Firefox

No, not the Clint Eastwood movie--the web browser! Over a year ago, I started to become disenchanted with the standard Apple Safari browser (yes, I'm a Mac user... but don't tune out just yet...), and switched full-time to OmniGroup's OmniWeb browser--and I was hooked by its docked tabbing system (which, if you're not familiar with tabbing in your browser, enables you to open several browser windows into "tabs" and store them in just one window on your desktop). But after awhile, I found OW to be rather slow and crashy (I'm on the Web all day for for my freelance work and often have a dozen or so tabs going at once). So I started playing around with Firefox, and it's been my main browser for the past few months.

The newest version of Firefox (1.5) was just released, and it's just as delightful if not more so. While the older version (1.07) did included the ability to view multiple tabs in one window, I was frustrated with the lack of ability to move tabs around--you were stuck with the tabs ordered in the way you opened them. Version 1.5, thankfully, has added the ability to drag and drop tabs for customizing their order. But you can also save a collection of tabs into a bookmarked folder, from which you can open all at once (great for opening all your morning news sites at once). OmniWeb offered a similar feature (workspaces), but I stopped using that as I found it became a memory hog; I'll be interested to see if it has similar effects in Firefox. And if you're an RSS user (and if you're not, you should learn more about it--check out this item in the WikiPedia), you can use Firefox's "Live Bookmarks" feature. Here it is explained in the just completed WaPo online discussion (as of the afternoon of Friday 02 December) on Firefox:

Live Bookmarks let you view RSS news and blog headlines in the bookmarks toolbar or menu. You can then quickly review the latest headlines from your favorite sites, which are refreshed automatically. When you see an orange RSS icon in the location bar, that means the site can support a Live Bookmark

The other reason to use Firefox is because it's just a lot faster in rendering pages than other browsers. Plus--and this is a big one for Mrs. F--it's not a Microsoft product. It's an open-source software product that's also free. But don't take my word for it. Check out reviews in MacWorld and PC Magazine (for a Windows-based perspective)

So give it a whirl--you'll be glad you tried it. Also, if you click through to the Firefox download page from the links provided on this page, you'll help to support the magazine subscription fund of this site (i.e., our ability to afford The Nation, New Republic, The American Prospect, and more to keep ya'll informed).

I'll stop being geeky now.