The Windows version is only 6.0 MB. That's insanely small for something this powerful. No matter what theme you choose for your Fireird -- and there are quite a handful of personalized styles out there to select from -- it just feels slicker than all the alternatives. It's extremely responsive, and just looks cool. Far more screen real estate is given to the webpage itself and less to the browser, giving it a clean and compact feel.
I've watched over a dozen people pick up Firefox for the first time, and it takes them only seconds to
become comfortable with its interface. All the menus are stored exactly where they should be, and
although Firefox offers an abundance of features and options, it never feels as though you have to wade
through an impossible labyrinth of choices and menus in order to change your settings. Firefox
successfully accomplishes the difficult goal of making simple things simple and complicated things possible.
Anyone currently using a browser without tabbing abilities may have difficulty comprehending exactly why
tabs are such a useful feature, but those who use tabs wouldn't give them up for the world. Firefox
integrates tabbed browsing seamlessly into everyday browsing life by opening tabs if a user holds Ctrl while clicking on a link. While you continue to read the current page, the background tab loads so that it's ready for you when you're ready for it. There's no confusing switching between windows, and you can open an entire folder of bookmarks as a series of tabs. Fast, efficient, and intuitive.
You can finally laugh at all the Internet Explorer users who visit one webpage only to have fifteen
popup windows jump ceaselessly on top of each other. Firefox offers a powerful solution by blocking
popup windows by default but informing the user through an unobtrusive icon when popups have been blocked. If a user clicks on the icon, they can
manage their popups and grant access to legitimate ones.
Firefox comes with an easy way to perform searches while browsing. Typing Ctrl-K conveniently
brings the cursor to a Google search-field on the toolbar. Also, highlighting any word and right
clicking on it brings up the option to do a Google search on that word in a new tab. Firefox also
comes with an easily installable extension to perform a dictionary search on any word highlighted in the browser, again
in a new tab. These two features make gathering further information about a page's content easy and
convenient. Also, to find a link on the current page without having to use the mouse, simply begin
typing the description of that link, and Firefox will automatically jump to the first match.
Upon choosing to save a file to disk, Firefox prompts you for the desired local location for this fire. However while you're busy browsing your directory tree, Firefox has already started the download for you. This means less waiting times: often the download is complete as soon as you've selected the desired location, or shortly thereafter.
Firefox comes with a comprehensive suite of extremely helpful web development tools which can be easily
added as extensions. The Web Developer extension allows converting between GET and POST, disabling of a variety
of web functions, table outlining, displaying of images without alt tags, finding broken images,
resizing of the browser window to view other common screen resolutions, and much more. The EditCSS extension displays the current page's CSS as a sidebar in the browser, and allows live editing of the CSS which automatically updates the page currently being displayed. This and many other tools that Firefox offers as extensions make web development debugging and design much easier.
Firefox currently has over 150 extensions (including some of the extensions mentioned in this document): from Calendar modules, to "Blog This" capabilities, to W3C checking of the current page, and mouse gestures. Extensions are remarkably easy to install in Firefox -- just a few clicks without a disruptive install screen. Whether you want to play Minesweeper in your browser, or add Word Processor functionality to text forms (including opening and saving form entries as files), Firefox has more extensions than you could possibly dream of.
The highly-demanded feature has finally arrived with Firefox: the ability to display HTTP headers. Find
out exactly what information your browser is sending to a given webpage, and what headers they're
sending back to you. This is a feature that has been requested repeatedly by the internet community,
and through a simply Firefox extension it's easily available.
Every time you use Firefox, you're helping to support the Open Source movement. The wide range of
extensions that Firefox provides is due to user contributions, and its overwhelming success comes from a
dedicated community. It's cross-platform and comes with numerous language extensions. The source code is freely available, so anyone
can open up Firefox's hood and see how it works. If you have suggestions about how to improve Firefox,
contact the team.