Once Upon A
Time in a Chinese Restaurant
By David Shamah, The
Eating some Chinese this week, I found myself reading
a very interesting message in my fortune cookie "It's not about the steak,
it's about the sizzle," said the message.
But there was more much more inside that cookie.
Listen to these words of ancient wisdom, as brought down to us by prophetic
proprietors of Oriental eateries. "People often fear to change the way
they do things, even if they will benefit substantially" the message went
on. "You get used to doing something on a regular basis, and when
something better comes along, you don't bother with it, out of laziness or fear
of the unknown or inertia.
"But change can be useful and helpful. If you
don't try the purportedly better system, you'll be denying yourself the
benefits of a product that just does everything better. Naysayers
will say that you are foolish for going against the grain for taking a chance
on the unknown element, that cannot possibly work as
well as the usual way of doing things. If they are right, you can just return
to your old ways. But what if they are wrong?"
Yes, that was an extremely long message for a fortune
cookie, but then again, it was an extremely large cookie. I actually had to
take most of it home in a doggy bag! I couldn't get a straight answer out of
the waiter as to why I was chosen to receive what by the fortune cookie fates
to receive that message but it was truly not by chance.
For you see, that ancient bit of Chinese wisdom is
just as applicable today as it was 40 years ago, when they wrote up all these
words of wisdom and perhaps it is even more relevant today. Almost everybody
uses two mediocre programs Internet Explorer and Outlook Express - for the
most important aspects of their computing experience. And while the choice is
"safe" (depending on how you define the term), there is a better way.
I wrote about Firefox here
a little while ago, if you will recall and I have kept up using it. Actually,
for a while, I was using both Firefox and Internet Explorer
to surf, mostly in an effort to compare the two products. Like I wrote then, I
thought that Firefox outclassed IE for a number of
reasons, especially for its convenient system of tabs you open up within one
instance of the program saving memory and the improved security, due to its
lack of ActiveX implementations.
But it was only recently that I discovered just how
much Firefox outclasses IE and when it became
obvious just how much better the program was, I immediately dumped Outlook
Express in favor of Thunderbird, the e-mail client that is made, along with Firefox, by Mozilla.org.
And how did I arrive at this conclusion? Not through
another round of Gates-bashing, and not even through
any particular problem I had with IE; Firefox is just
better on its own terms. What put it over the top for me was the extra
functionality of Firefox's extensions, which, like
the name says, extend functionality and makes the
program easier and more fun to use.
There is a whole industry built around the things
that Internet Explorer "forgot," like automatic form filling programs
to popup blockers to download managers. Each of these additions are extra
downloads not provided by Microsoft, which means you have to search the Net,
look for a suitable application, install it and deal with the extra memory
load, potential software conflicts, and increased security risks. It's almost
as if there's a conspiracy to bog your computer down and make it work harder
than it has to.
All by themselves, Firefox's tabs save you a ton of memory and processor
activity. One instance of Firefox with 10 tabs open
on different Web sites takes less memory than three open IE windows. But Firefox has a whole slew of extensions that save you even
more time, effort, and memory (all available at https://addons.update.mozilla.org).
When I finally checked out the Firefox extensions
"store" (where everything is, of course, free), I went download
crazy! The extensions I installed help me work the way I want to, and you, too,
will be able to shape your browser to do the stuff you want it to do.
I often need to copy text from Web sites, for
example, in order to do research and write about programs. In all Windows
programs, including Internet Explorer, you highlight the text you want, go to
the Edit menu and click on Copy (or press Control-C) and send the text to the
clipboard for pasting in your word processor. But with Firefox's
Autocopy command (http://autocopy.mozdev.org), your
text gets placed on the clipboard when it's highlighted no more moving your
mouse to the Edit menu or keyboard combinations, until, of course you paste the
text. Right there you've saved your mouse miles of travels to and from the
menu. It even works when you "select all" on the page.
But sometimes it's not enough to download text. If
you work on a laptop that does not have an always on Wi-Fi
network connection and you want to browse offline, there are several options
available to you with IE. One is to open the Web page while youre connected
and leave it open when you go out of network range. Another is to use a Web
site download program, like HTTrack (http://www.httrack.com),
which will "rip" a site and save it in a directory on your hard
drive. Again, you have to install a third party program and run it, further
taxing your memory. In addition, because they are designed to be able to handle
downloads of sites with many links, these programs tend to be complicated to
use.
But if what you want is a simple way to save Web
pages while you are off line, Firefox's Scrapbook
utility (http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook) will do the trick. This
extension will save your information in a special folder, with the ability to
save as many levels on the page as you wish. When you install Scrapbook, your
right click context menu includes a setting called "capture page,"
which will do all the work. The page is now saved for later off-line surfing,
painlessly and efficiently.
Had enough of popups? You
could install a popup blocker there are many of them around today. Firefox actually comes with a built-in popup blocker, but Adblock (http://adblock.mozdev.org) blocks more and blocks better, and offers more control over your blocking
than other third party blockers.
Do a lot of searching? Check this out: Firefox offers dozens of search engines in your browser
bar. The search engine bar sits on your Firefox
toolbar, like the Google toolbar except you can
search with engines ranging from Google to Altavista to Dictionary.com to
Yahoo to IMDB (Independent Movie Database) to Amazon.com's
search engine you get the idea. To search, of course, you type the term you
are looking for into the search box and click OK. Unless, of course, you use
the Conquery extension (http://conquery.mozdev.org),
which, when installed, gives you a right click context menu search function.
You just highlight a term on a Web page, click the "search Web for"
setting on your context menu, and Firefox does the
rest. If you are looking for a word definition, for example, just highlight the
word and use Conquery's "Query to" function
to search Dictionary.com.
I could go on and on like, if you're a weather geek
who just has to know the temperature and forecast on demand. Forecastfox (http://forecastfox.mozdev.org) will give you
the current weather conditions, as well as up to a 9 day forecast, for any area
covered by Weather.com (over 30 locations in
Again, all these useful little items are installed
and run from within Firefox. Installation is a matter
of clicking on a link, and to uninstall, you just open your Firefox
extensions box and remove the extension you want to get rid of.
When I started using these extensions, my first
thought was that there had to be some kind of catch it was just too good to
be true! But when I realized that the aim of Firefox
and its extensions was truly to make my life easier, I decided to try their
other product Thunderbird, Mozilla's e-mail system
a try. How does it stack up against Outlook Express? Well
oops! I see I've
run out of space! You'll just have to wait until next time for the answer (I
can't wait to find out the answer!).
All Firefox extensions are
available at https://addons.update.mozilla.org. Nearly all extensions are
available for Firefox installations on Windows,
Macintosh and Linux
ds@newzgeek.com