Information technology news and advice
Mozilla's Firefox Browser and Thunderbird Email
The old famous web browser Netscape 4 has become obsolete a few years ago. The general ideas about developing web standards compliant modern web browser were successfully continued in the open source Mozilla project.
The Mozilla project resulted in a very convenient suite of browser-email-news applications Mozilla. Outdated and developmentally frozen versions of the Mozilla suite were taken by AOL and issued as Netscape 6 and 7 suites. Meantime, the Mozilla project is a live project that constantly evolves, improves its functionality and security and produces regularly new versions of its own free Mozilla suite.
The said above means that instead of Netscape 6 or 7 a user should rather use the latest versions of Mozilla, these have more new and advanced features, and are considerably more secure.
Recently, the Mozilla developers understood that many users do not need a suite of applications but rather they would prefer separate browser and email programs. This resulted in Firefox browser and Thunderbird email programs.
These two have easier installation and option setting procedures and they feel very much like the old Netscape browser and email.
Firefox and Thunderbird with a couple of mouse clicks import all data (bookmarks, history, content) from old versions of Netscape, Mozilla and Internet Explorer. The transition from older programs is very simple and easy and the user will not loose any of the data stored in previous browser or email programs.
Firefox browser has such advantages as
- simplified setting of options as compared to older Netscape and Mozilla;
- the tabbed browsing when you may open new windows inside the main window - just wheel-click your mouse - this makes opening numerous pages much faster;
- popup blocker;
- selected annoying image blocker;
- cookie manager so that you may remove planted spies;
- password manager so that you may not rely on saving the passwords in volatile cookies;
- easy import of data and settings from other browsers;
- selection of different appearance themes (skins);
- regularly upgraded web security
- numerous add-on functional extensions
Thunderbird email has such distinguishing features as
- operating several different email accounts in one shell;
- easy import of data and settings from other email programs;
- operation in POP and IMAP modes;
- delivery of RSS news feeds;
- self-learning email spam filter;
- blocking images and active components (virus-like) that may be embedded in the email message body.
Additionally, there is a very handy program to create backups for Firefox and Thunderbird.
You may also find many useful functional extensions following Tools/Extensions/Find more extensions path in Firefox menu.
One of these is IE Tab to view the specified site in Internet Explorer that is useful when you bump into one of those Frontpage or MS Word websites that don't follow internet standards.
