Spreading The Fox

If you are reading this post on Internet Explorer, you are an idiot.

Few years ago, my dad bought this book on jazzing up Windows XP. It had a recommendation for an IE plugin called Maxthon. At that time, Maxthon seemed very fresh, clean, with tabbed browsing and a whole array of other features that made IE pale in comparison.

I was very skeptical when I came across Firefox (I always am when I have to change my browsing habits). But blimey, Firefox is the most fabulous software I have ever come across. It is stupendous. It is God's gift to the Internet. Forget paling, IE looks unquestionably prehistoric in front of Firefox.

I'm not going to scan over the default Firefox features here. But I thought I'll do a post on my favourite Firefox add-ons/tricks/themes-rather, nitty-gritties of the Firefox experience. They aren't all spectacular, but I love them nonetheless.

1) iFox Smaragd: iFox itself is a very smooth clean Mac-inspired theme. It comes as iFox original, iFox Metal, iFox Smooth blah blah.. But iFox Smaragd (Smaragd=Emerald in German) is this very striking green flavour- exactly the green of that creepy tree-frog to your right.

2) Google Images Re-Linker: You know everytime you click an image thumbnail in Google Images it directs you to this annoying framed page before you see the enlarged image. Now you skip that step! Incredible isn't it? (It's strange but these tiny hacks excite me much more than the significant ones)

3) Tab Mix Plus: The God of all tab-hackers. Loaded with options, and very flexible. This was one of the first add-ons I added, the reason being that Maxthon by default came with a lot of options for dealing with tabs and I particularly missed those in Firefox. I personally feel that they should incorporate Tab Mix Plus into the default Firefox too. Highly recommended if you're a multi-tasker.

4) Keyword Search: I know this is highly ridiculous but I discovered this feature only today and it's not even an add-on! It's another trick that Maxthon had and I had missed initially.
What you do is right click in any search box and say 'Add keyword for this search'. Let's say the searchbox is the one on the grey navbar that searches my blog. You specify a name 'etc search' and a keyword 'e'. Now anytime you want to search my blog you type 'e keyword' in your address bar and voilà! Brilliant stuff.

Umm... I think I'll split this into two posts.

For now, I'll leave you with some links:
1) Get Firefox
2) CNET Prizefight: IE 7 vs Firefox 2
3) Why use Firefox?



P.S : My apologies for forgetting - I have to give Anonick a very big tribute for recommending Firefox to me. May his pots overflow ceaselessly with milk and honey and may his pen never run out of ink. Amen.