Explore the Internet in a Whole New Way

Written by Daniel Punch


For a long time now Microsoft's Internet Explorer has ruled as 'King of Internet browsers'. Like many of Microsoft's products an initially brutal marketing campaign pushed Internet Explorer intorepparttar mainstream's consciousness and from then on it wasrepparttar 107419 logical, default choice. It's free withrepparttar 107420 operating system, works well, loads any page and is easy to use. Other web browsers soon faded into obscurity and sometimes even died inrepparttar 107421 shadow ofrepparttar 107422 new king ofrepparttar 107423 pack. Netscape Navigator,repparttar 107424 former 'King ofrepparttar 107425 browsers', has now ceased commercial operations and has been taken over byrepparttar 107426 fan base. Opera is fading into obscurity and Mozilla was facing a similar fate, until recently.

Mozilla Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) is probablyrepparttar 107427 largest threat that IE has faced in recent times. Currently, according to http://www.w3schools.com, IE isrepparttar 107428 browser used by 69.9% of Internet users and Firefox is used by 19.1%. This might not seem like much, but according to http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/ an educated guess atrepparttar 107429 number of people that userepparttar 107430 Internet is somewhere around 605,600,000 users (or was in 2002,repparttar 107431 number will have increased substantially by now). That means that (after some erroneous math) a rough stab at guessingrepparttar 107432 number of people using Firefox is probably over 115,064,000, which isn't a bad user base at all.

When a friend of mine from university first tried to convince me to switch to Firefox I wasn't particularly interested. Basically, IE has done everything that I've wanted in a web browser. He went on at great lengths aboutrepparttar 107433 security aspects,repparttar 107434 in-built popup blockers, download managers and so on, but I'd spent a fairly large amount of time and money on anti-virus programs, firewalls, spyware removers, and my browser was secure enough. I also have a download manager that I'm very happy with and refuse to change from. After much cajoling I finally agreed to try this newfangled software. I'm glad I did too, because now I have no desire to go back.

Firefox is very easy to install and use. There's nothing complicated, you simply download (for free) and runrepparttar 107435 install file and then when you runrepparttar 107436 browser forrepparttar 107437 first time you get presented withrepparttar 107438 option of importing your IE favourites (a nice feature, withrepparttar 107439 click of a button everything is moved across to ease your transition) and alsorepparttar 107440 option of making Firefox your default browser. My initial reaction was fairly apathetic; Firefox seemed pretty muchrepparttar 107441 same as IE and in essence, it is. It has allrepparttar 107442 basic features of IE, but then I discovered it adds so much more.

The first feature to really grab me isrepparttar 107443 tabbed browsing. Many alternative browsers and even IE plugins support tabbed browsing (whererepparttar 107444 new pages can be opened in a tab inrepparttar 107445 one window, instead of fillingrepparttar 107446 task bar with buttons) but Firefox seems to make it so easy and useful. All you do is click a link withrepparttar 107447 middle button on your mouse (most newer mice have three buttons,repparttar 107448 third often being placed underrepparttar 107449 scroll wheel) and a new tab opens up containingrepparttar 107450 page requested. Middle clicking on any tab inrepparttar 107451 window will close it, without having to actually go torepparttar 107452 tab and click close. Ctrl-T will open a new blank tab, and Ctrl-Tab will cycle through them (similar in fashion to Alt-Tab cycling throughrepparttar 107453 open programs). What this all leads to is a much neater Internet experience, with you being able to group certain pages into browser windows, leavingrepparttar 107454 start bar much cleaner and easier to navigate.

Virus prevention and removal

Written by Ashish Jain


A virus is a piece of code that gets loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes. The first known occurrence of viruses goes back to 1987 whenrepparttar ARPANET was infected by one.

One common misnomer among people is that you can infect your computer just by opening an email and reading its text. That is not possible; it is usuallyrepparttar 107418 files attached torepparttar 107419 email that containrepparttar 107420 virus. The most common file types are ".SCR" ".VBS" ", ".PIF"

Prevention is better than a cure: Here are some tips to make sure that your computer does not get infected.

* Get a good Anti-Virus software like Norton Anti-Virus, MacAfee, PC Cillin etc. * Keep your anti virus software updated by downloading new virus definitions regularly. Most Anti-Virus software comes withrepparttar 107421 feature of updating virus definitions. * Keep your windows operating system updated by regularly downloading new updates fromrepparttar 107422 Internet. Windows O/S's have a lot of security loopholes and bugs that can be easily exploited by worms and viruses. * Make surerepparttar 107423 anti virus scansrepparttar 107424 file each time before its opened. * Floppy disks and removable media are a good source of viruses; always scan them before accessing files on them. * Never open email attachments from sources that are unknown or suspicious. * Do not open emails that have questionable subject lines. * When in doubt about a file, don't open it. * Even withrepparttar 107425 best of precautions bad things can still happen. Backup all your data and important files.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use