Fans of Internet Explorer 7 and Opera, bow down to the Browser Goddess, Firefox 3!
Earlier this week, the first release candidate of the much improved Firefox 3 was released. I remember getting a notification about an available update after months of browsing on beta 5. At first I didn't quite read the RC 1 bit, so I assumed that the final version had been released. No, it's just a release candidate for the final version, which is setting its paw on global PCs next month.
One reason I love Firefox is the way how it can be customized, personalized, tweaked and enhanced to suit its user's preferences. With every kind of add-on available, many features can be added to the browser. This is why people never complain that so some X browser has the Y feature that FF doesn't have.
For example:
Opera has mouse gestures, which makes it easier to perform many operations. Just a flick of the mouse can load pages again , take you to the previous page, or change the text size. I remember cursing the fact that FF lacks that until a search later I found FireGestures, a wonderful FF add-on that allows you to set up mouse gestures in FF. You can customize the preset gesture for many different operations too.
A feature of Safari is that it shows the progress bar within the address bar, so there's no need for a status bar. Fission is an add-on built specifically to emulate this on FF. You can even change the color of the bar.
Although FF is loved worldwide because of its speed, stability and overall better experience providing features, IE7 and Opera aren't far behind. Opera' newest version [9.5] has been on beta for some time, so we can expect an Opera release with even more features, which might influence many FF stats. Also, IE7 boasts many features that are common talk on FF, tabbed browsing [took them years to figure out why we loved FF], RSS, Quick Tabs [something I like] and it has many of the add-ons FF has too [now they get add-ons] and now we can search through the browser toolbar, which isn't much compared to FF. There was some recent news about an IE add-on called IE7 Pro.
I'll quote what I got from IE7 Pro's site, because I'm too tired to type:
Quote starts:
IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins, MiniDM, Google sponsored search,IE Faster and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.
Quote ends.
Sounds good, and it sure will be a big boost in IE7's performance. That's why I'll say it again. Hear it from a FF fan: The previous age was of IE. Now, FF control the web. Tomorrow is looking hazy.
Anyway, back to topic. FF 3 was what it claimed to be: better. It loads pages much faster than FF 2, though I didn't see the difference immediately because I had been running the beta for so long now.
A recent find of mine led me to the Internet Browser Review 2008. It ranked Opera at first place, IE7 second, and FF third. See what I mean?