Start Your Engines

It is Firefox Download Day. They're attempting to set a world record for the most downloads of a piece of software in a single day. Later revised to a "single 24-hour period" after poor planning caused their servers to crash under the load. But, this is probably the only time you'll hear "Firefox" and "crash" in the same sentence, unless someone was saying something like "If you're tired of having a browser that crashes constantly, it's time to ditch Internet Explorer and download Firefox."

Unless you're already using Flock or Opera, there are plenty of compelling reasons to switch to Firefox. If you're using Safari and find the text blurry or you'd like to bookmark more than one homepage, you'll like Firefox. And if you're using Internet Explorer -- because it came with your computer -- today is the day you re-assert your control over your life online.

Trust me, it's painless, and well worth it.

Ready?

GetFirefox.com

How can I be so sure? I've been using the release candidates for several weeks now and I love it so much better than what I was using. (And I was using Firefox 2 prior to that!) It's fast, memory-efficient and just really easy to use, especially the new AwesomeBar and the way it helps with bookmarking.) There are still a few Addons not available, but most of the Addons I use are FF3 compatible.

Recommended Addons:

• Forecast Fox - puts the current conditions and upcoming forecast into otherwise unused space in your browser


• Better Google Calendar - allows you to make additional adjustments to how Google Calendars are displayed


• Better Gmail - allows you to make additional adjustments to GMail


• Better Google Reader - more adjustments to Google Reader


• Faviconize Tab - shrink specific tabs down to only their icon to allow more tabs to fit on the screen.


• Customize Google - make adjustments to Google search results


• Firefox Showcase - shows you a small display of all open tabs


• Google Preview - inserts screen grabs into Google and Yahoo search results letting you see what a website looks like before you click


• GreaseMonkey - advanced users only - allows you to browse a library of "scripts" that adjust how websites look and work

Feel free to post your favorites in the comments.