by Demarius Chrite

Created on: October 14, 2010

Since the launching of the internet, I've disliked Internet Explorer. Even with Microsoft's occasional improvements, it never seemed to be able to do what I want. One glorious day, however, I stumbled upon http:/www./Mozilla.org and immediately started using Firefox.

One of my biggest itches about IE is also one of the reasons I like Firefox so much. If there's anything you want that Firefox can't do, there are multiple add-ons that you can install to make it happen. Internet Explorer's definition of add-ons appears to be "toolbars", however, and no one wants a myriad of toolbars clogging up their screen. That's what tends to happen, though, and I happen to hate it.

Another big plus for Firefox is how customizable it is, even without the use of add-ons. You can drag around pretty much anything to your liking, and install various themes based on tv shows, random patterns, musical artists, etc. You can even create your own and upload it to Mozilla's site. Right now, I have an Alexisonfire theme installed.

Firefox thankfully streamlines the stress of bookmarking and history management. To bookmark a site, you simply click a nice little star to the right of the address bar. That's it, you're done. If you want to add it to a specific folder or make a new one, you can do that too, but it's nice to make a single click to save a site and also nice to not have a big "Add To Favorites" button crowding up the browser.

Unlike internet explorer, your browsing history can be organized in many ways, and it is much easier to delete certain sections and retain others. You can even drag sites straight from your history to your bookmarked folders if you wish, which is another big plus.

Although it may be slightly unfair, one of Mozilla's best moves was to maintain familiarity; Firefox is similar to Internet Explorer in many ways, more so than Flock or Chrome (the Yahoo! and Google browsers). This means that those who are finally tired of IE will have problem switching over; there is no learning curve. The tabbed browsing (which Firefox had before IE) works just the same, the address bar is in the same place, and many of the buttons look familiar. It won't take long to learn what makes Firefox better, though, with little goodies thrown in such as the qlauncher (which allows you to open your favorite sites by just hitting a few keys), the multiple options for saving/recovring tabs, and the overall smoother feel.

All in all, Firefox does it all; and if you find something it doesn't do, there is likely an add-on that will do it- something Internet Explorer just doesn't seem to understand.

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