Firefox 1.5.0.1

You may recall that I had some problems with Firefox 1.5, so much so that I went out and got the bleeding edge development version to get rid of the bugs.

Well, good news. The bug fixes have now propagated back into the 1.5 series with the release of Firefox 1.5.0.1. I've decided to get off the bleeding edge and go back to the stable Firefox tree, at least until I find a bug.

So, as I once promised, it's time to tell you about the wonders of Firefox.

Uh, it's a browser, Dave

Well, right, Hal, but what a browser. It — it —

Yes?

It browses the web, frak it!

So do Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Galeon, Amaya, Nautilus, Lynx, etc., etc., yada, yada, ad infinitum, Dave. Then there's something called Internet Explorer.

Well yes, Hal, but Internet Explorer is for Windows, and we don't even let the XP box upstairs use it.

True, Dave. But what about the other browsers I just mentioned. You know, – ahem – I have all of them. Why don't you use one of them?

Well, Hal, because Firefox has extensions: A bunch of nifty little add-ons that let me customize the browser.

Ah, I see, Dave. So what extensions do you have loaded up?

Thanks for asking Hal.

Just wanted to get to the point of the article, Dave.

OK. Here's the Firefox extensions currently installed on Hal-whose-name-isn't-really-Hal (Hey!). All of them are available under the Tools=>Extensions>Get More Extensions menu, in no particular order:

• Forecastfox: Puts icons of current an future weather on a Firefox toolbar.
• Sage: An RSS/Atom feed aggregator.
• Translate Page: Calls up Google's translation service to convert a foreign language page to English.
• User Agent Switcher: Fool websites into thinking you're running IE.
• CookieCuller: A Cookie manager that lets you save the cookies you want to save and delete the ones you aren't crazy about.
• AspellFox: Runs the aspell spell checking program on input boxes. Useful for spell checking posts like this one.
• BugMeNot: is supposed to access the BugMeNot web site to get instant login information. So far I haven't been able to get it to work.
• Adblock: Block selected advertisements, or advertising sites, from appearing in your browser window.

And there you are, ladies and gentlemen, the Firefox extensions.

Thanks, Dave.

You're welcome, Hal.