Top 10 reasons you should use Firefox over Internet Explorer

Firefox is a amazing browser. I managed to find it during its early days, before even version 1.0.
I really liked the tabbed browsing and since I had dial up this really helped to speed up my browsing. Firefox was small then and did not have much market
share. It still may not have much today but Microsoft is finally paying some attention to the little browser.

Back a couple of years ago when I started to use it
Microsoft said it had no intentions to ever release a new version of Internet Explorer. When firefox started gaining market share and a lot of attention they wised up
and released IE 7 and it also had tabs.

Still IE 7 does not have many features of firefox and that brings me into reason number 1 on my list:

Speed

Firefox is like night and day when comparing browsing speed between the two. Plus it loads so much faster than IE. I have been using the newest version of it lately which was 2.5 and it was great.
I managed to get the beta version of 3(RC2) and I was amazed again at what Mozilla was doing with Firefox(beating up IE for sure). It was again like night and day from version 2.5. Now a couple of days ago they released
the full Firefox 3. Microsoft says they plan yet another update for their browser and actually have a beta out now.

Firefox’s engineers claim that their third major release is 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 in JavaScript performance, and 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2.

Built in download manager
Firefox has had one of these maybe since day one. This is a helpful feature for dial up users. Being able to pause a download,disconect and then come back online later to finish the download is a great feature.
If you wanted to do this with IE you would have to find a free download manager. While they do exhist and I have one for IE why should I have to get more software when it should come built in?
Plus with extensions you can make firefox’s download manager even better!

Extensions

Firefox is not only fast and light on the memory but it can also be customized. You can download and ad a ton of tools called extensions which can help you on a number of your daily internet needs.
Lets say you dont like ads or especially those bloated flash ads. These two tools have saved me so much page load time on dial up, its nuts. The two tools you will need are called noscript and adblock plus.
If you get firefox these tools are a must. They also speed up load times on even a fast connection.

Smart Location Bar

I really really love this new feature in firefox 3. It remembers what you type in the url bar and keeps the most used up top plus it shows the sites details so you can see what you are clicking on.
Plus it shows a list of possible websites with details of the websites as you type to help you find what your looking for quicker.

Restore Sessions

You know how when your working away and the browser “JUST MUST CLOSE AS IT HAD A ERROR” and you don’t want to lose your work but you have to. This happens in both firefox and IE. Well firefox has a great feature called Restore Session. Whenever the browser dies unexpectedly it will remember all tabs that are open and when you re-open the browser it will ask you to restore session or start a new session.

Exit and save a session

I have a bad habit of getting a big work load and not finishing it before bedtime. Its not always work but just pages I want to leave open and go back to. You all might know what this does to your computer the next morning. It makes it groggy and slow when you first start using it again. Well you now have the ability to SAVE your session and close the browser. This way you can close it and restart it later and free up that ram for some other project you are doing.

Built in spellchecker

This is a feature I find myself using all the time. Its so fast,simple and easy to use also. The built in spellchecker really makes spell checking easy and fast. Whenever a word seems or is misspelled it is underlined red and if you left click on the word it shows a list of possible spellings. Pick the one thats right and away you go.

Anti-Malware

This is another GREAT built in feature that has actually helped me once. Firefox is already a lot safer than IE at browsing. I used to have to scan for viruses and spyware all the time. Now I get neither on my computer. This Anti-Malware feature runs the site your going to through a list of known bad sites and tells you to not load the site if its a bad one. This list is updated continually to keep you safe.

Move tabs around

Firefox unlike IE allows you to move your tabs around. If you want the last tab to be all the way up front just drag and drop it up there or anywhere in between!

Re-open a tab

I use this feature a lot so its going to included in this list. Its so very handy to have this feature. Lets say you accidentally close the tab but you still want some info from that page. Now you can left click on another tab and hit “Undo Closed tab” and your tab is back. It will remove more than just the last tab closed, up to how many I am not sure.

This is why you should use firefox over IE. By all means go and download it. This little list is so small, it does not count hardly any of the features firefox has. With the extensions this browser can be very powerful.


















This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.