What web browser do you use? Internet Explorer, Netscape, AOL, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or something else? Did you know there were so many of them to choose from? It might be going out on a limb to say it is the best, but Firefox is the browser of choice for many people these days. Why? It is the only DIY browser. Firefox is the only browser with such a large array of choices and options that you can choose from to customized your web experience. There are hundreds, even thousands of add-ons, themes, and search plug-ins you can download and use in your Firefox browser. Internet Explorer, and many other browsers don't have anything like Firefox's list of choices that even comes close, making it worthy of the DIY stamp of approval.
So why does it matter so much? DIYers want things the best they can be, and we aren't afraid to get our hands dirty to get things running the way that works best for us. Firefox is the browser many have found to deliver that type of experience. It can be downloaded by visiting Mozilla's
Firefox page.
Firefox not only has add-ons that let you do all kinds of things, themes to let you customize the way it looks, and extensions and search engines you can download to use with it, one extension in particular turns Firefox into a browsing powerhouse, that many geeks refuse to live without. The add-on is
Greasemonkey.
Once you stop laughing at the name of it, Greasemonkey is
simple to download, easy to install, and lets you find and use scripts that other users have written and modify the way the web works in Firefox. There are way too many scripts to list here for Greasemonkey, so check out the coverage of it at
DownloadSquad (our sister site), the
Greasemonkey homepage, or
userscripts.org (where the bulk of scripts are located).
You can even get your tech-savvy hat on and learn to build your own scripts for Greasemonkey to modify websites to your liking. Firefox also lets you write your own search plug-ins for your favorite sites, which is a bit technical to discuss here, but we might feature this idea in an upcoming
geek-it-yourself post.
The long and short of it is that for those of us with a distinctive DIY streak always want things to be the way we like them, which is exactly what Firefox will let you do, letting you own the way your web browser operates and looks. If that isn't a DIY browser, I don't know what is.
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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)
. . It would be cool to note that Opera have themes, extensions (widgets, in this case) and a lot of other stuff right out of the box. If you use Firefox with AdBlock, GreaseMonkey and Mouse Gestures extension, you'll be glad to know that Opera have all this bundled by default—and working much better.
ReplyYeah, I hear ya, Opera does have some decent features, and we all know that they have better CSS 2.0 compliance than IE7, making Opera a viable competitor. Thanks for the note.
Reply