I must say Mozilla Firefox is still the best web browser out, even with so much competition. Internet Explorer has been always troubled with bugs and malicious exploits. Chrome is very nice being high-security and a minimalist browser. Yet the addons/extensions for firefox are top notch in my opinion.
To balance security out, I recommend purchasing the software SandboxIE. This allows your browser to be ran in a much safer environment, so if your browser were to become infected, it would not affect your entire computer system. Once installed, be sure to setup the software so Firefox is always ran inside the sandbox... If you ever feel like something is just not right, you can simply delete that 'sandbox' and start over fresh!
Add-ons
My highly-recommend favorite add-ons for Firefox to turn your browser into a 'super browser' are:
* BarTab
This very nice add-on can be setup to unload unused tabs after a set amount of time. Why is it so good?
Well say you have 50 tabs open in your browser... This will unload any tabs from your RAM memory, giving your system more resources so your computer run faster. Plus you can set the program so on loading up Firefox, it will not load up all tabs, which would require using your internet bandwidth to reload every tab. Great for saving bandwidth if you have to pay, or say you only want to load up 1 page, say your email quickly, you don't have to wait for every page to reload!
* Delicious Bookmarks
A great way to organize your favorite sites and have backed up online. You can add tags to your favorite sites for easy search, as well as your own description of the site. You can also share your bookmarks with your friends and family simply sharing your Delicious user name/URL, while you can also have secret bookmarks that only you can view when logged-in to their service.
* Tab Kit
One of my favorite features of Firefox over Google Chrome's browser... You can have 50 tabs open, and have superior organization capabilities of those tabs. You can use a hierarchy and also colored tabs. Say you open 2 windows of two different search ideas; each tab you open up will appear underneath that first initial tab as well as being color coded.
* Adblock Plus
This add-on has the main purpose of helping to remove ads from web pages. You must configure this to add a ad-removal filter list which I recommend EasyList. Not only does this remove those annoying ads from appearing in your browser, it also will speed up your browser. Those flash/animated ads actually can slow down your computer, especially with multiple tabs opened up with multiple ads.
If for some reason you need/want ads on a particular page, you can choose to disable ads for just that particular site.
* LastPass
For added security and a strong password manager, LastPass add-on. Sure Firefox has a password manager, but like all other browser password managers, the security is not top-notch. With LastPass, you create one password to store all your site passwords(it is not recommended to use the same password for every site you need a password, since web sites have been hacked/compromised and user data leaked, that could allow malicious hackers to try your password on other sites as well!) Not only does this have a password management, but also you can have form filling options to save you from typing your name/email/address etc every time you want to sign up for something.
To balance security out, I recommend purchasing the software SandboxIE. This allows your browser to be ran in a much safer environment, so if your browser were to become infected, it would not affect your entire computer system. Once installed, be sure to setup the software so Firefox is always ran inside the sandbox... If you ever feel like something is just not right, you can simply delete that 'sandbox' and start over fresh!
Add-ons
My highly-recommend favorite add-ons for Firefox to turn your browser into a 'super browser' are:
* BarTab
This very nice add-on can be setup to unload unused tabs after a set amount of time. Why is it so good?
Well say you have 50 tabs open in your browser... This will unload any tabs from your RAM memory, giving your system more resources so your computer run faster. Plus you can set the program so on loading up Firefox, it will not load up all tabs, which would require using your internet bandwidth to reload every tab. Great for saving bandwidth if you have to pay, or say you only want to load up 1 page, say your email quickly, you don't have to wait for every page to reload!
* Delicious Bookmarks
A great way to organize your favorite sites and have backed up online. You can add tags to your favorite sites for easy search, as well as your own description of the site. You can also share your bookmarks with your friends and family simply sharing your Delicious user name/URL, while you can also have secret bookmarks that only you can view when logged-in to their service.
* Tab Kit
One of my favorite features of Firefox over Google Chrome's browser... You can have 50 tabs open, and have superior organization capabilities of those tabs. You can use a hierarchy and also colored tabs. Say you open 2 windows of two different search ideas; each tab you open up will appear underneath that first initial tab as well as being color coded.
* Adblock Plus
This add-on has the main purpose of helping to remove ads from web pages. You must configure this to add a ad-removal filter list which I recommend EasyList. Not only does this remove those annoying ads from appearing in your browser, it also will speed up your browser. Those flash/animated ads actually can slow down your computer, especially with multiple tabs opened up with multiple ads.
If for some reason you need/want ads on a particular page, you can choose to disable ads for just that particular site.
* LastPass
For added security and a strong password manager, LastPass add-on. Sure Firefox has a password manager, but like all other browser password managers, the security is not top-notch. With LastPass, you create one password to store all your site passwords(it is not recommended to use the same password for every site you need a password, since web sites have been hacked/compromised and user data leaked, that could allow malicious hackers to try your password on other sites as well!) Not only does this have a password management, but also you can have form filling options to save you from typing your name/email/address etc every time you want to sign up for something.
