1225 Sunrise: July 2005

Firefox is one of those great examples of open-source software. It's easily the most innovative mainstream web browser available today. (If you dont know what Firefox is, then you'd better go here before you read any further).

Aside from being more secure and faster than Internet Explorer, Firefox supports extensions, which are basically little customizations for your web browser. Whenever I have to re-install my computer (with WinXP that basically means once every 3 months), Firefox is one of the first programs I install, along with some of the best extensions for it. Below is just a short list of the ones I would highly recommend, particularly for people who haven't used Firefox before. These are a good sample of some of the extensions the Firefox community has come up with to make web browsing easier and more enjoyable.

In case you were wondering, extensions are incredibly easy to install. Once you have firefox (if you dont, go here right away), click on the links below and then click the "install" button. A confirmation window will appear; click "Install," restart Firefox, and you're done.

1. ForecastFox – A MUST have if you are obsessed with the weather, and if you’re an avid Internet user then I’m quite certain you already have either Weatherbug (SUCKS) or some other taskbar weather program. This one is fully customizable and is easily the best weather app I've seen on the net.

2. Stumble Upon – StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.

3. mini T – Allows you to drag and drop window tabs to re-shuffle them as you need it. This is great when you have 15 tabs open at work and your personal e-mail is stuck somewhere around tab 7. You can drag it back to the far left without having to close everything first.

4. IEView – Adds a right-click menu option that allows you to open the current page in MSIE. Good for badly-coded sites that are optimized for MSIE only.

Keep in mind that extensions are a great addition to the browser, but they do add to the boot time for Firefox. These 5 won’t really slow you down, but when you start having 15-20 extensions, the load time can be a lot more. You can easily uninstall them though. Just go to Tools -> Extensions, highlight the one you want to get rid of and click uninstall. Restart Firefox and it's done.