Firefox
Created | Updated Oct 24, 2005
If you have not already joined in the Firefox revolution, do not understand why you should, or do not even know what Firefox is, do not worry, help is here! (Plus a few sneaky tricks!)
First of all, a brief description of what it is. Firefox is a web browser developed by Mozilla (www.mozilla.org). Being open-source, it is totally free, and you get the chance to improve future versions of it by helping with code/bug reporting if you so wish. It is not very big (4.7 MB) so even 56k users can download it without too much hassle. Also, it is available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac and most distributions of Linux so is totally cross platfrom.
Firefox's underlying 'engine' is called Gecko which is used by Netscape (which is now owned by AOL) and Mozilla's standard browser. However, Firefox is a lot more streamlined and efficient.
Security has always been a problem for web browsers running on Windows, but Firefox is about as secure as you will get as it does not have support for ActiveX controls, although because of inherent flaws in Windows it is still open to attack. However, if you use Mac or a Linux distro you will have a very safe browser indeed.
Despite the small download size, Firefox comes with very good tools. It has a very competent pop-up blocker built in and turned on by default so annoying 'CONGRATULATIONS you are our 1 millionth visitor' kind of things won't spontaneously appear in front of you unless you allow them in the settings. You can even tell it to block pop-ups on certain sites and not others, or hold 'Ctrl' to temporarily allow pop-ups if it blocks one that you require. It also comes with a built in search box at the top right of the browser which includes popular search engines and encyclopedias via a dropdown menu. It is also possible to add your own to the menu if it does not have your regular search engine/encyclopedia/dictionary/online shop etc.
Firefox also supports tabbed browsing. This is a feature that has been around for some time now, but for some reason Microsoft still have not embraced it, and will not do until the next version of Windows is released. Tabbed browsing allows you to open new windows in one instance of Firefox if you so wish. This basically means no more alt-tabbing or searching the taskbar for webpages if you regularly have a few open at a time.
Another very handy feature (whih most people do not know about) is the ability to locate and load web pages without typing in the whole address. For instance, to get BBC news, instead of typing 'www.bbc.co.uk/news', you can just type 'BBC news' into the address bar and it will automatically load the BBC news front page. This works for all webpages that are at the top of the list on the Google search engine. So typing in 'BBC weather Manchester' or 'ebay' will bring up the page :D. Try it with the webpages you visit most, and you will wonder why you have been typing in www. and .com/.co.uk etc for so long!
Firefox is also compatable with RSS, a new real time news feed on some webpages (including BBC news - try it!). RSS allows you to create 'live' bookmarks that update the main headlines so you can view them without actually visiting the site - very handy.
Finally, there are a whole host of extensions (most IE plugins such as Windows media player, Flash player, Quicktime etc etc work in exactly the same way they do in IE) and themes for Firefox, to suit every personality and taste. Unfortunately though, some web pages will not function properly (or at all) when using Firefox, so IE will still need to be used occasionally.
All in all, it is a stunningly good browser and I urge everyone unfortunate enough to be using IE to make the switch, even if I have not fully conviced you, try it anyway, and if you still do not like it, oh well. It is not like it has cost you any money or been a stupidly large download.
Now the next phase - so you have got Firefox and are happy with it. What next? Well there are a few 'hacks' you can do to Firefox to make it even faster(!) and take less resources. This is totally legal and quite easy and even if you make a mistake, it will not harm your p.c in any way.
First of all, open Firefox or a new tab (hold 'Ctrl'and press 't') and in the address bar type 'about:config' and hit return. This will open the rather daunting but actually quite simple Firefox configuration/ settings.
To speed up the browser even more, scroll down to network.http.pipelining and click this to set it to 'true';
set network.http.proxy.pipelining to 'true'
set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30
and finally right click any blank area of the screen and select 'New -> Integer. Call this 'nglayout.initialpaint.delay' and set it to '0'. Now restart Firefox and marvel in how much faster it is! ;D
To fix the memory leak problem, do the same as above to enter the config screen, right click a blank area and select new integer again. Name this 'browser.cache.memory.capacity' and give it a value of 1600 - 16384 and restart Firefox. This will stop it from eating away at your RAM and ensure it is lightning-fast. :D Enjoy!
