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Firefox 1.0 Renews Interest in the Browser
By Trevor Bauknight

The Mozilla folks, with apologies to the Monty Python gang, 
aren't quite dead yet. They feel happy. They think they'll go 
for a walk.

What they've done is take advantage of the frustration many 
people (particularly Windows users) are feeling with the 
condition of their web browsing experience by releasing 
Firefox 1.0, a lightweight new browser based on years of 
redevelopment since Netscape's open-sourcing of Communicator 
in 1998.

Problems with spyware, pop-up ads, security flaws, indifference 
and downright hostility to standards-compliant behavior have 
made Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser one of the most widely 
reviled pieces of software ever. Of course, the fact that it's 
bolted tightly onto the Windows operating system that runs some 
90% of the world's personal computers means that hundreds of 
millions of people worldwide use it regularly anyway.

While that isn't likely to change anytime soon, assuming 
Microsoft continues to develop MSIE as a component of Windows 
(standalone development has ceased), competitors are beginning 
to reclaim some of the web-browsing market they lost when 
Microsoft decided to give away its browser for free with the OS. 
Firefox's developers are hoping to reach 10% of the browser 
market eventually, and even that is a tall order.

But they have the product to do that and more. Firefox is 
brilliant work from the moment you double-click on its installer. 
Some eight million people downloaded preview versions of Firefox 
in the months leading up to the 1.0 release, and their feedback 
helped refine the browser into a very slick package indeed.

After Firefox is installed, the first thing it lets you do is 
import your bookmarks and preferences from a variety of other 
browsers, most importantly MSIE. Gone are the dreaded days of 
reassembling all that meticulously put-together information and 
trudging through endless preference panels just to try out a 
browser.

The underlying technology is worth mentioning: Firefox is based  
around Gecko, the next-generation webpage rendering engine built 
from the ground up for efficiency and standards-compliance by 
the Mozilla developers and insecure ActiveX controls are eschewed 
in favor of Javascript and a cross-platform user-interface 
language called XUL.

But the real beauty is readily evident to everyone. Some of 
its features, like tabbed browsing, aren't new; but Firefox 
represents the best collection of features versus "feeping 
creaturism" I've seen since my jaw first dropped in 1993 when 
I saw a graphical World Wide Web for the first time.

Tabbed browsing is remarkable, and will revolutionize the way 
you browse the web. It enables you to open numerous websites 
simultaneously and switch between them by simply clicking on the 
familiar tabbed interface.
 
Working at CafeID.com, for example, I can open a tab with our 
Webmail interface by itself and monitor that constantly while 
I maintain our website in another tab, handle web-based live 
support in a third and keep up with affiliates in a fourth! I 
like to keep my tab-bar visible at all times (even in the rare 
instances when I only have one site open) just because it's so 
easy to right click and open a new tab to see another site 
without losing your place on the first one.

Live Bookmarks represents a step forward in keeping up with 
the rapidly-changing nature of today's Web, with all its 
content-driven blogs and news sites. Live Bookmarks makes 
receiving RSS-syndicated feeds a snap, eliminating the need 
for a separate aggregator program.

Popup Blocking is central to Firefox, and not an afterthought or 
an aftermarket accessory as it is on the MSIE side. Google search 
is built right into the toolbar, as well...no need to add that 
capability. And what's not included in Firefox can probably be 
added. A whole raft of extensions is already available for 
downloading.

Speaking of downloading, Firefox weighs in at only about 4.5 
megabytes, making it a manageable download even on a dialup 
connection. There's no reason not to give it a shot, and we 
think you'll never willingly go back to MSIE once you've been 
reminded or possibly seen for the first time how good web 
browsing can be.

Firefox is solid and secure, earning hearty recommendations from 
CERT (the Computer Emergency Response Team - heavyweights in the 
world of computer security), the Wall Street Journal, which 
recommended dumping IE altogether and many others. We unreservedly 
add our own recommendation to the list of them, and hope you'll 
do yourself a favor and help take back the Web.

Firefox can be downloaded at www.mozilla.org. While you're 
there, you might want to check out Thunderbird, an excellent 
Mail/Groupware client similar to Microsoft's Outlook, also based 
on Mozilla.

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Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with over 15 years 
of experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation 
and maintenance of business and personal identity online and can 
be reached at trevor@tryid.com. Stop by http://www.cafeid.com 
for a free tryout of the revolutionary SiteBuildingSystem and 
check out our Flash-based website and IMAP e-mail hosting 
solutions, complete with live support.
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