Firefox Can Do That?

Using Extensions to Customize Your Web Browser



Rachel Bridgewater, Washington State University Vancouver
Beth Heins, Sherwood Public Library
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/bridgewa/

10 February 2006




Firefox Can Do That?

So today we'll be talking about the Firefox web browser and specifically, how you can use extensions - which are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox - to customize and enhance firefox to meet your own needs.

But before we get into talking about extensions, we'll give a little background on the browser, it's history, and some of the features, apart of extensions, that make it so powerful.

How many of you are already using Firefox as your web browser of choice?

And how many of you have extended it?


Ancient History

"Mozilla" = "Mosaic Killer" Netscape Navigator/Netscape Communicator Mozilla Foundation


Mozilla.org = the virtual meeting place for Mozilla code. Users & coders can meet, discuss, download, and share feedback.


More-recent history: Firefox

(figures from press release http://www.mozilla.com/press/mozilla-2006-01-24.html


World domination?

(figures from press release http://www.mozilla.com/press/mozilla-2006-01-24.html )


People Firefox!



...and the experts aren't the only ones... Since its introduction Firefox has been garnering a LOT of praise. It's won a lot of awards in the technology world, including those you see here. It's also been the subject of a lot of pretty glowing news articles.

But perhaps even more significantly, it has a user base that is just incredibly dedicated. In fact, Firefox really uses word-of-mouth, user-to-user promotion as it's primary marketing tool. The "spread firefox" campaign is a community of firefox boosters dedicated to getting the word out about firefox...lately they've been focusing on collecting user testimonials - which range from cute to interesting to boring to pretty nutty....

We showed that testimonial both because it's kind of funny and because it demonstrates that an undeniable element of FF's appeal is in what's it's NOT......it's not Internet Explorer, it's not Microsoft...A lot of people out there are fed up with the security problems presented by IE and by the business practices of Microsoft. But there are a lot of really good reasons to love Firefox for what it *is*...


Why People Firefox: Security

First of all, Firefox has some impressive security features.

We're all aware of the problem of Spyware/adware/malware that be installed on our machines by exploiting security holes in the Internet Explorer browser. This is made possible largely because of Active X, which is used to deliver content to PCs via the web. Well, FF doesn't use Active X so it

IT's easy to customize how much personal data you want it to save - passwords, cookies, history, etc. It's also REALLY easy to clear your personal data (DEMO: Tools --> Clear private data)

Firefox boosters claim that bug/security fixes happen more rapidly in Firefox than in other proprietary browsers. Because FF is open source and has thousands of developers working on and looking at the code, in theory bugs can be fixed a lot faster (THREE TIMES FASTER). It's hard to tell how true this claim is and there is a lot of rhetoric on both sides.



And then there are some extensions you can add to increase the security even further...we'll talk about that more later.


Why People Firefox: Accessibility

One thing that should make FF near and dear to us as librarians is its accessibility features. It's designed to make things as good for screen readers as possible. It's really easy to navigate the program using the keyboard. Also, it has built in unlimited zoom! No special software needed!


Why People Firefox: Niceties

It also just has a heck of a lot of things that make it nice to use.

One of my favorite features of Firefox is "tabbed browsing". You can see we've got a lot of tabs open within this window. I'm someone who always has a ton of websites open at once. Before I started using Firefox, I always had a ton of windows open but now I just have one. Looking at the two screen shots here, you can get a sense of how much cleaner and more efficient it is to use tabs. Tabbed browsing (SHOW the screen shots - talk about how easy and addictive it is.)
When you talk to Firefox users another thing they always mention in the Pop up blocking. Firefox has a built in function for blocking those annoying pop up and pop under ads. As a reference librarian I really appreciate this feature because i've has a lot of reference interactions really spoiled by all these ads popping up all over the place while I'm trying to work with a patron, especailly one that is a little nervous about technology and the internet. (also really great for ref. libs, how annoying is it to try to help a patron while a million windows are opening

I'm really addicted to the built in search engine box too! I'd been using the google toolbar for years with Internet Explorer so I was used to being able to search google without having to actually go to the google site. But this is even nicer becasue there's nothing extra to install and you get more choices.

Integrated download manager (SHOW)
Find while you type (DEMO)
Live bookmarks (RSS)...also can be extended
Lightweight - talk about role of extensions


Why People Firefox: Open Source

Finally, as we've mentioned a few times, FF is open source. This is important for a few reasons:
  • It's my personal belief that librarian values and open source values are closely aligned. In my own work, I try to use open source software whenever possible. Because lots of eyeballs have looked at the code and its open and available for review, i'm more confident about the stability, safety, and security of OSS than I am about proprietary software.
  • But another really neat aspect of the open nature of firefox is that it is out there for anyone to "extend". Its designed to be added on to. This approach to adding features is great, in my opinion, because it doesn't rely on some small, centralized process in an office building somewhere to add new features to the software. Clever programmers can see a need and act to fill that need.


Go get 'em


Add-Ons We Like

Image Credits: This presentation was created in HTML using CSS. Thanks to Jessamyn West for the source code. The layout and stylesheet are available to borrow via a share and share alike creative commons license.
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