In an effort to further configure my computer to work the way I want it to work as opposed to defaults, I have been playing with Firefox today. I’d like to know who came up with the defaults and why they thought they should be used instead of obviously better systems? Are we, the end users, looked on with so little disregard that we do not get the full functionability of items without hoops? Hmmm.

To answer your questions first. Why Firefox? If you haven’t figured it out by now, I hate MS. Why haven’t I fully switched over to Firefox already then? Well it didn’t do some things I thought it should do by default (or able to be chosen in options). Read on.

First I asked for help in The Screensavers chatroom. They had no idea. They didn’t think it could be done. It can. With Extensions.

For quite some time now, I’ve been browsing the web via slimbrowser. I love slimbrowser. What is slimbrowser? It’s like an extension of IE. It is only a couple of megs and it sits on top of your Internet Explorer, it just adds a lot of very cool functionability. It blocks pop ups, it gives you google search (and other search engines) in the toolbar, it allows you to quickly wipe away your surfing tracks, automatically checks for updates, and best of all you get tabbed browsing. Now the coolest feature would probably be “groups”. You can group your favourites together and with one deft mouse click, all the pages in that group open up in individual tabs. Nifty!

I downloaded Firefox which is MUCH better than Netscape ever was. Finally, a true alternate that is quick and cool. It still allows for searching from the toolbar, pop up blocking, and tabbed browsing as well. However, the tabbed browsing is severly crippled. You basically get it and can use it, but you can’t do anything with it. There are almost no ways to fix this in options. Slimbrowser integrated tab browsing much better.

Today I decided to really and truly delve into the extensions. I found some extensions to help integrate the tabbed browsing! Things that you can do in slimbrowser right off the bat, that I’m used to and could not understand why Firefox would not allow.

I now have installed:
Url2NewTab Anything you type in the URL bar becomes a new tab. (That was REALLy bugging me that it didn’t do this)
Duplicate Tab Gives you the ability to duplicat a tab. Figured, why not, it was tiny.
Single Window Gives you the ability to use Single Window mode. Wants to open a new window? Not any more! Will open in new tab. (another big bug point for me. I mean duh! That’s why I wanted tabbed browsing!)
Close Tab on Double Click If you double click on a tab, it closes. This is also the default setting in Slim Browser for easy removal of a tab. Could probably annoy someone untili they get used to it. I’m used to it from Slimbrowser.

If you have Firefox… download these extensions and have true tabbed functionality!

BTW I also put in:
Bandwith Tester (just for kicks)
OpenBook (Gives customization to your Add Bookmark)
Ad Block (Hello, pop up blocking not enough This supposedly blocks ads in page or something… haven’t really tested it out yet)
And last but not least… Just BLog It Allows for right click blogging! And guess what? Works with LJ AND Movable Type! My website uses MT. And my bookmarklet doesn’t work in Slimbrowser.

Now, if I can get groups and clean trace? I’d probably completely migrate.

One neat feature in Firefox? You can have live bookmarks. Your RSS sites? The new posts show up as links in your bookmark leftbar. OK this is nice. However, I hate having that open so I don’t really use it. And I can’t seem to figure out how to RSS my friends page. Need to find the RSS link for that I suppose. But it is still a neat feature. 🙂 I have them pop up on my yahoo page. 🙂 Well the ones they easily had on there. Doesn’t work for say… Kevin Rose’s site… LOL But live bookmark sure does! It is ALMOST as nice as groups, but just not quite.

I’m sure if there isn’t an extension to allow for the group and the clean trace, it would probably be fairly easy for someone to make. Right? I’ll keep trying.

I also created my own toolbar. So now I have my favourite functions. Print, show bookmarks, that sort of thing.

So now I have a much more usable Firefox and my multiple desktops and I even can quickly right click and make an image smaller in my file manager! Excellent! (yes there’s even a setting in the right click to make it for PDA!)