Smoothen Your Browsing Experience!

[Heruka]

Well, here is something with a difference. While this thread has nothing whatsoever to do with designing, Biorust.com is a website, after all, and we all want our browsing experience (not just confined to Biorust, but I mean the entire package) to be as smooth, and uneventful, as possible. With this foremost in my mind, I have compiled a list of items that will allow you to get the best out of the Web. I hope you find this useful. This is by no means a comprehensive list. Please feel free to add your own discoveries, be it an useful tip, or an exemplary download accelerator.

I shall start with the browser and build upwards on its useful modifications, finally ending with stand-alone packages.

For the sake of simplicity, I will mention only one browser. Doubtless there are a number of them around, and each will have its fans. However, this thread will deal only with the one best suited for the casual user, in my opinion, and exclude the others. Feel free to discuss the merits and demerits of other browsers below, but flaming shall be dealt with strictly and swiftly, and the default choice of mine is still recommended. Well, here goes... We all know and love Firefox, and we all know that it has one awesome feature: modding. Firefox can be infinitely modified using extensions. You can find really useful extensions that do all sorts of things. I thought I'd make a list of the best extensions from my experience. These may not be the most popular, but they are the most useful, certainly! I suggest you get each of them and also Firefox, if you are not currently using it. Firefox is the best all-round browser, with only Opera coming close to beating it. Getting Started with Firefox Essentials: Adblock Plus: Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu - the banner won't be downloaded again. Or open Adblock Plus sidebar to see all elements of the page and block the banners. You can use filters with wildcards or even regular expressions to block complete banner factories. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 Google Safe Browsing: Warns you of scam pages and fraudulent sites. Google Safe Browsing for Firefox StumbleUpon: Bored? Click the 'Stumble!' button. You will be instantly taken to a random high-quality webpage reviewed by other users. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138 Answers: Alt-click on any word to instantly look it up on Answers.com. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/735 Fasterfox: Tweaks Firefox to make it run and browse faster. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269 BackgroundImage Saver: Some sites resort to placing pictures hidden under a transparent gif so that you can't just right-click and save them. Ripping these usually mean going into source code. But with this extension, right-click and choose 'Save Background Image As.." and Voila! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1853 DownThemAll: This is a wonderful extension that can replace Firefox's own useless download manager. It supports acceleration, resuming and one very nifty feature: downloading all the links and images on a page!! Imagine how useful this is on 4Chan and other imageboards!! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201 Colourful Tabs: While this is not really 'essential', it does make Firefox look very slick indeed! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1368 Auto Copy: Instantly copies any selected text on a webpage! This is probably the best plugin in the world! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/383 Other Stuff: Noia eXtreme Theme: This is undoubtedly one of the best themes for Firefox around, and is well-complemented by the Colorful Tabs extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/72 Free Download Manager: Don't look anywhere else! This is absolutely the best download accelerator around! Nothing comes close to beating it, be it in terms of usablility, speed, or stability. Not DAP. Not IDA. I personally tested all three out, and FDM was the only one which could survive a disconnection and still resume the download. Both the others produced corrupted files. Best of all, FDM is free! What more do you need? Free Download Manager - absolutely free download accelerator and manager

[Heruka]

To be perfectly fair, I'll go back on my word and recommend one more browser, Opera. This is after I was let down rather embarassingly by the latest Firefox version. Certain functions on this site failed to work. No biggie, but still...
And would you believe it, Opera worked flawlessly. (However, the extensions named above are all for Firefox. Opera supports extensions as well, but I'll leave that to you guys to post. I'm not very fluent in that.)
Here's the site:
http://www.opera.com/
Note: Opera also bundles a fine download manager of its own, as opposed to Firefox's clunky default one. It auto-saves session-history, and supports mouse-gestures by default. (You can get extensions for Firefox to introduce these features.)

[Telos]

Latest Firefox version, beta? Since I'm using the latest stable and everything works fine. But you are right about Opera. Since it became ad-free browser it did improve a lot in other areas as well and is very good browser nowadays. I'll stick to firefox anyways.

[buckmonsta]

I have firefox but only use it as a secondary browser for web apps. So yeah, maybe firefox is better.....easy to use

[bedlam123]

Thanks Heruka, I am in the process of using some of the nifty litle things you reviewed. Once again you have performed an invaluable service for Biorust!

[kelly1313]

I had the same experience, Im going to check this one out, maybey I'll have better luck

[ovidiua2003]

i feel the same way 'bout firefox. it's better than other browsers. it's reliable and secure. opera can't do what firefox does .... at leas not right now. so...still using firefox

[Jcas]

Thanks for these handy tips. I have been a FireFox fanatic for years now, but wasn't really up with all the available extensions.

I will go and try some ..... again thanks for the help.

[WatMuzzer]

Thanks Some of these I had, but some I didn't know about.

Cyndie

[Jimbo Jones]

Firefox is good and offers a lot, but I still prefer IE for safe and secure sites. I often tend to use Firefox when surfing around looking for stuff.

However, if you're a webdesigner, then you should have all the top five most popular web browsers on your system and all of them should be fully up-to-date.

[Tamlin]

Originally Posted by Jimbo Jones

However, if you're a webdesigner, then you should have all the top five most popular web browsers on your system and all of them should be fully up-to-date.

If the top five most popular browsers are IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror (as seems to be the case), doesn't that mean you'll need Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on the same machine? Seems a bit extreme!

[Jimbo Jones]

Originally Posted by tamlin

If the top five most popular browsers are IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror (as seems to be the case), doesn't that mean you'll need Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on the same machine? Seems a bit extreme!

If you're a web designer, you should have (or look at getting) more than one system and also two different connections.

[shimano]

thanks heruka never used firefox or opera but i'm gonna try firefox now thanks again.

[fhayemous]

thanks for the tip! :] it really helps and what not. so thanks again

[stiney51]

Actually if you are a web designer, you shouldn't necessarily have all of the up-to-date versions. In fact I'd argue that you should ALWAYS design for old versions of explorer software (with maybe the exception of Firefox which automatically updates).

It's better to design your pages so that everyone will be able to see it. Even those using a 10 year old version of IE on a windows 95 box while using dial-up. I know these people are definitely out there (I have met them, they are usually called parents and grandparents).

This is especially important if you are designing for retail. There are websites I won't shop from because they are excessively slow or overburdened with Flash and the likes. And I have up-to-date versions of all the software (albeit on a bit older of a Mac).