Primo Firefox Extensions
It has been taking me awhile to get used to Firefox. I use several browsers, depending on need and mood, but have held to a well tied down IE as my main choice over Firefox. I don’t see where Firefox is necessarily safer or faster, but am I ever having some fun with the new toys it offers through extensions!
Don’t have Firefox yet?
Just click and go. It’ll walk you through the rest.
Now bear in mind that I am not advocating exclusive use of Firefox, as there are some things you just cannot do with it. Windows Update is one (surprise, surprise). I still prefer IE and have been running Beta 7 with no problems, unlike some other people we all know. I won’t mention names, but his initials are gconn77. 
After you get Firefox, go to their extensions area. There you’ll find two dandy items which latch themselves onto Firefox and make life so much nicer. The first one is Adblock. The second one is actually an extension to Adblock, called Filterset.G Auto-Updater. This oddly named bit of code keeps Adblock’s filterset updated.
Install these two bits to Firefox and what do you get? A virtually ad-free surfing experience is what awaits you. We’re not talking the old fashioned clunky method of simply blocking the ad, leaving a red X or an otherwise unloaded image. No, here, we’re talking about complete ad invisibility! It is like the ad was never there!
No more dealing with those awful Yahoo ads. Banner ads are a thing of the past. Google’s Adsense is Adblocked. What’s more, since these ad scripts are not loaded, the rest of the page loads noticeably quicker! You don’t have to load what you’re not getting.
This is enough to make me consider jumping over to Firefox on a more permanent level.
Try it yourself and see what you think. Firefox is one of the Web’s hottest downloads and Adblock is one of the most installed Firefox extensions. With the addition of the Filterset.G Auto-Updater, it all begins to come together.
You may or may not have been around long enough to remember the uproar when an attorney’s office took to putting up the first ads on the Internet. I was there and remember it well. It wasn’t pretty then, but with Firefox & Adblock, the World Wide Web might return to its former ad-free beauty.
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February 24th, 2006 at 7:57 am
The problem I had with IE7 was when typing into a text box, such as the text box I am using now… the text was white on the white background, making it impossible to see unless I highlighted all the text by holding the left click and rolling the mouse over all the text. I need to work with IE7 again because I really haven’t given it a chance yet. I opened it, used it for two minutes, and discovered that problem, and then stopped using it. I guess for some reason the default color was set to white, or something like that… I will try it again and try to fix that problem.
The browser looks great… but yes, I definately am used to FireFox now… its a great browser… but, you do illustrate some great points about some items that are NOT availale with FireFox that ARE available in IE6 or even IE7 for that matter. In FireFox, the extensions are definately awsome!
February 24th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Well, we can forget about the trash known as Firefox. That is the browser for idiots and morons.
I was breezing along, running a few apps - with a dual core processor and 4GB memory, none was overly taxing to my system. The grouping of apps included Outlook, IE (9 windows), Media Player Word and OpenOffice Writer. Sitting minimized was Firefox & Opera (I said I use various browsers). I am also running Webroot Spysweeper, Norton AV and assorted other little background apps which suck the life out of many systems and te=ake the crisp response out of most.
Then it happened. I pulled up a graphics editor. Within a few seconds, I noticed a heavy drag on my computer. I felt like I was running on a 133MHz Pentium machine or worse, a Moto box running a Linux derivative. It was that slow. My initial thought was the graphics suite, so I closed it down. I waited about a minute and went to reopen it, but noticed I still had some terrible lag. So, I opened Windows Task Manager, clicked the Processes tab and then double clicked on the Mem Usage header. This brings up the memory usage of each application, sorted from highest to lowest. I expected to see my graphics app had crashed and hadn’t cleared from memory. But no, it was gone and the system was still dragging. What I did see was more disturbing.
Firefox (one instance, with two tabs - one at MSNBC and the other in one of my phpMyAdmin pages) was at the top. It was definitely at the top and Internet Explorer (9 windows, remember) was in second place, with Outlook running third. The word processor apps were well down the list, since they were dormant. All of this I could see. What I couldn’t understand is the the difference in usage between these positions.
Firefox: 289,000K
IE: 58,000K
Outlook: 12,000K
Ouch. So, what did I do? I shut down Firefox. It took about a minute to clear the Task Manager log, but then my computer seemed to improve - but not completely. So, I restarter Firefox and watched it fluctuate between 155,000K and 305,000K, no matter what I loaded into the tabs. I took the machine off of the network and saw no change in the activity. I decided to reboot the machine using minimal startup and run a full virus & malware scan. Nothing was found. I pulled a Hijack This log and again saw nothing out of the ordinary. I ran a trojan cleaner and a different AV app - first updating each using signature files obtained from another machine. Again, nothing. So, I again rebooted the system and opened apps one at a time, while I monitored their memory usage. At first, Firefox started using a normal amount of resources. I then saw it spike and return to normal. By spike, I mean 200,000K worth of spike. It would do this with about 80% of the sites I tested it on. So I tried it with only a simple text (.txt) file, loaded from my desktop and created just for this test - it read “Hello” - nothing more. It was a 5 byte file, so why did Firefox continue to fluctuate?
I ran the same tests on IE6 & IE7, as well as Opera. With these browsers, the memory usage fluctuated from 40,000-60,000K and was dependent on what tasks the browser was being asked to perform.
I then learned that Firefox has several back doors that are now being exploited, as well as some serious memory leaks. There are many out there complaining about the heavy memory usage that Firefox requires.
It seems the infamous Firefox has fallen prey to bloat and sloppy coding. Unlike Microsoft, driven by profits and a requirement to improve, Firefox is the victim of too many coders having their fingers in the pie.
I uninstalled Firefox and found that many components remain after uninstall - I manually took them out.
I’m sorry, but even with the extreme security measures I have on this network (hardware firewalls, enterprise AV clients, malware protection, software firewalls), I cannot trust the garbage known as Firefox. I’ve been using IE for many years, having been converted from Netscape around version 3. I have NEVER had serious issues with IE or Opera.
From now on, anyone suggests Firefox to me, I will put them out of their misery. of being so stupid.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
A follow up comment…
It’s been eight months ago when you created this post. I have learned a lot since then. I am happy and very pleased to announce that I use IE7. During the past eight months we have talked a lot about these two web browsers, and I really have to say that Internet Explorer is much better. IE7 is absolutely amazing… so thanks for aiding me in with my decision to choose IE over FF.
Now… to everyone else reading this article, if you haven’t already done so, take a moment to install IE7. Many people voice their opinions about much they support FF and how much IE stinks. Many people make these comments without even installing, and trying IE7. Please install IE7 and if you really don’t like it, then be done with it. However, if you try it like I did, you won’t go back! Promise!
- Garry