The things we do

If I had to pick the nearest thing to actual torture which people voluntarily undertake, I think I'd go with The Marathon des Sables.

It's a 150-mile marathon that takes place over six consecutive days. In the Sahara Desert. Carrying all your own equipment (excepting water and a tent. But clothes, sleeping bag, food...).

Ben Hammersley's going to take part to raise money for a number of charitable organisations, to which I can only profess my complete awe and mention that it's the most incredible understatement to say, "Rather him than me."

Oh, and he'll be moblogging the whole thing. Of course.

Firebird rocks

You all know it. I'm guessing you've all been preached to on the subject.

Well, guess what? Now it's my turn.

Firstly, the basics. Why switch from Internet Explorer? Firebird is significantly faster than IE. Firebird can by default block nasty pop-ups, unlike IE. Firebird gives you tabbed browsing, which means you don't have to have your start bar cluttered up with dozens of open windows, such as you have with IE. Firebird lets you bookmark all your open tabs into a new folder, or open all bookmarks in a folder as new tabs; it doesn't make you open ten new windows and load up all the pages individually, like you have to with IE. Firebird lets you open links in the background with Ctrl-click or middle-click, rather than having a new window open on top of what you're reading, as with IE. Firebird has a right-click option to "Block images from this server" so that you don't have to endure banner ads, unlike if you browse with IE. Firebird has a scalable text feature so that you can increase or decrease the text even if the page's author is a Font Bitch and has the font size set in pixels [*cough cough*], meaning that you cannot resize the text in IE. Firebird makes it easy to browse without lifting your hands from the keyboard: Ctrl+L gets you the address bar, Ctrl+K gets you the built-in Google search bar (another thing that IE doesn't have by default), to select a link simply start typing the hyperlinked text and press Enter, eliminating all that tedious usage of the mouse which is inherent with IE.

These features are off the top of my head, and this is just with the basic, lean, just-downloaded version. We haven't even started on the Extensions yet.

Firebird's Extensions. These are really the killer argument as to why Firebird is superior to most other browsers, not just IE.

Extensions that I have installed at the moment are:

Alternate Stylesheet Switcher

Allows you to easily switch between alternate stylesheets, should any be available (see Meyerweb.com as an example) through a drop-down menu.

Mouse gestures

The reason why I was willing to switch from Opera, where I had got used to the mouse gestures. Admittedly, the only one that I actually use is to open a new tab, but I use it about fifty times a day. I'd use the Back and Forwards gestures as well, but I have nice Back and Forwards clicky buttons on the side of my mouse.

Tabbrowser Extensions

Lets you do many, many wonderful things, such as dragging the tab bar to the bottom of the window (which I would have done had this been installed immediately when I moved from Opera), reordering tabs by dragging and dropping, closing all tabs to the left/to the right/other than the tab you're on, undo Close tabs, set a maximum number of tabs per window (any further will open in a new Firebird window), etc.

This Window

Forces all links to open in the same window (new tab). Praised be the name of Ralph Churchill! (author of this extension). I despise with a great passion links that open in new windows, even though most of the time I middle-click on hyperlinks anyway.

Flash click to view

Flash animations are replaced with a button which you can click if you want to view the animation. Makes browsing much more peaceful.

Preferential

Gives you an awful lot more control over just about the entire browser. Perfect if you are like me and need to have things just the way you like them.

Web developer

This is very useful for web developers (I imagine), but I mostly use it for the View CSS button which will load all of the page's CSS (even multiple stylesheets) into a new tab.

If you need any further convincing, here's the evidence:

• Why You Should Switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser
• Lots of people enthusing about Firebird extensions:
  • DrikoLand
  • Phil Ringnalda
  • Aquarion
  • Kadyellebee
• Firebird WebBar

So, what are you waiting for?