When I started this series I had a different audience in mind initially. I was going to aim at a more serious hard core techy crowd and I have for a couple of these but I also realized that people don’t seem to be able to connect with a subject if they feel like it doesn’t effect them. Well people it does. That’s because of my favorite browser Firefox. If you are on the internet regularly it’s a word you had to have heard. Linux machines mostly have it by default. I must also admit that I don’t tend to nudge people on Windows or Mac in a particular direction when it comes to software but the one thing that I almost always install on one of these machines is Firefox. It has just become my standard and that’s mostly due to the cool plugins you can get and the familiar face on every operating system (don’t slow down though because Google Chrome is running up fast).
How you get people to realize what is and isn’t open source is you start from home. Many people are so involved in the evolution of this browser that it stays ahead of standards in most cases I know of. I’m even a bleeding edge user (the guy that gambles with the software before it’s totally tested) and have the nightly builds of Firefox on my laptop and desktop and use them regularly. The only side of Firefox that just might bother some a little is that it uses up a decent size of memory especially with plugins but I’ve only seen that be a problem with really slow low memory machines. I’m not going to bore you talking about a browser because I do have some people who will tell me they’ll stick with Internet Explorer or Safari and I say to them it’s their choice. There’s always the freedom to choose and I love it.
One area that I am going to talk about Firefox is the one place that I started to uninstall it. My phone. For some reason on my last phone (Android) I was having problems with Firefox making it really slow or from time to time crashing. Plus, I love to use a program called Xmarks to sync up my bookmarks on every computer in the world that I used. So reluctantly I did a little searching left my beloved Firefox behind. Fast forward to the present for the article I had finally gotten fed up with the CONSTANT and FRUSTRATING crashing of a browser called Skyfire. It literally crashed every other time you open it and when you open it again it would work fine. When I found out that this was a known bug and that the 10 month old article said they planned on fixing it soon I was out! Let’s go back and give my old love a try.
Technology can be sexy. Foxy in the 80’s meant sexy. Hot also means sexy and fire is hot. So according to it’s name. Firefox is just some sexy software. I went back and installed it on my phone and it seems so far like all the things I used to worry about are gone. It’s only been a couple days but I’m already loving it again because I live off my phone. The plugins are crazy cool and most are the same as the desktop version. One bad spot is that I can’t seem to find the Xmarks plugin for it but I do notice that Firefox is trying to promote it’s on syncing feature that’s built in. I’ve got to spend a little more time researching that before I go ahead and set that up to replace my Xmarks because it also syncs your tabs in use. I’m really not sure how much I need that but it may come in handy after I give it some thought.
I know that it may be just me??? No it isn’t. It’s home screen with top sites I use is sexy. Even though I usually turn off history and other such things because I’m just not a big fan of a computer looking over my shoulder but I think I’m actually going to leave it for a minute. No crashes and seems to work very quick. Kuddos to Mozilla. Firefox is now officially on all my computers. Well, except my Kindle Fire HD. Amazon doesn’t have a build out there for it’s tweaked Android for some reason or another and I forced a version on to it but it wasn’t stable at all. So GET ON THAT Mozilla! Tell Amazon they need you because Phillip needs you.
Firefox. Open source that’s just plain sexy.