To make it easier to find Countryplans and all your favorite sites each day switch to Firefox with tabbed browsing.

There are so many security issues with with IE you spend a lot of your time removing spyware or fighting browser hijacks- (Where did my home page go )

Tabbed browsing opens all your Bookmarks (same as Favorites in MS IE)at the top of the page immediately when you right click on your favorite bookmarks then you just click the tab and the page is open.  This may be a little slow on dial up or an older computer, but you could limit your pages to one folder with just a few at once- the group of bookmarks in one folder will all open in tabs on one page - I call mine Daily  Bookmarks and currently have 16 pages open at once.  To switch pages just click another tab.  The page will already be loaded.  

There are currently 184 extensions for added functionality -you start out rather bare bones then add all the extensions you want.  There are also many themes to change the look of your browser.(like skins).

Get it and read the information on it here.  http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Note - this is open source- kind of belongs to everybody-   I use it and it works great - even the Egg Timer and Magic 8 Ball works great.  Lets see MS IE or Netscape do that!!!!

One of the things I like best about Firefox (and Maxthon http://www.maxthon.com/, an IE tabbed browser add-on) is that Ctrl + enlarges the page so you can read small type. Perfect for those using high-resolution montiors with older eyes.

One of the things I use everyday for spell checking these posts is Ispell http://www.gnu.org/software/ispell/ispell.html. I cannot yet get it to work with Foxfire. Also, the url maker (the world symbol) puts its brackets at the end of the post with Firefox whereas it puts it at the cursor in Maxthon or IE.

There is a spell checker extension for Firefox that works great with this forum. -as long as I remember to use  it.

It is called Spellbound.   It will come up in your right click context menu.  Right click the message typing area, select check spelling and it will copy it in a box and spell check then make the changes you approve for you.

http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/download

I had a hard time finding where I got it from as it doesn't seem to be listed in the extensions unless it may be in one of the dictionaries.  You will also have  to download the library for the extension and install it per the instructions.  

Note that with most extension installations you will have to close and reopen the browser for the new extension to appear.

I noticed the problem with the URL maker so now add it as I go where I want it or cut and paste it where I want it as a workaround.  Same problem with smileys I think.  Yep, so same solution.

Thanks for the note about the control +  -----I forgot how to do it.

Sounds like you are the expert Glenn.  One thing I havent' figured out how to do with Firefox is have it show the picture text when you put your mouse over the picture like in IE or Netscape.  Is it a setting somewhere, or an add-in perchance?

Apparently, IE's behavior doesn't follow the HTML specification.    The Firefox developers are against the popups but someone has created an extension that does it: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/popupalt

I've played with Firefox a lot but thanks to Neil, now we both know about the alt text popup.  I noticed the tool tips on some pictures but not all.  Its a fun browser with so many extras.  I have tried most of the extensions that look remotely useful.

We use Firefox almost exclusivly. I love tabbed browsing.

Live bookmarks! oh the joy. so that this url

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss091.xml

loads all of the latest BBC headlines. No adds, just the info I want.

I only used live bookmarks once before and the above page link loaded text so I went to the help page to refresh my memory on what to do.  Here is the information.

Add Live Bookmarks manually

    Some sites don't tell Firefox that they support Live Bookmarks, even though they actually do. If you know the URL of a site's RSS feed (url ends with .rdf or .xml), you can manually create a Live Bookmark for the site. Go to the Bookmarks menu and select 'Manage Bookmarks'. Under the 'File Menu', select 'New Live Bookmark'. Create a name for the Live Bookmark and add the URL. New articles from that site will appear as Live Bookmarks in Firefox.

Thanks Christian
Glenn