How many of you have always used Internet Explorer (IE) to browse the Net and never really looked at any of the other browsers available? I have always used IE and have been quite comfortable with it until I found what Firefox has to offer.... and believe me it was worth the switch. I enumerate below some of the many plus points of Firefox and you can decide for yourself whether it is indeed worth the change.
- The google search tool is incorporated in Firefox. In Internet Explorer (IE) you have to either download the google toolbar or perhaps set your homepage to google or add it to your favourites. On Firefox it is always available and the search is faster.
- Tabs besides windows for quicker browsing : Allows you to open a link in a new tab or a new window. IE gives you the option to open a link in a new window only. Having too many windows open can be very annoying and time consuming. This facility of Firefox to have several tabs in one window is very good. It’s easy, quick and saves a lot of time navigating between windows; it’s faster navigating between windows.
- If you want to open several bookmarks in one shot, you have to put them in one folder under bookmarks and open them in tabs. This is just not possible in IE – you cannot open several sites in a folder under “Favourites”.
- It has it’s own batch download program. You can pause your download and continue it at a later time, something which is not possible with IE’s download manager. The download manager stores information such as file size and location of your downloaded file. When the download is complete, a small notification is displayed in the lower right side of the screen. In IE, if your internet connection fails you have to start from scratch all over again.
- Security : Internet Explorer has some major security holes. Firefox has none.
- You can drag and drop any link right into the top of the browser and it automatically adds a button.
- No more Pop-Ups to annoy you. The default settings will allow no pop-ups but you get a message just above the web page displayed saying that popups from that website have been blocked. You can change the settings to allow for popups to be displayed for certain sites as the need maybe or not at all. In IE you need to use a third-party software to achieve the same thing.
- Memory usage : Internet Explorer uses far more memory than Firefox.
- Faster browsing so you spend less time waiting.
- Firefox is free while IE is not.
- Firefox is comparatively smaller in size and the download takes only a few minutes.
- In Firefox you have more space as the History button is missing but you can have the sidebar for History (you will find it under View menu)
- To search for any text on a particular web page, you would normally use Ctrl + F. Now you can do that even faster by pressing the "forward slash" key (it's the one that shares the key with the question mark on your keyboard) and thentype in what ypu want to search as usual. It's quick and easy!
- Maintains HTML formatting : I copied some text from the left side of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and pasted it into notepad.
What I copied from IE is as follows :
Navigation
Main Page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
What I copied from Firefox :
Navigation
* Main Page
* Contents
* Featured content
* Current events
* Random article
Now that you have seen all that Firefox has to offer, what are you waiting for?
Get Firefox with Google Toolbar now!!! Click on the square button below.
