Where There's Smoke There's Fire(fox)

If you often cheer for underdogs or don't particularly care for 800-pound gorillas, you may like the idea of using a non-Microsoft browser or e-mail client. While Mozilla's open source-based offerings – Mozilla Firefox, an internet browser, and Mozilla Thunderbird, an e-mail client – are free, they're also competent programs that provide some clever features of their own. And there's arguable safety in using non-Microsoft browser and e-mail clients that aren't the number one targets of hackers throughout the civilized world.

Where There's Smoke There's Fire(fox)

A no-nonsense browser that competently does its job while serving as a viable alternative to Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox's recently debuted 1.0 release serves as the strongest contender to the reigning champ yet.

The official 1.0 edition of Firefox is easy to understand and use, is generally faster than IE at bringing up and displaying web pages, is customizable, offers built-in security measures, and makes the transition from IE as painless as possible.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0

Once it's installed and running, you're pretty much free to do with Firefox what you would using Internet Explorer. Firefox supports all of the standard features you'd expect to find in a browser, including tracking history, maintaining bookmarks, caching web pages, one-click web searching, and full screen web viewing. The browser sports some nice extras as well, including tabbed browsing and an integrated Google search button. Perhaps best of all, the inclusion of a built-in pop-up ad blocker competently stops the appearance of annoying ads.

After installing Firefox, we were pleased to find our Favorites links from Internet Explorer had been imported correctly and were clearly displayed in the Firefox links bar. The only thing missing — and it's something many won't miss at all — were the many MSN options and toolbar icons that are a part of Internet Explorer. In little time, we were competently browsing the web and didn't miss Internet Explorer in the least.

If you're a long-time user of Internet Explorer, you'll find that Firefox's interface is less cluttered because it's not bogged down with commercial links. The browser interface in Firefox also offers a more polished, streamlined look and feel than its loosely related family members, the venerable Netscape web browser and the Mozilla web suite.

Firefox offers built-in support for Macromedia Flash and Adobe Reader, so it displays multimedia-rich pages from a good number of web sites. The browser also features a helpful plug-in manager that automatically downloads and installs plug-ins when needed.

For better or worse, Firefox ignores ActiveX, which tends to be the cause of many problems in Internet Explorer. While this technology was originally designed to enhance the web experience and help users add updates and new features to web sites, it unfortunately has evolved into the weapon of choice for hackers that want to load spyware onto unsuspecting PCs.

A Sense of Security Sorely Lacking in IE

Speaking of security, while Microsoft continuously tries to secure its browser, Firefox in some cases takes the easy route by not supporting vulnerable technologies and therefore avoids the problem altogether. In cases where security holes are revealed, the Firefox team has typically been much quicker to resolve the vulnerabilities than Microsoft. (One benefit of open source software is that identified issues are often quickly addressed.) There is certainly merit and comfort in using a browser that isn't the constant target of hackers who always seem to find and exploit Explorer weaknesses.

We found Firefox easy to install and encountered no problems getting it up and running. After we downloaded the program file and executed it, a step-by-step wizard helped us transfer our existing history, bookmarks, cookies, and site passwords from Internet Explorer. In our testing, Firefox was able to quickly load and display our favorite web sites, and most appeared as they do in Internet Explorer.

Mozilla Extensions Manager

We experienced a few minor glitches on some web sites — typically alignment problems due to the proprietary support of web standards by Microsoft. And while we didn't miss the pop-up ads that failed to display, the blocker did stop some legitimate pop-up menus from coming up. And, of course, sites that relied on ActiveX wouldn't display. For these sites, you'll have to resort to Internet Explorer and take your chances.

You can easily customize Firefox by modifying its toolbars and adding buttons. And if you want to change its look, you can quickly download and install themes via the integrated and ultra-efficient Themes manager. To add more capabilities, the program supports extensions that can be downloaded and installed through the Extensions manager. Extensions let you add helpful features such as the ability to zoom into images, display a calendar, copy text without formatting, execute common commands with a mouse, and more.

Overall, we were impressed with Firefox's streamlined interface and its tabbed browsing capabilities that let you open numerous web pages in a single window and view each by clicking on their respective tabs. We found the tabbed interface to be particularly handy when conducting multiple searches through Google or Yahoo. And we could also view a site as another one opened, which saved us time.

Once you become accustomed to opening and working with multiple web pages, it's a convenience feature that you may not want to live without. Another plus, Firefox lets you conduct Google searches from a port on the toolbar or by highlighting text, right-clicking on it, and then selecting a search option.

In the end, Firefox evolved into our everyday working browser. There's just not all that much to miss in trusty old Internet Explorer.

Stealing Outlook's Thunder, Thunderbird

If you're in need of a slightly different "outlook" on your e-mail tasks, Mozilla's Thunderbird 0.7.3 presents a solid alternative to Microsoft's Outlook. Thunderbird not only performs similar functions to Outlook and Outlook Express, it also comes with integrated spam filters that can intercept and cut down on the unwanted e-mail that you receive throughout the day.

Like Firefox, Thunderbird was easily downloaded and installed from the Mozilla website, and we encountered no problems importing our e-mail settings and addresses from Outlook and then sending and receiving e-mail. While Thunderbird can import your settings, messages, and addresses from Outlook,

Mozilla Thunderbird

Outlook Express, Eudora, or Netscape Communicator, one drawback is that Thunderbird can't import your message rules/filters from any of these other e-mail clients.

If you're familiar with Outlook, you'll find Thunderbird to be intuitive and easy to use. It displays HTML-based e-mail, searches for data in messages, manages addresses, offers extensive sorting and filtering capabilities, and handles return receipts. It also manages multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts and supports enterprise and government security protocols. When you compose a new e-mail, the program offers a competent spell-checker – a big plus – and its search tools are flexible and thorough.

Thunderbird's most notable feature is its integrated ability to detect incoming junk mail. You initially "train" the program by showing it your real and junk mail in your inbox. After that, the program does its best to analyze incoming e-mail and identify the spam, which you may choose to have automatically deleted or placed into a specified folder. In theory, the more that you use Thunderbird and refine its e-mail filters, the more useful its anti-spam features will be to you. In our tests, the anti-spam filter performed adequately.

As with Firefox, you can customize the program by adjusting its toolbars and setting other options, and you can change its appearance by selecting and applying downloadable themes. Thunderbird can also be enhanced through extensions that offer additional features like the ability to zoom into images, add calendar capabilities, look up words in an online dictionary, and more.

While it's not a real improvement over Outlook, Thunderbird works as a first rate e-mail client. Don't let its free price sway you.

Pros: Tabbed browsing interface, integrated pop-up blocker, helpful Themes and Extensions managers, easy-to-use interface, free

Cons: Lacks ActiveX support, some websites won't display as they do in IE (due to Mozilla's stricter compliance with web standards)

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