Benefits Of The Firefox Browser
Chris Channing
The ignition of project Mozilla dates back to mid 1990's. It all started when Netscape lost the battle with Microsoft over bundling of Internet Explorer browser into Windows. This event marked the end of dominance of Netscape Navigator and it soon started to lose its market share to IE. Netscape released its version 4 in the year 1997 but it was nothing as compared to IE4. It was high time for Netscape to bring something special which could outperform the Microsoft Internet Explorer if they even wish to turn tables around. So, Netscape announced the Mozilla Project in 1998 in which Netscape's source code was thrown open for developer use. And within six years, a web browser was developed which was not only fast, lightweight but also performed every function better than IE. Yes, this browser is none other than Firefox, previously known as Firebird.
Mozilla Firefox, presently the safest browser available, is backed up by huge community of active volunteer coders who have been with them since the time of Netscape halcyon days. The absence of Active X components, which are widely used to install spy wares as in the case of IE users, makes Firefox a safe browsing experience. Also, what clearly demarcates the IE and Firefox is the frequency of updates that the later receives. If vulnerability is found it is corrected and updated within few days or even within few hours whereas IE receives no updates for years!
It's interesting to note that disk space requirements of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Internet Explorer will require a hefty 80 megabytes, while Mozilla Firefox only takes only 4.9 megabytes in disk space to operate- quite a healthy difference!
Rendering is important in a browser, with much hype put around the Acid 2 test that measures how well a browser can display things correctly on a webpage. Firefox uses the Gecko engine, which is very precise and hasty, yet fails the Acid 2 test. But in comparison to Internet Explorer, Firefox does much better on the test in the end.
An interesting feature of Firefox is the installation of themes and extensions which makes the browser user customized, a feature which is absent in IE. These themes and extensions are available at the Mozilla and other web developers Websites. The extensions can be added to perform a specific operation for the users such as adblock, Gmail notifier, etc.
Tabbed browsing is a sensation that can triple productivity many times over, simply due to the fact that there is better organization and record keeping to be done with tabbed browsing. Internet Explorer versions have accomplished offering the same thing, but it is less efficient on memory usage and will appear to be much more slow than that of Firefox.
The latest addition in the inventory of Firefox 2 is the session restore. If you are in the middle of typing a long e-mail and suddenly your system hangs or crashes, then Firefox latest "session restore" feature comes to your aid. It restores all your tabs that were there before the system crashed with all your work intact! Also, spell check feature, derived from word processor, gives you ability to correct your spelling mistakes online with a click of mouse.
The browser war will continue to be waged against contenders such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. But as both browsers strive to compete and achieve things such as passing the Acid 2 test, consumers will have to wait and see who will come out on top in the end.
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