Day 56- Firefox 3 Beta

Day 56- Firefox 3 Beta

Most every one I know uses Mozilla Firefox. In just a few short years, this open source web browser has really bitten into the market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

And it is easy to see why. It runs quickly, smoothly and safely. It has one of the best pop-up blockers around. The autofill search bar is amazingly accurate and helpful, plus your ability to specifically select which search engine you prefer is a real time saver. Tabs allow you to organize and clean up your desktop by keeping multiple pages open in one window. And the download organizer is a stroke of genius.

I downloaded the new beta for Firefox 3. I have fallen in love with it. This thing really zooms.

Without getting too geeky, I will explain my new favorite aspects to Firefox 3.

1. Plugging the memory holes. If you were to open 10 tabs, that would really drag down your download time. But since so many of the memory holes have been plugged, you can run 3, 5, 10 tabs at a time and not really notice any slow down.

2. Autofill navigation bar. Utilizing the same technology as in the search bar, the autofill navigation bar searches your history and gives you options to which webpage you want. So often, I am trying to read URLs to figure out which page is which. But the Navigation bar now lists the URL along with the name of the webpage in a large, easy to read way.

3. Stars and Labels. Just like in GMail, I can now star and label websites according to my likes. If I think a site is cool, I star it. Double click on it and the page is automatically bookmarked. And when it is bookmarked, you can label it with as many labels as you want. So, if I were to bookmark lifehacker, I can label it as "blog", "Finances", "Health", "Organization", etc. And firefox does all the sorting for me. A real organization lifesaver!

4. Download Manager- Now with Pause Button!!! Lets say you are downloading an add-on or a large file. But, you need to quickly run out and do an errand. Before, you would be forced to keep your computer on with your browser open if you want to keep it running. Or you would have to drop your download. Now, you can pause your download, close your browser and shut down your computer. When you sign back on, just finish the download.

5. Browser Continuation. My laptop has a tendancy to freeze these days. When I restart, Firefox asks me if I want to refresh my browser or open the previous pages. It was really helpful. Now, with Firefox 3, no matter when I shut down, it asks me the same questions. This is great for when I return to work and need to finish up a job I was working on before I left.

The only real downside to Firefox 3 is the fact that it is still in beta. So, my outside source extensions like Del.ic.ious and google accelerator are not compatable. But, soon, those things will be fixed and I will feel whole again.

Competence Moment of the Day: I finally called the chiropractor about getting an appointment so that my damn back and side stop hurting.