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Firebird Rises from Mozilla's Ashes

UPDATE Firefox .9 has been released. Upgrading from .8?
Be advised some of your extensions may not yet work with .9

I've been using the Mozilla Firebird (formerly Phoenix) browser almost exclusively since it's release. First of all, the most significant feature you'd notice over Internet Explorer is tabbed browsing which allows you to open multiple windows in one main browser window.

I rarely have less than 5 browser windows open, so tabbed browsing really cleans up my task bar since Firebird just shows up once. It allows me to keep related tabs in different browser windows. So I can keep my work tabs in one, news/stock updates in a separate one and of course goofing off windows in yet another. You can also bookmark these windows into one folder and then open all the tabs in that folder. This is very helpful for when you've been doing research b/c with just one click you can launch a handful of pages. Now, Firebird isn't the first browser to have this feature, Netcaptor (which claims to have invented the concept) and Opera both have tabbed browsing. But those browsers will set you back $30 and $40, respectively, while Firebird is FREE (let's face it, paying for browsers is so 1996). UPDATE 1: I found out that Avant is a free ie-based tabbed browser. Haven't tried it out though. UPDATE 2: There's also MyIE2. It looks pretty neat but haven't tried it either.

Who knows if Microsoft will inclued tabbed browsing in the next version of ie. Tabbed browsing does add a new level of complexity that the average computer user might not be able to wrap their head around. Heck, the majority of people don't even open more than ONE window (it bugs me to no end when I see people clicking back and forth b/w a listing and detail page instead of just opening a new window for each item they want to compare). And while Apple may not want to confuse their users with the complexities of a two-button mouse they do believe they can grasp tabbed browsing.

As for Plugins, like Flash, Shockwave and Java, the installation isn't as automated as it is for ie however the install process really isn't much more difficult. It's just a matter of pointing to the plugins directory when you're running the Plugin's setup. Another neat feature are Extensions these are 3rd party add-ons that introduce new/improved functionality to the Firebird browser. For example, I installed SmoothWheel and PNH Developer Toolbar.

Now Mozilla/Firebird diehards will be wondering why I spent so much time on tabs and didn't bother to mention the fast HTML rendering engine, better CSS compatibilty or XUL skinning. Mainly b/c the average user doesn't care about this sort of stuff but I will say that I had tried Mozilla and it just didn't convince me that it was better alternative to the ubiquitous Internet Explorer. This is not the case with Firebird which at .6 release is already a very stable and impressive browser and has become my default browser.

PROS

• Free
  
• Tabbed Browsing (Launch multiple windows w/ one bookmark)
  
• Built-in Popup killer
  
• Better CSS2 support than ie
  
• Free extensions
  
• Favicons are shown in the URL and tabs (not just in bookmarks as in ie)

CONS

• Some popular Windows-based/ie centric applications do not work (ex: download accelerators, easy/WYSIWYG online editors)
  
• Installation of plugins isn't as automated as with ie.