Top 101 Firefox

Anderhalve week geleden schreef ik hier over de belangrijkste voordelen van Firefox. In de tussentijd is het aantal downloads van Firefox verder gestegen tot 25 miljoen, een aantal dat binnen 99 dagen na de lancering bereikt werd. Gemiddeld downloaden 25.000 250.000 mensen per dag deze browser en meer dan een half miljoen websites promoten Firefox. Firefox heeft intussen vijf procent van het marktaandeel van Internet Explorer weggehaald. Twijfel je nog steeds om de overstap te maken? Dan ben je vast geïnteresseerd in dit overzicht van de 101 dingen die je wel met Firefox maar niet met Internet Explorer kunt doen.

 

• Tabbed browsing Lets you display more than one site in a window using multiple tabs.
• Popup blocking Block all those popup ads.
• Prevent scripts from doing various things such as moving windows, closing them and setting cookies.
• Link toolbar Displays content from the <link> tags provided by a document, allowing one to navigate to various parts of a site.
• Sidebar The sidebar provides a number of tabs by default, and others can be added by the user.
• Can add custom panels to sidebar Custom sidebars can be implemented in HTML or XUL and can be installed from a remote site without much hassle.
• More control over text zooming Can zoom text to any size. IE only supports five sizes and has no shortcut keys that I could determine.
• Can zoom any text, even that with fixed pixel sizes Can zoom text no matter what units were specified.
• Can select from multiple stylesheets provided by page When a page provides multiple (or alternate) stylesheets, one can select between them by choosing from the View menu.
• Page info dialog Provides additional information about encoding, MIME type, referrer and meta tags.
• Detailed form/link/media info dialog The page info dialog provides tabs which have lists of the form elements, links, images and other media in a page. You can even preview images and save the then from this window.
• Save plugins Mozilla saves plugins when saving a Web page as complete. You can also save them from the Page Info window.
• Themes Provides two themes by default (Classic and Modern), but others may be installed. Bookmark window displays more detail Displays more information about the bookmark in the bookmark window.
• Bookmark keywords Keywords to look up bookmarks quickly. Has the advantage that the part entered after the keyword is filled in where ‘%s’ appears in the bookmarks’s URL.
• Bookmarks can be downloaded at a certain schedule One can set bookmarks to be checked at various schedules and notify when the content has changed. At least, in theory.
• Cookie Manager The cookie manager lets you view the cookies that have been set, their values and their expiry times.
• Can delete cookies individually The cookie manager lets you delete individual cookies without having to search around your file system.
• Block images from third party sites One can block images that come from a third party domain.
• Can block images from certain sites Images can be blocked from particular domains, such as those that commonly display ads.
• Download Manager The download manager provides a tabular view of all of the files that you have downloaded, allowing you to open them without having to search around on your file system.
• Prevents running of executables directly Mozilla doesn’t let you run executable files directly when downloading, which at least makes you think twice before opening them.
• View Source View the syntax coloured source of a page, without having to view it in Notepad.
• JavaScript Console The console displays a log of errors that you can easily scroll through, or ignore if so desired.
• JavaScript Console displays script warnings The console separates warnings and errors. The warnings allow you to see obsolete script usage and so forth.
• JavaScript Debugger Utility for debugging JavaScript.
• DOM Inspector View the structure of a document using a nifty tree view. Also lets you view script properties and style applied to each element.
• DOM Inspector image capture The DOM Inspector has a tool to capture an image of part of a page, although it doesn’t seem to work all too well.
• Select text and perform search Select some text, bring up the context menu, and choose ‘Search’ to search for the selected text.
• Can select custom search engine You can select any search engine you wish, not just one that has been chosen for you.
• Can display search results in sidebar When a search is performed, results can be parsed automatically and displayed in the sidebar. You can navigate each found item, without hiding the list.
• Supports any Sherlock search plugin Supports the Macintosh Sherlock search format, so any search engine that supports it can be used.
• Can manage saved passwords Lets you view and delete stored login and passwords.
• Can fill-in complete forms automatically Stores complete forms which can be later be filled in automatically. This is useful if you want to register for something 600 times.
• Master password encrypts info A single master password can be used to protect all of your other passwords.
• Can disable tooltips Not very exciting, but useful if someone thinks they get in the way.
• Caret Browsing Press F7 and a cursor appears on the page. This can be used to navigate a page and select text using only the keyboard.
• Type Ahead Find Press a few keys to search for links with that text.
• View Selection Source Select some text, bring up the context menu, and choose ‘View Selection Source’ to view the source just for the selected content.
• Properties dialog lets you see info about various tags Right click on certain links and images and so on, and view info about them, such as language and whether links will open in a new window.
• View scripts and stylesheets directly Mozilla can display scripts and stylesheets directly as plain text without a separate application which is useful if you just want a quick peek at something.
• More font options One has more control over the fonts used, including customizing the various CSS fonts.
• Can set minimum font sizes Can set the minimum font size that text is displayed in which is useful on some sites.
• Mouse wheel options Pressing Alt and scrolling the wheel will navigate back and forward in the browser history. One can also configure the wheel for other modifier keys for scrolling and changing the font size.
