After helping way too many people unscrew their systems due in large part to Microsoft software inviting everyone into their hard drives, I’ve decided to do something drastic.
If you are visiting my webpage with Internet Explorer, it will now nag you to switch browsers. I’ve joined the Explorer Destroyer campaign, boys and girls. Oh, I haven’t gone totally ideologue on you – the site will still work for IE users, but mostly because I know people may not be allowed to use a secure and fast browser at their workplace. At home, though – please do yourself a favor and stop using IE. Not only does it ignore web standards (CSS2, PNG, etc), it’s a virus waiting to happen. I’ve had to use IE to access a couple sites recently – they almost invariably end up leaving some sort of electronic spooge on my system that takes me a half hour or more to remove. And I know what I’m doing. Other folks just say, “my computer is messed up” and eventually they stop using the machine entirely.
I’ve used a variety of web browsers over the years. When I first got a PPP internet account, I used Netscape (0.7 as I recall). As time went on, I tried IE 1.0, but stuck with Netscape. When Netscape stopped getting updates and became a giant bloated piece of dung, I reluctantly used IE for a while. When Opera came out, I grabbed it (even though I had to pay for it, it was better than IE). A while back, the Mozilla Project came out with Phoenix, which became Firebird, which became Firefox. They got sued out of their previous names, but I guess nobody wants to remember the Clint Eastwood movie so they’re safe now.
Firefox has tabbed browsing, built-in popup blocking (that actually BLOCKS everything, unlike IE’s attempt), and is fast. The program is significantly smaller than IE’s bloatware, but allows an impressive variety of extensions to be used. If you use Firefox, here’s the extensions I recommend:
Adblock – nukes any images from ad-serving web sites. Doubleclick, begone! Must-have for dialup users.
All-in-One Gestures – let’s you use the right mouse button to jump back a site, go forward, or do the hokey pokey. Until you use mouse gestures, you will not understand why people love them. once you use them, you’ll hate using a machine that omits them.
Flashblock – Allows you to decide whether to load that Flash-based content or not. Must-have for dialup users.
And here’s some that I like a lot:
TabBrowser Preferences – exposes many of the tabbed interface options that are hidden by default.
Forecastfox – shows a multi-day forecast at the bottom of your browser. Takes no space, and alerts you if there is a weather alert.
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