Featured Article- Firefox and Thunderbird
Host | 22 April 2005 | Comments Off
Why You Should Consider Switching from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express to Firefox and Thunderbird
Elizabeth Malloy – Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.
Mozilla’s Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail program have been drawing much attention lately. In fact, there have been more than 46 million downloads of Firefox alone to date. You may be wondering what these products are and why anyone would switch from using Microsoft’s offerings. Let me give you a bit of background about Mozilla. The Mozilla Foundation was started in 1998 with support from America Online’s Netscape division, and "exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project." This open-source software project is responsible for the creation of all of Mozilla’s software, including Firefox and Thunderbird. Open-source software is that which is created by a community of developers rather than by a single company/group. While Firefox was built on a Netscape browser foundation, volunteer programmers have been responsible for its evolution.
Firefox is, as mentioned above, Mozilla’s answer to Internet Explorer. Among the benefits of this free, easy to use web browser is tabbed browsing. This enables the user to have just one browser open, with multiple tabs containing individual web pages. This is a major change from Internet Explorer, where a user must open a new browser for each new web site s/he wants to visit. With Internet Explorer, if you want to have immediate access to your favorite online news source and a weather-related website, while making travel plans for an upcoming trip on a third website, you need to have three browsers open. It can be confusing trying to remember which icon on the bottom of your screen relates to which web page, especially if you have any other applications open at the time. With Firefox, each of the websites has its own tab, with the name of the page readily apparent, making switching back and forth between the sites a breeze. This tabbed feature also saves some memory used by the computer when compared to having three separate browsers open simultaneously.
Firefox is a customizable web browser. It’s easy to add additional buttons, install Extensions to add new features, add Themes to change the appearance of the browser, and use an adaptive search system to search an infinite number of search engines.
Downloading and installing Firefox is very simple. During the installation process, new users even have the opportunity to import all of their book-marked favorites and related items like saved passwords from another browser.
There’s a lot of talk about increased security with Firefox’s browser as well. It seems that, in truth, the jury’s still out on this one, so this shouldn’t be your only reason for making the switch. While there are indeed less reported security issues with Firefox than with Internet Explorer, it may be possible that this is just because there are far fewer people using it than Internet Explorer. Another issue that has led to Firefox’s reputation as a "safer" browser is that there are not as many pernicious attacks made on users’ computers through it. This may be because the malicious people who create viruses, spyware and the like have not focused on Firefox like they have with Internet Explorer, until its recent growth in popularity. One thing that people do agree on is that it’s at least as safe as, if not safer than, Internet Explorer.
Firefox’s companion, Thunderbird, is a free e-mail program similar to Outlook Express. It’s greatest feature is a built-in spam filter. Even those with a spam filter running somewhere between their e-mail server and e-mail inbox receive some amount of spam. Thunderbird’s "smart" spam filter learns over time which e-mails a user considers to "spam", and which ones s/he does not. Based on user preference, suspicious e-mails may be diverted into their own folder for later review or immediately placed in the user’s recycle or trash bin. Other features include an RSS reader (RSS feeds will be discussed in a future edition of the Blizzard newsletter, multiple Extensions and Themes, and advanced search features. As with Firefox, installation is very straight forward, and there is an option to bring all contact information and e-mails over from an existing e-mail program. It will even configure your e-mail server settings so that you can begin to send and receive e-mails through it immediately after installation. The one drawback of Thunderbird for current Microsoft Outlook users is the lack of an integrated calendar and task managing function. To counter this somewhat, Mozilla has released a stand alone calendar called Sunbird. It is not clear to me at this time whether or not this will ever be fully integrated into Thunderbird.
Firefox and Thunderbird are cross-platform technologies, meaning that software for each is offered for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms; they’re also available in more than two dozen languages. Both load quickly and use less RAM than their Microsoft counterparts. As I mention above, both products are very easy to install; they’re also very easy to UNinstall, should you not like either one. Because of this, and because both products are free and simple to use, if you’re even a bit interested, you may want to check one or both out. The tabbed browsing alone in Firefox makes it worth a try – all Firefox users I talked with raved about it.
