make life miserable for us who are trying to get work done and perhaps even enjoy it while we are putting our energy into making a PC do something useful! The nerve 😉

Enter FireFox – the browser created in the real world for people in the real world. You can download and install if for free – but even if there was a price tag – it would be entirely worth it!!

What is FireFox?

In it's first year FireFox saw over 100 million downloads. In 2006 PC World compared the IE7 and FireFox 2 and after the review stated that FireFox was the better browser!

What would make FireFox a better browser? And, What is it?
Mozilla Firefox (originally known as "Phoenix" and briefly as "Mozilla Firebird") is a free, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers.Wikipedia

BUT, it is more than a browser:
Security: FireFox is built by a team leading the way to better security online. Security from Phishing, Spyware and other obtrusive realities are developed as the software is actively tested by a global community of experts.

Extensibility: With FireFox you can enjoy the web in a whole new way. The internet is no longer something you simply browse - it is something you can wield to get more accomplished. FireFox has an amazing ability to be extended to do specific things you want it to. Visit the "Recommended Extensions " page to begin discovering that a browser can do far more than you have been trained to think! (one of my personal favorites: the Web Developer - tool for working with websites; a second: Aardvark - for sluthing web styling; and third: Gspace - for using your gmail account as a 2.8GB online backup drive!

(I use others regularly, like the delicious extension, live bookmarks, ScribFire and more. A popular one I need to explore is GreasMonkey.)

Personalization: This is something you can waste a lot of time with, have a good bit of fun or simply find a browser environment that fits your flow. FireFox has tons of great themes to customize the look and feel of your browser on your computer!

Built into the system is the need for speed. Generally speaking, you will get much faster page loads compared to Internet Explorer. If you like to split seconds and get more response to your mouse click on the web - don't miss this amazing and fast creature called FireFox!! 🙂

Click below to get your own copy:

Need more speed? Tweak some internal settings for even more than the default speed:

1.Type “about:config” into you FireFox address bar. Look for these entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally your browser will make a single request to a web page. Enable pipelining you browser will make several at once, significantly speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number say, 16. You are setting the browser to make up to 16 requests at once.

3. Final step: right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.
Give it the name: “nglayout.initialpaint.delay”
Set the value to "0". (This will be the amount of time the browser requires before it response to information it receives.)

Test it out and see how much the speed has increased!
You can read about pipelining here on the Mozilla Site