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Downloaded Firefox? Good. Now Put It To Work For You
By Trevor Bauknight

So you've read the glowing press and you're sick of the gaping
security holes Internet Explorer opens into your personal computer
and the personal data it manipulates. You've gone to
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox and you've downloaded
the latest and greatest in Web browser technology. What next?

You could be content to use it just like you use any other
browser. It'll happily import all your Internet Explorer
preferences, bookmarks, etc. and let you interact with them
the way you always have. You can set Firefox as your default
browser and it will pop up when you click a link in your e-mail.

You can do everything you can do with Internet Explorer except
run ActiveX controls (this is a feature, not a bug!), so you'll
still need to use IE if you want to run Windows Update manually
(though if you have Windows XP, we suggest turning on Automatic
Updates and not fooling with manual updates anymore.)

Check Your Prefs

The first time you run Firefox, you will be given the option
to import your current settings and bookmarks from Internet
Explorer. This makes it easy to give Firefox a try without
investing a lot of time tweaking it to your liking; and, let's
face it, if you try it, you're probably going to keep using it.
You'll also be asked at some point if you want to make Firefox
your default web browser. We think that's a great idea.

Under the Tools menu, select Options... to open the Firefox
preferences manager. We'll briefly walk through a few of them
you may not have thought about. The manager organizes the
preferences into five categories: General, Privacy, Web
Features, Downloads and Advanced.

The General tab is highlighted automatically, but there isn't
much new here. You might find the automatic proxy configuration
option under Connections useful.

The Privacy tab contains lots of options dealing with how your
browser stores information from your sessions and how it presents
it to websites to which you return. Each option gives you the
ability to clear all stored information quickly and conveniently.
Firefox will offer to save your passwords internally and type in
a master password each time it's necessary to access some web
content. This feature works flawlessly and is even able to
handle multiple logins for single pages. You also have
fine-grained control over cookies, those relatively harmless
bits of information websites leave behind in your browser to
help them recognize you next time you come around.

Under the Web Features tab, there are all kinds of features that
make old-time Web purists like me almost giddy. You may already
have downloaded some sort of pop-up blocker for IE, but Firefox
has this built in, and it's easy to gain control over which
sites are allowed and which aren't allowed to spawn new windows
all over your screen. You can choose to allow websites to load
images or not, or to load them from their server and not allow
off-site images that may carry tracking bugs to load.

The Advanced tab is where most of the fun is with Firefox. Here,
you can adjust all kinds of default browser behaviors. The best
feature of Firefox is tabbed browsing. This enables you to open
multiple websites each in its own individual tab in a single
browser window. These preferences allow the user to control when
new tabs are created and when they come into focus.

We recommend unchecking the box that hides the tab bar when
there is only one site open because of the visual reminder that
you can add tabs instead of opening new windows. You can also
right-click in the tab bar to create new tabs quickly and
right-click existing tabs to bring up a contextual menu of
options for dealing with them.

There is also a handy Software Update section that allows you to
have Firefox automatically check for updates to both itself and
to any extensions you have installed. The Advanced tab is also
where heavy-duty secure certificate manipulation is handled.

Make Firefox Yours

Our next favorite thing to do with Firefox is to customize
the main browser toolbar and select which toolbars are visible.
Under View > Toolbars > Customize... you can drag and drop the
browser's control icons as you like. You can also control the
appearance of the Status bar at the bottom of the browser and
the main Navigation and Bookmarks toolbars at the top. Don't
forget that the main Navigation toolbar includes its very own
search box that you can associate with any search engine you
prefer and that takes you straight to your results.

We wholeheartedly recommend turning on the Status bar because
it's often handy to see where a link will take you before you
click it, and that's one of the things you'll see in the Status
Bar. The Sidebar is a special toolbar where you can see your
bookmarks and History arranged hierarchically. Each bookmark's
properties includes a selection you can use to specify that the
bookmark opens in the Sidebar instead of in the main browser
window. This feature is great for bookmarking pages that are
long lists of links that you'd like to open in the main window.
In addition, the Sidebar comes with its own Search box tied to
its current contents.

Extend Firefox

The most powerful feature of Firefox is undoubtedly its
ability to be extended by third-party developers using XUL, the
extensible framework developed by the Mozilla team as an answer
to Microsoft's ActiveX. There are already dozens of excellent
extensions designed for all kinds of purposes. You can see all
the available extensions by selecting Extensions from the Tools
menu and then choosing Get More Extensions at the bottom of the
Extensions Manager. Here are some of our favorites:

Chatzilla - Here at Cafe ID (www.cafeid.com), we use Internet
Relay Chat to communicate in real-time with our far-flung
developer staff. There are lots of IRC clients out there,
but none are quite as straightforward for use in a serious
environment as Chatzilla. It allows you to open a multi-tabbed
window containing all your IRC activity and supports most IRC
commands. Best of all, it's free while many Windows IRC clients
are shareware or commercial applications.

SearchStatus - this one does an excellent job of replacing both
the missing functionality of the Google Toolbar and the Alexa
Toolbar used heavily in website marketing to monitor traffic and
inbound links.

Adblock - lets you filter out website content by source address,
simply by pointing and clicking.

Checky - opens up an interface between Firefox and numerous
website validation and analysis tools, this is an essential tool
for web developers.

Sage - a lightweight RSS and ATOM feed aggregator, used for
viewing your collection of incoming RSS and ATOM feeds into a
single, easy-to-use view.

Abe Vigoda Status - checks on and displays the status of Abe
Vigoda in the Status bar.

More To Come

We can't recommend Firefox heartily enough. It's an excellent
browser with a perfect collection of features that doesn't
succumb to the bloat that was starting to drag down Netscape
while at the same time allowing you to browse a bit more freely
without worrying about running into a site that will allow the
site owner to take control of your computer for her own nefarious
ends. The Firefox developers aren't resting on their successes.
They want to help you take back the Web, and they're going to
stay ahead of the browser technology game. Go ahead and give it
a shot if you haven't already. We don't think you'll look back.

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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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