Mozilla Firefox is the dream Internet browser you've been looking for. It displays an elegant simplicity and makes your web experience better, faster and even more enjoyable.
Take its translucent toolbar which, compared with the clutter of Microsoft Internet Explorer's toolbar, presents only a few basic browsing commands: back, forward, reload, stop and home. Its Options screen consists of seven simple categories of settings - most of which don't need adjusting, since the defaults actually work and make sense. Firefox also blocks pop-up ads automatically and strongly resists "phishing" scams.
Phishing Protection takes Firefox’s security to a new level, helping to safeguard your financial information and protect you from identity theft. When you encounter a Web site that is a suspected forgery (known as a “phishing” site) Firefox will warn you and offer to take you to a search page so you can find the real Web site you were looking for.
To keep Firefox current with any security fixes, the browser is designed to check for updates automatically and pops up a box on your desktop to inform you when these are available for download.
Firefox will not allow a Web site to download, install, or run programs on your computer without your explicit agreement.
Firefox also has built-in spell checking to keep you from making any mistakes in your blog posts and Web-based email.
A "Find" bar at the bottom of Firefox's window lets you search for words on a page without blocking your view of the page itself; as you type a query, the first matching item is highlighted in green. "Find Next" and "Find Previous" buttons jump to other matches, and a "Highlight" button paints all of them in yellow. Simple, yet a powerful search tool yet again showing the advantage of open source software development!
For searches across the entire Web, a box at the top right provides a shortcut to Google queries, and a menu lists five other sites, including Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, Answers.com, and Creative Commons.
Downloadable plug-ins offer access to such resources as the Internet Movie Database, BBC News, CNN, FoxyTunes and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Firefox 2 also supports a built-in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) newsreader to fetch updates from Web sites that publish their content using this standard. Firefox gives you full control over Web feeds, showing you a preview and letting you choose how you want to subscribe. You can use a Firefox Live Bookmark, or a feed reader that you’ve installed on your computer, or through a Web service such as My Yahoo!, Bloglines or Google Reader.
Web addicts can customize Firefox to no end with browser extensions that add functions and themes that alter its looks and feel. Find the Options window's settings too limiting? Type "about:config" into the address bar and you'll see around 600+ preferences to tweak!
You can download Firefox 2 for free from this site, and unlike Internet Explorer 7, Firefox is available on a variety of operating systems: Windows, Mac and Linux. There are also a wide variety of localised language versions, including Basque and Byelorussian.The Firefox 2 installation routine does not require that you shut down your anti-virus protection; nor does it perform a system reboot.
There are many enhancements within Firefox 2 which make it a worthy upgrade for existing users and a fine introduction for new users. Firefox is truly innovative, yet it's also very practical for everyday use. Download a copy from the Mozilla Web Site and see for yourself how good it really is!
And if Firefox isn't already good enough you can improve its performance even further by using FireTune. This is another piece of open source software that optimises several internal settings of Firefox for better performance. According to your specific computer speed and Internet connection speed, FireTune will optimise several internal settings of Firefox for better speed and performance.
In most cases you'll notice an improved browsing
speed after optimising Firefox with FireTune.
Everything FireTune does can be undone easily provided that you save your original profile configuration file with FireTune's profile backup feature ‘before running the program’.
The latest version of FireTune is available for free from this site. Click here to Download your copy.
Please note: QBS do not offer any product support for this product. The FireTune .exe file will be downloaded to your desktop when you click the above link. Make sure Firefox is closed before you run the FireTune set up program.