2004 is drawing to a close. Have you ditched Internet Explorer for Firefox yet? I have been using Firefox for almost six months now, and I can honestly say it beats IE hands down. The first full version — Firefox 1.0 — has been available for some time. Switching from IE is easy.

I love the following things about Firefox:

• It’s more secure than IE. Microsoft, comfortable with the notion that the vast majority of people in the world use their IE browser, have done little to improve the browser since Netscape, their former competitor, “lost the browser war.” But you don’t have to take my word for it: even Slate, owned by Microsoft, published an article subtitled “How Mozilla’s Firefox trumps Internet Explorer.” Securityfocus.com recommended ditching IE six months ago.
• Tabbed browsing. I can have multiple tabs open in one window and switch back and forth between them easily. It makes writing blog entries involving web research very easy. And it keeps the taskbar on the bottom of my computer screen less cluttered so I can even have multiple programs open and still see what I’m doing. This is especially valuable when I’m creating handouts for school.
• “Smarter Search.” I don’t have to download a Google or Yahoo toolbar. Search is integrated into Firefox’s toolbar. And not just Google or Yahoo. I have my toolbar configured to search Google, Yahoo, Amazon, E-Bay, two different dictionary sites, IMDb, and Wikipedia. That saves loads of time, because all I have to do is open a browser and I can execute searches at any of these sites without having to even open their website or open a bookmark. It’s easy.
• Dictionary Search. This is a nifty extension that makes it easy to look up words I don’t know or find articles. All I have to do is highlight a word, right click, and select which sort of search I want to do, because my particular setup allows me to search Merriam-Webster’s dictionary or thesaurus, Wikipedia, and even a Hebrew dictionary.
• Pop-up Blocker. I don’t have to download anything extra to block pop-ups. It works great, too. Not one single pop-up has opened without my consent since I’ve been using Firefox.

That just barely scratches the surface. If Firefox has one flaw, it seems to be that it doesn’t like PDFs. Often, when I try to open a PDF with Firefox, it stops responding. Aside from that, I can do anything else I need to do over the Internet in Firefox. In fact, I have become so attached to Firefox, that I can’t stand it when I have to use IE for any reason (for example, most of the computers at work don’t have Firefox).

Out with the old and in with the new — do yourself a favor and try it. And no, this wasn’t a compensated endorsement — that’s just how much I like it.

Found via Roger Darlington’s blog Nighthawk:

The other way of creating an encyclopaedia is to create a space on the Web and invite passers-by to write articles. This is such a preposterous idea that nobody in their right mind would entertain it for a moment. How, then, do we explain the fact that someone has done it, and that it is a raging success?

Read the rest of the article at The Guardian.

Naughton makes a great point. How on earth does this work, what with so many people out there being jerks and whatnot? But it does. You know, I also use Wikipedia more than most other reference sites online. I even have a plugin with Firefox that allows me to highlight a word, right-click, and look it up in Wikipedia. Most of one of my recent Pensieve posts was written largely with the help of Wikipedia. It’s all open source. You can alter or write articles if you want. Yes, you! Of course, someone may come along and change what you’ve written. And as Naughton points out, vandalism happens. It also happens to get repaired by the good geeks to find it. It’s a pretty cool community and a great resource. Take the knowledge of humanity on the web, construct a way for them to share it, and you have probably one of the best and most comprehensive encyclopedias ever produced. Who would’ve thunk it?

Okay, in my quest to become a true web geek instead of a lame poser, and also because of the identity theft issue (which I can’t prove is because I was using IE, but who knows), I downloaded Firefox, in part because Kim Komando said she uses it. I’m sure she’s got several browsers that she switches between. The more I read about Internet Explorer’s bugs and security holes, the scarier it seems. I immediately performed the Secunia Multiple Browers Frame Injection Vulnerability Test I told you about, and Firefox is indeed secure as far as that particular problem is concerned.

Firefox has an easy user interface and even includes a help file for people who use IE so that they can figure out the differences between the two browsers with ease. It also displays favicons in the location bar (address bar in IE), which is something that IE doesn’t do (they display them in your “Favorites,” however). The only thing is there seems to be a bug with favicons in Firefox. Looks like it sort of randomly dumps the favicon or flashes it, then shows the default page curling favicon. That’s a pain in the ass if you have bothered to make a favicon for your site. However, it looks like the user has more control over the the web. You can disable favicons and target=”_blank”, customize your brower with themes, and BLOCK POP-UPS mong many other things.

I also dumped Eudora in favor of Thunderbird. The user interface is much simpler. Eudora was really busy. Plus, it had ads. Ick. Who wants that? You can get a version of Eudora without ads one of two ways: 1) purchase it for about $50; or 2) get the trimmed-down version with less features. I will admit neither one looked particularly desirable to me.

Oh, who am I kidding. If I was a true geek, I’d be running my computer on Linux. Maybe someday. Open source rocks.

I promise not to write about techie stuff every day. I know some of you aren’t interested and don’t get it. I’m just sort of into web development right now.

My first web site was a crappy-looking monstrosity wrought using Geocities’ Pagebuilder. Waiting for Pagebuilder to load on dialup was agony. I had every bell and whistle on that site that I now find annoying as hell: tartan backgrounds so busy they caused eyestrain, background midis (yes, I know, and I have seen the error of my ways), lots of slow-loading images, buttons for everything instead of text links, etc. It was truly awful-looking. I was going to link it here so I could prove it, but Geocities appears to have deleted it due to, I’m sure, inactivity on my part and lack of interest on the part of the entire Internet community. I revamped one part of the site and moved it to a new spot, where it still exists. It is a small site in homage to the author Diana Gabaldon. It was done after I gained some valuable web experience maintaining a diary at my old host. The only real problem with this site is it needs to be updated quite badly.

Now I have my own domain, and as soon as we get any content up, I’ll share it with you. Most likely, I’ll be moving my blog over there as well. It’s weird. I don’t claim to be a web goddess, but I have learned quite a bit over the past couple of years. I’m actually pretty pleased with the way my blog looks right now. I don’t know what all we’re going to do with the domain. I know my husband wants to put his blog there. We don’t want it to be one of those cheesy family sites where the little lady shares pictures of her knitting projects (I’m sorry if I offended anyone who does that. I’m thinking I’d like to have my genealogy information up there. Aside from that, I don’t know what sort of content I’ll include. I’ll have fun with it though.