TecKMagazine - Firefox and Thunderbird Garage Book Review

Firefox and Thunderbird Garage Book Review

Written by David Thompson
Saturday, 12 December 2009
In the early days of the web, there was only two main browsers available which was Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. While Explorer managed to gain the majority of web surfers over time, a new browser was in the works from the folks at Mozilla. Changing browsers and email clients isn?t such an easy thing to do because there are compatibility and functionality issues that would need to be addressed but once you've tried Firefox and its email companion Thunderbird, those issues may not seem like an issue at all. With the Firefox & Thunderbird Garage as your guide, you'll get up to speed on the programs and its cool features in no time. What's in the book The book is broken down into two sections. One is for Firefox and the other for Thunderbird. Now let's take a look at what's inside the book. Part one on Firefox has eight parts covering topics such as getting started using Firefox, how to protect yourself using Firefox, how to perform a search, how to avoid internet nuisances, creating bookmarks and utilizing the browser's history, customizing Firefox using third part extensions and themes (very cool concept), using tabbed browsing and even learn how to manage your personal blog using Firefox extensions (another great addition). Part two deals with the Thunderbird email client. Covering topics such as setting up your email account (of course), creating spam filters, customizing Thunderbird, how to receive RSS feeds and newsgroups and more. Thunderbird's interface will remind you of Outlook Express but with number of new features. One of the coolest features in Thunderbird is its ability to handle RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. In case you were unfamiliar with RSS, these feeds allow people to receive the latest headlines in their RSS program (Thunderbird itself in this case). Combining email, RSS and newsgroup access from one program makes this program worth a try. Instead of having to open multiple programs to handle these tasks, you can just use Thunderbird. The Firefox & Thunderbird Garage book offers plenty to the average user. If you?re one of those people who enjoy learning things thoroughly, then this book is for you. To get the most from your web surfing experience using these programs, Firefox & Thunderbird Garage will help you master these programs in no time. The Final Word After using Firefox and Thunderbird at home and work, I?m very impressed with its features. The tabbed browsing and the built-in popup blocker were the initial reasons I tried it but this book provided a number of new features that I never utilized before. Although both programs are easily configurable, the Firefox & Thunderbird Garage book greatly reduced the learning time. Some features I really like in Firefox include the bookmark toolbar that appears above the tabs in the browser window. You can store a number of bookmarks in categorized folders in the toolbar for quick and easy access. The ability to customize the navigation toolbar is also great for putting the most used options like creating a new tab in there while being able to remove ones you don?t need. My biggest complaint about Firefox is having the close tab button separated and off to the right from the tabs instead of having an individual close button on each tab. I think it would be great to have that as an option in a future update. I would also like to see Firefox's launch time shortened. These are minor personal gripes, which doesn?t affect the overall quality of the programs though. I found the book to be invaluable towards learning these programs. As for Thunderbird, I never realized how mature this program was until I ran it through some of the examples in the book. The RSS setup is very easy and you?ll be up and running in less than a minute. The RSS feeds worked great and I was able to save a lot of time by having the news feeds and my email in one program. An excellent time saver for those of you who don?t have a lot of time to scan the internet for the latest headlines from your favorite websites. The book has a complete appendix at the end, which includes some very helpful mouse and keyboard shortcuts that you can utilize to help save you even more time and effort. The programs are free so get your copy of Firefox & Thunderbird Garage by Chris Hofmann, Marcia Knous and John Hedtke and then head over to http://www.mozilla.org and download the programs. Join the millions of people who have discovered a new way to surf the web, check email and stay updated on the latest headlines. I really enjoyed using Firefox and Thunderbird and they will be permanent fixtures on my hard drive. The features and compatibility is good enough to warrant everyday use and with the Mozilla group continuing development, it's only going to get even better. You can click HERE to purchase Firefox & Thunderbird Garage book. About Firefox Firefox is an open source web browser code project handled by the Mozilla. Org team. You can download Firefox from the program's official website located at http://www.mozilla.org. About Thunderbird Thunderbird is the standalone email mail client for the Mozilla web browser Firefox. You can learn more about Thunderbird and its capabilities at the official website located at http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

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