John 'Johnef' Hamblett
First of all, a brief description of what it is. Firefox is a web browser developed by Mozilla (www.mozilla.org). Being open-source, it is totally free, and you get the chance to improve future versions of it by helping with code/bug reporting if you so wish. It is not very big (4.7 MB) so even 56k users can download it without too much hassle. Also, it is available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac and most distributions of Linux so is totally cross platfrom.
Firefox's underlying 'engine' is called Gecko which is used by Netscape (which is now owned by AOL) and Mozilla's standard browser. However, Firefox is a lot more streamlined and efficient.
Security has always been a problem for web browsers running on Windows, but Firefox is about as secure as you will get as it does not have support for ActiveX controls, although because of inherent flaws in Windows it is still open to attack. However, if you use Mac or a Linux distro you will have a very safe browser indeed.
Despite the small download size, Firefox comes with very good tools. It has a very competent pop-up blocker built in and turned on by default so annoying 'CONGRATULATIONS you are our 1 millionth visitor' kind of things won't spontaneously appear in front of you unless you allow them in the settings. You can even tell it to block pop-ups on certain sites and not others, or hold 'Ctrl' to temporarily allow pop-ups if it blocks one that you require. It also comes with a built in search box at the top right of the browser which includes popular search engines and encyclopedias via a dropdown menu. It is also possible to add your own to the menu if it does not have your regular search engine/encyclopedia/dictionary/online shop etc.
Firefox also supports tabbed browsing. This is a feature that has been around for some time now, but for some reason Microsoft still have not embraced it, and will not do until the next version of Windows is released. Tabbed browsing allows you to open new windows in one instance of Firefox if you so wish. This basically means no more alt-tabbing or searching the taskbar for webpages if you regularly have a few open at a time.
Another very handy feature (whih most people do not know about) is the ability to locate and load web pages without typing in the whole address. For instance, to get BBC news, instead of typing 'www.bbc.co.uk/news', you can just type 'BBC news' into the address bar and it will automatically load the BBC news front page. This works for all webpages that are at the top of the list on the Google search engine. So typing in 'BBC weather Manchester' or 'ebay' will bring up the page :D. Try it with the webpages you visit most, and you will wonder why you have been typing in www. and .com/.co.uk etc for so long!
Firefox is also compatable with RSS, a new real time news feed on some webpages (including BBC news - try it!). RSS allows you to create 'live' bookmarks that update the main headlines so you can view them without actually visiting the site - very handy.
Finally, there are a whole host of extensions (most IE plugins such as Windows media player, Flash player, Quicktime etc etc work in exactly the same way they do in IE) and themes for Firefox, to suit every personality and taste. Unfortunately though, some web pages will not function properly (or at all) when using Firefox, so IE will still need to be used occasionally.
All in all, it is a stunningly good browser and I urge everyone unfortunate enough to be using IE to make the switch, even if I have not fully conviced you, try it anyway, and if you still do not like it, oh well. It is not like it has cost you any money or been a stupidly large download.
Now the next phase - so you have got Firefox and are happy with it. What next? Well there are a few 'hacks' you can do to Firefox to make it even faster(!) and take less resources. This is totally legal and quite easy and even if you make a mistake, it will not harm your p.c in any way.
First of all, open Firefox or a new tab (hold 'Ctrl'and press 't') and in the address bar type 'about:config' and hit return. This will open the rather daunting but actually quite simple Firefox configuration/ settings.
To speed up the browser even more, scroll down to network.http.pipelining and click this to set it to 'true';
set network.http.proxy.pipelining to 'true'
set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30
and finally right click any blank area of the screen and select 'New -> Integer. Call this 'nglayout.initialpaint.delay' and set it to '0'. Now restart Firefox and marvel in how much faster it is! ;D
To fix the memory leak problem, do the same as above to enter the config screen, right click a blank area and select new integer again. Name this 'browser.cache.memory.capacity' and give it a value of 1600 - 16384 and restart Firefox. This will stop it from eating away at your RAM and ensure it is lightning-fast. :D Enjoy!
John 'Johnef' Hamblett
