• Mood: Exhausted
• Quote: -- Sorry to wake you, sir.
  -- Well, what is it?
  -- Starfleet urgently requests any data we have on the whereabouts of Enterprise.
  -- What?
  -- Apparently they're refusing to acknowledge signal to return to spacedock, sir.
  -- Signal Starfleet... that we have no idea location Enterprise.
  -- Sir?
  -- You havin' hearing problems, Mister?
  -- No Sir.
• Episode: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
• Character: Excelsior Comm Officer and Captain Sulu

Hey y'all.

I just wanted to take an aside from Trek news, to give you my take on Browsers in light of the new Beta Preview release of Netscape 8, which I just downloaded and tried out this morning.

Netscape 8 Beta has some great features, but still has a lot of bugs to be worked out. 
One of its best features relates to security.  Once an hour, and presumably at start-up, Netscape will download a list of sites an outside company has examined for either being fully trusted or blacklisted.  NS8 has incorporated this info into its tabs.  Whatever site you are on, a little shield will appear on the right side of the tab, and its color will indicate the threat level the site poses to your computer.  A green shield means it has been reviewed and is on NS' safe list.  A yellow shield simply means that the site has not yet been reviewed, and NS will automatically apply a default level of security to the site unless, you override.  A red shield, will actually take you to a warning page first, indicating the site has been reviewed and determined to be malicious in nature, and added to NS' blacklist.
As I understand it, this will also recognize spoof sites that appear to be a part of known, legitimate on-line organizations.
In addition, by clicking on the shield, not only can you override the default settings for the site, but you can also change how NS renders the site, using either Mozilla protocols or IE protocols.  This allows you to enjoy the pluses of a Mozilla-based browser and still be able to visit sites that are IE-compatible only. 
Netscape also remains ahead of Firefox in terms of using tabs for its sidebar.  This is a great feature that I miss on Firefox, as it allows you the ability to display a variety of sidebars, with a variety in info.  Maybe there is a Firefox developer that can create an extension for this.
The downsides to NS 8B include its inability to install Firefox extensions and themes.  There are currently no extensions or themes available for NS8, although there is a manager for each.  Also for Yahoo! fans, neither version (IE or Mozilla) of the Companion Toolbar will install on NS8.  However, Yahoo! Launchcast does work in NS8.
Another downside is the unusual location of the menu-bar (File, Edit, View, Bookmarks, Tools, and Help).  The title and menu bars have been merged and do not display as traditional.  The site title will appear in the usual location in the top-left, but it has been stylized with the look of the default browser theme.  The menu-bar items now appear in the top right just to the left of the minimize, maximize and close ([_] [=] [ X ] ) buttons.  It takes a little too much getting used to.
A feature that seems all right, but takes some getting used to, is the main toolbar.  It has 5 sets of items.  The first four are fixed in terms of their content, and the last one, which starts out blank, is customizable.  These are interesting as they can show you localized weather and news.  It localizes it by asking for your Zip Code during setup.  The downside of this might be that I think it will only accept US zip codes; making the feature useless if you live anywhere outside the 50 US states.  As someone who spends 22 weeks a year living in Canada, I am disappointed with this.

On another note:  I still cannot say I am overly pleased with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  First of all, IE is far too integrated into the Window's operating system for my tastes.  Every time you open a window to browse files, you are essentially in IE.  While this provides convenience, to me it ultimately feels like a security hole.< > Speaking of security holes, Microsoft has come under attack a lot over the past two or three years as hackers have continued to exploit various security holes in the IE browser, leading many companies to actually demand their employees switch to Firefox.  Yet, IE still possesses nearly 90 % of the market share and many websites still embrace IE compatibility by refusing to test their sites in Firefox or other Mozilla browsers.
Microsoft has yet to employ many of the popular features of Mozilla browsers such as tabbed browsing.  It is only just within the past year that they actually incorporated a pop-up blocker into their browser.  In addition, when Version 6 was first released it was only available as part of the Windows XP Service Pack 2.  They have now released an SP1 version of IE 6, which is downloadable for users of other versions of Windows.  While I have not checked on this personally, it is supposed to have the same security updates to it, such as popup blocking as the version included with WinXPSP2
As for the next version if MSIE, which they're already working on, it will likely not be out until they release their next version of Windows, and even then is supposed to be, initially at least, only compatible with that version of Windows.

Finally, here is why I use Firefox as my default browser:
Security is big.  While it may still have some security holes, these have yet to be exploited, primarily because of its low profile.  In addition, once holes are exploited, they can be patched and released much faster than with IE, because Firefox is open-source and open-license.  This means that anyone with Comp Sci knowledge and expertise can write code for it.  The only stipulation about writing code for it, is they have to make the code they've written for Firefox publicly available by submitting it to the Mozilla developers website at http://www.mozdev.org.
Tabbed-browsing:  if you haven't yet discovered the wonders of tabbed browsing, you have no idea what you're missing.  Regardless of whether you use Windows or Mac, tabbed browsing enriches your experience.  Open links in new tabs instead of new windows.  On a Mac, if you have more than one browser window open, they are all layered behind each other and you cannot see them or access them easily unless you access a menu.  On a PC, having multiple browser windows clutters up your start bar and slows down your computer performance.  Having tabs is just simply convenient and you can see all your tabs on the tab-bar.  You can also choose to have the focus shift immediately to the new tab or load in the background.  I often set it to background load when I "center-click" a link, and then as I'm looking through a page, I can click all the links I want to look at, and by the time I'm ready to look at them they're already fully loaded.  In addition, switching through the tabs is each, just hold down "CTRL” and use the "page-up" and "page-down" buttons.
Extensions are awesome.  There are lots of great add-on extensions to fully customize Firefox.  Some of my favourite include: Image Zoom (enlarge any image right on the page); FoxyTunes (control button toolbar for your favourite player); Prefbar (quick toolbar access to change preferences of your choice on the fly); downThemAll (a bulk download manager); Tabbed Browsing Options (enhances tab options); Webmail Compose (loads e-mail links in your favourite Web-based e-mail account, like Yahoo!, G-Mail or Hotmail); and Target Alert (gives you a visual indicator if a link either opens a browser window or is a PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint doc, or an e-mail link.
There are also well over 50 themes (or skins) to choose from, so you are bound to find the look you want.  I myself like "Noia 2.0 Extreme" the best.
Also next to the address bar is a search bar, to which you can add a slew of favourite engines, from Google to AlltheWeb, Amazon to EBay, and IMDb to Webster.  Just scan the list of available ones to add, or if you are savvy enough, you can even add one for a favourite site of yours; if it is not already listed.

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