What's On Your Desktop?
Browser Technology from Mozilla Firefox

The other essential ingredient for the modern computer desktop is the browser technology used to access the internet. Some years ago a good friend of mine with many years of programing experience recommended the wonder of Mozilla Firefox to me, explaining that Bill Gates's favourite, Internet Explorer, was far more likely to open up my PC to millions of viruses. I do believe that there was some truth in that, and maybe there still is. Firefox is certainly recommended by many for its security features, but I have also grown to enjoy its functionality and configurability.



Firefox blazed a trail for tab-based browsers, though now of course they all are! The product is also supported by a wide range of add-on features, created by and shared by the user-community. A wide range of "Themes" have been developed in order to give your browser a different look and feel - and you can change the look of Firefox just as often as you like. Perhaps more importantly you can also add to the functionality of the browser, tweaking its capabilities to fit in with your own browsing needs.



Here, for example, an extension called "Showcase" provides a thumbnail of all open tabs - the thumbnails are shown on the left hand side of the screen where the bookmarks sidebar is normally found. The above shows one of my "bookmark groups" open, showing five different UK newspapers in tabs on the screen. The "Showcase" tool allows simple clicking from one tab to the other with the visual aid of the thumbnail images.



Like nearly all internet users, I'm sure, I find bookmarks really handy for revisiting sites of interest. With Firefox I have my most regular sites included in a bookmarks toolbar at the top of the screen. Also, of course, there is the bookmarks sidebar on the left of the screen (though this does need regular maintenance to keep it useful!). A third option is this extension,"Speed Dial". Similar to a feature on the Opera browser, "Speed Dial" allows the user to be presented with a bunch of thumbnails within a new tab. Simply click on any of the thumbnail's to go to that site. My version of "Speed Dial" is configured for 16 thumbnails. There are other similar Firefox extensions offering slightly different features, but I kind of like this one.



Tabs offer many advantages, but sometimes you really do need to be able to see two or more web pages at the same time. Fear not! Firefox has the solution with the extension "Split Browser". In the example above, a busy Saturday afternoon's live football feeds from the BBC are shown in action. On the left side of the screen is the Live Videprinter showing the goals from all games as they happen. On the right at the top is a page showing the match scores and goalscorers in a particular division, while right/bottom is  the live text from the MK Dons game - three different web pages, all live and updating on the same screen.



One essential activity within any browser is the web search. Here a Firefox extension "GooglePreview" (although it also works with Yahoo! as well) helps to make the search task just a little bit easier by showing thumbnail previews of the sites that appear. Google has a system for making these thumbnails, so this extension is just making use of the data that is available! It helps to see the sites on offer, as a quick visual scan can often eliminate a suggestion, or indeed take you straight to the one you were looking for.
 
 

The observant might see a change of theme in the above - a more Safari like software (or Mac style) in place - however, the main topic addressed above is yet another RSS newsreader. Whilst I have already detailed elsewhere two RSS feed readers on the main desktop, this one is a very flexible offering via Firefox. Wizz RSS allows the use of a multitude of feeds - as many as you like really, via various user created folders. Contents of the selected feed are shown in the second panel down on the left of the screen. The chosen story is shown in short in the bottom panel on the left. Another click on the story reveals the full text in the main screen. This feed is my own Genesis Marketing feed, and the main screen shows the full text details as held on the GenesisNews blog.

 

Latest: September 2009

Whilst the recently installed Glaze Black theme probably doesn't come over very well at the above size, it really does look good on the 20-inch wide screen monitor! One obvious change that can be seen clearly is the use of the Tree Style Tab extension, which takes the tab line out of the screen, and re-arranges tabs vertically on the left hand side - great for wide screens! It makes for much easier tab handling, and means that you can have loads of tabs open at one time - seven are shown open on the above screen shot, but 20 or 30 would be no problem.

As you can probably tell, I am a fan of Firefox! Give it a try! You might just like it!