FireFox

Well, I've finally done it! I've switched 'kit and caboodle' (have no idea what that means) to FireFox. I had been using Maxthon for the longest time because of it's great tab interface, but recently pages have been taking a very long time to load or locking up all together. I think this was in large part to certain sites using combinations of ActiveX and Flash and the way Maxthon handles that. It got so annoying that I decided to see if I could get the tabs in FireFox to function the same way as Maxthon (Maxthon was much more configurable initially).

I'm happy to report that by downloading the Tab Mix Plus extension I was able to get just about all the functionality of Maxthon in to FireFox's tabs. It was quite a bit of work as there are tons of options but seems to be worth it so far. The browsing experience is much faster and more reliable now.

Other benefits of the switch are some really useful utilities built in to the Google toolbar, one being a Spell Checker for forum posts like this one... how I lived without this I don't know!

So if you are interested in trying it for yourself (Dad, Lisa!) (Ellie you are out of luck until we get your Mac upgraded) look at the menu on the left, down at the bottom for the button called "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar". Things will be much faster and safer for you.