Mozilla Lives
Over the past few days, I have been exclusively using Mozilla Firebird as my primary web browser. As a web developer, this browser has many fantastic qualities and features that in my opinion are worth checking out.
The coolest feature of Firebird is the ability to open multiple homepages in separate tabs. Usually when I open my web browser, I visit the same 4 pages to check for updated content. The multiple homepage option allows me to have these 4 pages opened for me in separate tabs everytime I open my browser. To enable this option you simply go to your Firebird Preferences and type in multiple URL’s for you home page. Each URL must be separated by a pipe symbol (located above the backslash on your keyboard). For example, to have MacCentral and BetaNews open in separate tabs, type in the following for your homepage – http://www.maccentral.com/|http://www.betanews.com/
As a web developer, Mozilla has many third party extensions that you can install to make your web developing and debugging much more efficient. My favorite extension is called Web Developer. This extension adds a toolbar to the Firebird browser that lets you…
- Disable JavaScript
- Disable Stylesheets
- Outline block and inline elements (really cool)
- Show all form field values and names
- Outline images without alt attributes
- One click validation
- Resize browser window to common resolutions
- …and much more!
Another cool extension is Live HTTP Headers that allows you to view all HTTP request and reponse headers associated with a single request. This is great for troubleshooting server problems. I actually paid $20USD for a similar utility just a couple of weeks ago – doh!
Firebird uses XUL to define it’s user interface and appearance and many themes can be installed to ‘skin’ your browser.
Another nice feature of Firebird is that it runs equally well on Windows, Mac and Linux and has excellent support for the latest web standards – the Open Source community has done a great job of porting this browser.
As a huge advocate of Internet Explorer over the past few years, I never thought that I would be singing the praises of another browser, but over the past few days of browsing with Firebird, I am very close to switching to this very capable browser.
The more tech support I provide for IE, the more I love my Opera 6 browser. Wanna hear cool…Opera 6 recognizes mouse gestures when browsing. I will check Firebird out when I have a chance.