Firefox Web Browser

Firefox: Introduction

Image: The top section of a Firefox window, with Google Toolbar.

Firefox is a Web browser, which has rapidly gained in popularity. It includes some very useful features and it is free. Whether you browse on the World Wide Web a little, or a lot, it could be beneficial to you. Firefox is a Web browser from Mozilla, which is an open source, or open software, organisation that develops products using the voluntary co-operation of the Internet community. Such products are often free, or incur a small handling and/or delivery charge. Such products can also benefit from the expertise and ideas of a large user and development community. This means that new useful features continuously appear in updated versions of the product.

You can get Firefox here.

Firefox versus Internet Explorer

Here is a comparison between Firefox and Internet Explorer. In many aspects the two browsers have comparable features and benefits, and so this comparison only focuses on the key differences.

Tabs: View Multiple Pages in Firefox

Firefox supports tabbed browsing which allows you to have several web pages open in one instance of the Firefox program. This is a useful feature that shows the title of each page you are viewing in its own tab. You can click on a tab to switch to that page instantly. You can also cycle through the tabs by pressing the control and tab keys (Ctrl+Tab). Internet Explorer can only show one page per instance (window) of the program.

Score: Firefox 1 : Internet Explorer 0

Find Text on a Page

Firefox has a great find toolbar for finding text on the currently viewed Web page. When you select Find from the menu the toolbar automatically appears. As you type the characters of the text you want to find Firefox immediately starts searching for the first match and jumps to that text on the page. You can then find the next match, or previous match. You can also simultaneously highlight all matches on the page. This feature is easy to use and very useful, much better than the find in IE.

Score: Firefox 2 : Internet Explorer 0

Adjustable Text Size

The size of the text displayed on a Web page can be adjusted over a much wider range than that in IE. You can have text as large or small as you want.

Score: Firefox 3 : Internet Explorer 0

View Source (HTML)

The view source feature shows the HTML source of a page very clearly, using colours to represent HTML tags, their attribute values, and other aspects. In IE, by default, it just opens up the plain text editor - Notepad.

Score: Firefox 4 : Internet Explorer 0

Download Manager

In Firefox a download manager tracks what you have downloaded, and where you have put it. This makes it much easier to find your downloads. You can click on an entry to: open the folder it has been saved to, open the file itself, view its properties, and remove the entry from the download list. You can also clear the download list in one click. IE has no such feature.

Score: Firefox 5 : Internet Explorer 0

Firefox Extensions and Themes

You can download Firefox extensions to increase the functionality of Firefox, and get themes to change how Firefox looks.

Score: Firefox 6 : Internet Explorer 0

Tools

Firefox has tools that are useful to developers and designers: JavaScript Console; DOM Inspector; and Page Info. IE has a Java console, but lacks the other features.

Score: Firefox 7 : Internet Explorer 0

Extra Options and Features

Firefox also has other miscellaneous features that do things IE cannot do, or that make things easier to use.

Score: Firefox 8 : Internet Explorer 0

Viewing Offline

Although Firefox does have a cache for pages that have been viewed it does not appear to provide a way of viewing those pages offline. [If anyone knows otherwise, please contact Acro Logic.] IE does view page offline. IE can also download an entire site, or subset of a site, for viewing offline.

Score: Firefox 8 : Internet Explorer 1

Get Firefox with Google Toolbar

Get the free Firefox browser with the Google Toolbar by clicking the picture on the left. The download is quick, even on a dial-up connection. Installation is quick and simple.