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Ever since I learned about it, I've always preferred to use Firefox than Internet Explorer (IE) even though I couldn't really tell why. Lately, I've been working a lot with both browsers (and in the process got awestruck by the sheer amount of work a browser does each time we view a web page) and got to know them a little bit. It was this experience that showed me how much more flexible (and developer-friendly, to a certain extent) Firefox is. Here are a few things I like about Firefox:

• I can easily install mutiple versions of it in the same computer. Very useful to test your web application quickly. With IE, oops, it's closely tied with the Windows OS. I know that there is a way around this (by copying multiple DLL plus registry acrobatics IIRC), but it's very painful.
• Add-ons are wonderful. My personal favourite is Foxmark that synchronizes bookmarks across different computers. Very useful if you use Firefox both at work and at home.
• Firefox has Firebug, very helpful in debugging JavaScript. IE8 does promise a Firebug-inspired debugging tool; but basically debugging JavaScript in IE6 and IE7 (the 2 currently most popular browsers) is very painful.

Then, in the middle of development work, a unique incident put things to perspective. My parents visited me, so my Dad used my computer to browse the Internet. I see my Dad as a typical user, who does not care about development niceties, but care a lot about convenience. He is used to IE, of course. So I told him to use Firefox. As he used Firefox, he kept commenting how difficult it was to use. The biggest reason, I think, is different feel from IE. But here is the remark that got me thinking: IE allows him to save a web page in one file, whereas Firefox does not.

I could not understand that. Surely when I save blah.html, I always get a "blah_files" folder that stores non-text content. So I tried out IE. It does allow me to save everything in one file. Microsoft proprietary format, of course. (I'm guessing it's somekind of zip-based compression that IE can uncompress on the fly.) But my Dad doesn't care about that. All he cares about is that everything is in one file and there is no chance that he accidentally separates text content from non-text content.

The incident made me think, "Hmm... so what's so great about Firefox for a user like my Dad?" It's funny that I can't think of any. So many productive features and I just cannot see how my Dad will switch to Firefox just for them. Bookmark synchronization? Oh, he remembers all the URLs he needs (just a handful of them). Installing multiple versions of a browser? What for? JavaScript debugger? What JavaScript? Even Firefox 3's Awesome Bar?

What I learned was that Internet browsing is but one activity among many. What a sobering revelation.
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But let's get back to Awesome Bar. At first I thought it's cool, but so what? It's only until I started to use it while doing research at work that I decided that I could no longer live without it. My job is to be efficient in learning things new to my company. And research is usually not smooth. I usually read a number of pages to find some consistent pattern or repetition of a concept, and then realize that a page I read sometime ago make more sense than the time I read it. So I need to get back to that page. There are a few tricks to get back to the page:

• Never close any tabs. Obviously impractical. Which tab was which?
  
• Bookmark all pages I've seen. I did practice this once. Still the same question: which bookmark was which?
• Repeat the same search steps, something like re-tracing my earlier steps. It works if I remember exactly what steps I took. Even if I do remember, how many clicks do I need to get to that one page?
• Awesome bar. Type the phrase I remember, scan the list of pages and usually I get back to the page I want.

Last week, Google launched their browser, Google Chrome. It has something similar that they call the Omnibar. Their new tab feature arguably pushes this idea one step forward; I personally don't use find their new tab concept that useful. I'm still in love with the Awesome Bar :)

What I love about Chrome is its task bar. Shift+Esc quickly becomes my favourite shortcut. In relation with the revelation I wrote above, Chrome definitely feels like a web developer's browser rather than a consumer's. (I think a lot of articles about Chrome misunderstood it. Chrome is not a "Firefox killer," a term that implies Chrome is intended for consumers. Sure, consumers can use it; but its features are nicest for developers.)