Why firefox will be loved by it’s users inspite of…

By default, firefox is nothing more than a web browser and can make little difference for those who are using Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome etc. And as such, you might not find firefox to be great. And that is true, infact, firefox in it’s default “avatar” offers nothing more than tabbed browsing, basic bookmarking, search etc.

Though there might be many users who like the simplistic firefox browser, I believe the majority of them love firefox because of it’s plugins or add-ons. Firefox provides a rich set of plugins for so many things that you cannot even imagine. And sometimes it is very difficult to choose the right plugin for you from the plugin ocean.

There are plugins to download video, block flash-ads, manage blogs, manage bookmarks and so on and on..Add the innumerable “themes” and list is mind boggling.

These plugins turn firefox into such a powerful tool that you can hardly come out once you start using it. I would like to mention my favourite firefox plugins which makes my life easy when I surf. I’m a kind of person who prefers “simplicity” and as such I don’t use lots of plugins. I use what I need most and as a result, the plugins I use are few. So here is my list (in no particular order)…

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Google Chrome Unearthed

So, how does Google Chrome fair? Does it live up to the expectation? I too had the same questions in my mind and I thought of trying it today and I have explained my experience in this post.

(For those who are wondering what Google Chrome is all about, read my post Google takes the browser war one step further with Google Chrome.)

As I mentioned in my previous post, Google Chrome promises a lot of “innovative” things and claims to be designed from scratch to serve “applications” and not merely web pages. I chose to bring firefox to do some comparisons so see how well Google Chrome has done. Ok, does it live upto it’s promises?

First let us start with some good things I found Google Chrome ( Yes, you are right, there are “some” bad things I found as well!)

Google takes the browser war one step further with Google Chrome

In the beginning, there was Netscape Navigator and then came Internet Explorer, then Mozilla Firefox and what’s next..? This might be the question somebody had in Google and they came out with a answer called “Google Chrome“.

But I asked myself, “What’s the point of a new browser, in an already crowded place?”. And especially when firefox has begun to stretch it’s empire as a world class open source software, do I really need another browser? So, I quickly ignored any further thoughts about it until I came across this comic book released by Google itself. First I thought it might be a one page cartoon targeting non-technical users, but, I was wrong. Google has done a remarkable job in finding a new (or rather old) way to advertise their product. As we all know pictures speak louder than words, this comic book also speaks very loudly. (Ofcourse about Google Chrome). After reading the comic book yesterday, I quickly searched for the download link, only to know that it will be available for download only from September 03, 2008.

Some of the interesting things I noted from the comic book were:

– Multithreaded tab control, which means more swifter browsing and less bloating.
– Windows task manager style information to know which tab/page “eats up” more memory.
– Faster Javascript engine with advanced garbage collection to make Web 2.0 pages load much much faster.
– Address bar inside each tab.
– “Detachable” tabs. Yeh, they promise you can just detach your tab from one Google Chrome browser window to another.
– Fully open source.
– Built in google suggest in address bar.
– On startup, displays the “most visited” 9 pages as the welcome page.

So what do you think I would have done? I was itching my hand to download and try this new product. And I did so today from Google Chrome download page. I have already started using it, but haven’t explored all it’s “promised features” yet. But the browser looks promising. Let me come back after digging deep into Google Chrome. Till then, stay tuned!

The Best Antivirus of 2008

Of late, the antivirus marketplace has become crowded with more and more players. Recently, a survey has been conducted among users about the best antivirus software of 2008. It’s not very tough to imagine the contenders, which definitely might include players like AVG, Avast, Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, etc etc..Who do you think the winner is..?