Explore the Internet in a Whole New WayWritten 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 into mainstream's consciousness and from then on it was logical, default choice. It's free with operating system, works well, loads any page and is easy to use. Other web browsers soon faded into obscurity and sometimes even died in shadow of new king of pack. Netscape Navigator, former 'King of browsers', has now ceased commercial operations and has been taken over by fan base. Opera is fading into obscurity and Mozilla was facing a similar fate, until recently.Mozilla Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) is probably largest threat that IE has faced in recent times. Currently, according to http://www.w3schools.com, IE is 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 at number of people that use Internet is somewhere around 605,600,000 users (or was in 2002, number will have increased substantially by now). That means that (after some erroneous math) a rough stab at guessing 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 about security aspects, 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 run install file and then when you run browser for first time you get presented with option of importing your IE favourites (a nice feature, with click of a button everything is moved across to ease your transition) and also option of making Firefox your default browser. My initial reaction was fairly apathetic; Firefox seemed pretty much same as IE and in essence, it is. It has all basic features of IE, but then I discovered it adds so much more. The first feature to really grab me is tabbed browsing. Many alternative browsers and even IE plugins support tabbed browsing (where new pages can be opened in a tab in one window, instead of filling task bar with buttons) but Firefox seems to make it so easy and useful. All you do is click a link with middle button on your mouse (most newer mice have three buttons, third often being placed under scroll wheel) and a new tab opens up containing page requested. Middle clicking on any tab in window will close it, without having to actually go to 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 through open programs). What this all leads to is a much neater Internet experience, with you being able to group certain pages into browser windows, leaving start bar much cleaner and easier to navigate.
| | Virus prevention and removalWritten 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 when 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 usually files attached to email that contain 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 with feature of updating virus definitions. * Keep your windows operating system updated by regularly downloading new updates from Internet. Windows O/S's have a lot of security loopholes and bugs that can be easily exploited by worms and viruses. * Make sure anti virus scans 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 with best of precautions bad things can still happen. Backup all your data and important files.
|