• Multiple profiles Can handle multiple profiles so you can use one for testing, or share them between multiple persons.
• Easily installed Can be installed quickly and without much fuss. It can generally be run off a network or CD as well.
• Can be easily uninstalled One can uninstall in the same manner as one does with other applications.
• May have multiple versions installed at once One can have as many different versions of Mozilla installed at once which is useful if you need to test on various versions.
• Cross-platform Runs a number of different platforms and has the same features on all.
• XUL The XML User Interface Language is used to create complex user interfaces using markup
• XBL The eXtensible Bindings Language is used to create custom widgets or elements and bind them to other XUL, XML or HTML elements.
• RDF Mozilla can read and manipulate Resource Description Framework files.
• MathML MathML is a markup language for displaying math equations.
• XPCOM Native interface accessible via C++ or JavaScript which lets you perform various Mozilla functions.
• Properly handles MIME types Properly displays content using the content type supplied by the server instead of various other incorrect things.
• Supports documents sent as application/xhtml+xml The debate is still on whether this content type should be used for XHTML, but Mozilla supports it.
• Can render XML documents with styling Can render XML documents with associated style sheets without converting them into something else.
• Link Prefetching Newer builds of Mozilla allow one to set documents or images to prefetch in the background after a page is loaded. Usually, this would be used for the next page in a sequence.
• Displays ABBR/ACRONYM titles in tooltips Content in these tags are displayed with an underline and the titles of various elements are displayed in a tooltip.
• Supports blinking text You can make text blink. This list isn’t subjective.
• CSS min/max-width/height Set minimum or maximum sizes on content to constrain it.
• CSS position:fixed This feature allows content to be fixed to a particular part of the window. If the user scrolls the document, the content stays where it is.
• CSS display:table and related display types Allowing one to create custom table elements
• CSS generated content: before, :after, the content property and so on.
• CSS2 selectors Select elements for styling based on attribute values
• Supports a handful of CSS3 selectors Matching on attribute substrings, selected text and so on.
• Supports some extension CSS properties user-focus,user-select,border-radius, and many more. Mostly used in themes, but they can also be used by Web pages as well if you really need to.
• XML Base For specifying the base of an XML document. I really don’t know if this is supported in other browsers.
• FixPtr support For referring to parts of XML documents.
• Simple XLink support This is used for links in XML documents.
• XML-RPC Simple API for doing XML-RPC.
• Built-in SOAP API Fairly extensive set of SOAP functions are available without any extra libraries needed.
• PNG alpha transparency For making transparent images.
• MNG image support An animated image format, usually used for animated PNG images.
• Supports ‘favicons’ in any image format Supports any image format that Mozilla supports (GIF, JPEG, PNG, MNG, XBM, BMP, ICO). You can even make them animated if you’re insane.
• Display icons in tabs and address bar Displays site icons in the tabs and in the address bar. This is off by default in various builds.
• Available for more languages/locales Mozilla is available for many different languages, including ones you’ve never heard of before.
• Support for standard event handling Supports the standard capturing/bubbling event model.
• Support for additional DOM0/DOM1/Core features Supports almost all of DOM0 and DOM1.
• DOM2 namespace handling Supports the various DOM methods that deal with namespaces.
• DOM2 Style interfaces Supports most of the standard DOM style interfaces.
• DOM2 TreeWalker interface The TreeWalker interface is used to navigate through a document.
• DOM2 Range interface Supports the Range interface for grabbing blocks of text.
• DOM3 XPath interface Supports retrieving elements using XPath expressions in HTML/XML/XUL documents.
• Address field in full screen mode In full screen mode, there is an address bar to navigate to other pages.
• Can set size of printed output This may vary based on your printer, but one can scale the printed document or fit it to the page. Useful for those sites that are just a bit too large.
• Can bookmark groups of pages (in tabs) You can bookmark a set of pages and them open them all at once in multiple tabs.
• Can search bookmarks You can search bookmarks without having to search through your file system.
• Easily create and add custom components XPInstall can be used to easily install custom components, using an install script written in JavaScript. No special tool required except a ZIP utility.
• Supports finger protocol Can use the finger protocol. This has been disabled in newer versions of Mozilla.
• Supports data: URLs data URLs can be used to embed data in a URL.
• HTTP Pipelining Allows for better performance when viewing pages.
• Supports JavaScript getters/setters For adding custom properties to objects.
• JavaScript supports strict error checking Which means displaying errors for things you didn’t think were errors. (Think Perl’s strict mode)
• Easily accessible preferences file Preferences are all stored in a single file (prefs.js) which one can easily edit to add custom settings which have no UI.
• Preferences can be moved around easily One can easily copy preferences, bookmarks and other settings to another system as they are all stored in a single directory.
• Various security related features Surely you knew Mozilla had better security features?
• Supports irc protocol Supports the irc: protocol for opening Chatzilla
• Open Source So keen developers can always find out exactly why Mozilla behaves the way it does, or change it if they so desire.
• Bugzilla This is Mozilla’s bug tracking system, where you can find information about problems you encounter and can help get them fixed.
• Giant lizards are cool Much more exciting than a blue e.

(Met dank aan Neil Deakin die deze Top 101 eerder publiceerde)

Ben je alsnog overtuigd geraakt en wil je de overstap maken, lees dan in mijn eerdere artikel hoe je gemakkelijk en snel van Internet Explorer naar Firefox kunt overstappen.