Have you tried the free Firefox Web browser yet?
If you haven’t (and you should), consider these five great tools you can add to your Firefox surfing experience — all in less than five minutes:
1. FoxyTunes: Adds a row of music-player controls at the bottom of your browser window, allowing you to pick, play and pause your music without leaving your browser.
2. Stumbleupon: Tell this add-on just a bit about your interests and start “stumbling” around the Web. You’ll join thousands of people with similar interests in a cooperative quest for cool new stuff.
3. Download Status Bar: Don’t you hate it when you download something and then you can’t find where the computer stashed it? This simple tool brings sanity back to downloading.
4. Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer: Set this up for every computer you use and it will keep all your bookmarks identical on each machine.
5. gTalk Sidebar: Add Google’s popular Instant Messaging tool to your browser sidebar.
And the best part? There are literally hundreds of free add-ons for your Firefox browser, so you can customize it to fit your needs.
A few words about Firefox from a long-time user:
Is it perfect? No. It's got some flaws, including something called a "memory leak" that may require you to reboot your computer if you leave a bunch of browser windows open overnight (although that's a known bug that appears to have been fixed by a recent update).
But the biggest problem with Firefox is that there are a very few sites that are configured to run solely on Internet Explorer. In truth, this isn't a Firefox problem, it's a web page designer problem, but from a user's perspective, you don't care: You just want your page to open and work.
To me, the solution is obvious: Your computer came with Internet Explorer, and Microsoft keeps your IE program current so long as you've got your "accept updates" feature enabled. So you browse in Firefox until something doesn't work, and if it doesn't, you try it in Internet Explorer.
Other people avoid Firefox because "Explorer is the No. 1 browser." Well, McDonald's serves a lot more burgers than your favorite restaurant does. Doesn't make their burgers better.
Firefox now claims 35 percent of the browser market in the United States, while Internet Explorer's share has dropped below 57 percent. And what you really should be noticing is who makes up that 35 percent. Ask your computer-savvy friends which browser they use most. There's a reason most of them seem to prefer alternate browsers to Internet Explorer.
And as I've written previously: One big reason to shift to Firefox is the ability to carry your browser with you on a flash drive.
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