The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Easy Browsing with Mozilla Rob Reilly |
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Rob Reilly tells us in no uncertain terms why he loves using the Mozilla Browser |
Who Needs Mozilla?
Let me give you an excuse to try Linux or dump clunky old Outlook on your
Windows machine. Mozilla is an Open Source replacement for both Internet
Explorer and Outlook. It's free to download from the Web and has none of the
licensing hassles of the aforementioned browser/e-mail products.
Mozilla bundles a full featured Web browser with an easy-to-use mail client and
has lots of cool features like picture-perfect page rendering, mouse wheel text
zooming, popup ad blocking, tabbed browsing and customisable mail filters.
Mozilla on Your Machine
Mozilla can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org. Simply pull down the
version you prefer and save it in a Linux directory or Windows folder. Next,
unzip the compressed binary and run the setup program. Finally, set up your
preferences and mail account information. That's pretty much it for the basic
install. Anyone who has configured Internet Explorer and Outlook will have no
problem getting Mozilla to work. Mozilla has complete documentation on its Web
site, if you do have any trouble. [Ed: Mozilla is also on the Monthly CD, most
months-GT].
Both the Linux and Windows versions are fairly large, 13 MB and 14 MB,
respectively. Dial up downloads might take a while, but broadband will be a
snap. Even if you download over dial up, you'll be rewarded with one of the most
popular and best supported browsers available. Total time for installation,
after downloading, on either platform shouldn't exceed 10 minutes.
Big Linux distributions like Red Hat and SuSE bundle in Mozilla with several
other browsers. When loading a distribution just make sure that you choose to
install Mozilla and its related parts. Most current distributions provide a
version that is one or two revisions back. Download Mozilla from the Web for the
latest.
I've installed Mozilla on a fairly wide cross section of Intel based machines.
My personal laptop is a 5 year old 300 MHz PII with 256 MB RAM and a new 10 GB
disk. I use a generic phone modem, a 3Com Ethernet 10/100 card or an SMC 802.11b
wireless card, all of which are of the PCMCIA type, for connectivity. Of course,
I run SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional as the operating system. Mozilla takes about
15 seconds to load on this machine.
Other machines I've used Mozilla on include several ancient 133 to 200 MHz
Pentium machines running Windows 98SE or SuSE Linux 8.2 Pro. I also put the
program on my brother's new Acer 2.0 GHz laptop with Windows XP. In all cases
Mozilla started and ran great. No fuss, no worries.
Mozilla's Look and Feel
After Mozilla starts you'll be greeted with a pretty conventional browser layout
with menu and URL bars across the top of the screen (see Figure 1). The menu
buttons contain various file, view, bookmarks, tools, etc. functions and you can
just click on one to see the selection. On the right at the top are the print
and search buttons. The search button can be configured for brand name search
engines like Google, Mozilla.org and Netscape. There is also a big M progress
icon (upper right) that spins anytime data is being downloaded. Across the
bottom of the screen are quick jump buttons for the browser, e-mail, the HTML
editor and the address book. Handy to start up or switch between those
functions.
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I wanted to mention the main browser window as well. Mozilla seems to give the
cleanest rendition of a Web page among all the browsers that I use. The
Konquorer and Opera browsers are fast, but typically seem to display colors a
little funny. Mozilla on Linux platforms easily renders Web pages as well as or
better than Microsoft's Internet Explorer on a Windows machine, in my opinion.
Mozilla's mail client is equally easy to use. E-mail can be initiated with a
startup icon or from within the Mozilla browser. Usually I just start up the
Mozilla browser and then click the e-mail button at the bottom left of the
screen. Under Linux and the KDE desktop I like to put the e-mail client in a
separate window. Under Windows you'll have to live with clicking on the tabs at
the bottom of the Windows screen to flip back and forth between the browser and
e-mail, but the e-mail client does come up in a separate window (see Figure 2).
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Mozilla e-mail gives you much of the same look and feel as Outlook. There are
server and local folders that can be configured to organize all of your posts.
It also gives you the option of managing multiple e-mail accounts. Your e-mail
account will need to be configured before you can send and receive mail. Click
on the File| New|Account tabs in the e-mail window to start a new account.
You'll have to have the pop and SMTP server names along with your user name from
your Internet Service Provider (ISP), in order to complete the configuration.
Web page text varies greatly in size between sites. I find Mozilla's ability to
resize the text using the mouse wheel especially useful when I surf through
large numbers of Web sites. I've set it up to make the text smaller when I hold
the Control key down and roll the mouse wheel up. Conversely, holding the
Control key down and rolling the mouse wheel down makes all text in the browser
window larger. It's much faster and easier than trying to click on a menu button
and zooming the text manually. Setting up the mouse wheel can be found under the
Edit | Preferences | Advanced | Mouse Wheel menus. There are several other
options that you can try out with the mouse wheel, too. You'll be happy to know
that mouse wheel text resizing works in both the browser and e-mail client
windows. As an added bonus under KDE, I accidently found that mouse wheel text
resizing works in several other applications.
The Mozilla package also includes a basic HTML editor and fairly sophisticated
address book. The editor and address book are integrated nicely with the browser
and e-mail client. The address book imports and exports standard comma delimited
formats. I use other programs for these functions, but they might be just what
you are looking for.
You'll be happy to know that the look and feel under Linux and Windows are
virtually identical. Why not load Linux on one of your old Pentium desktops,
throw on Mozilla and compare it to Mozilla and IE on your Windows box?
A Good Day's Work
The advanced features in Mozilla add up to being able to get more done in a day.
The top 5 advanced features that I like include:
How would you like to flip back and forth between two Web sites. Or 10 for that
matter? I know it's certainly a convenience when I'm doing a product review or
researching sources for a story. Mozilla allows you to have any number of Web
pages up in the browser, indexed by tabs, all at once. I know a couple of people
that normally have 20 or 30 Web pages up at one time! It's easy to move between
screens by clicking on the desired tab at the top of the browser window.
My
version of Mozilla doesn't use tabbed browsing by default, but you can make it
work by clicking on the Edit |Preferences|Navigator (see Figure 3) and the
Tabbed browsing menu selection. Un-check the "Hide the tab bar" item under the
"Tabbed browsing" heading and you should be all set. To use the feature, simply
right click on the tab bar just above the browser window. Then you can select
"New tab" item and enter a new URL in the address bar. Whenever you want to go
back to one of your other Web pages, just click on that tab. I typically have 4
or 5 tabs up at once without any noticeable hit in performance. I think it's a
real time saver. It works great in Windows, as well as Linux.
Figure 3. The Mozilla Preferences screen.
Are you tired of sorting all those e-mails that you receive on a regular basis?
Click on the Tools |Mail Filters menus to set up some filters to put inbound
message into the appropriate folders for later review. I have roughly a dozen
filters that sort my mail according to family members, associates, affiliations
and topics. You should keep an eye on your filters and periodically review the
sort keywords and phrases because I've had some messages turn up missing from my
in-box, only to be found in some strange unrelated mail folder. Your choice of
sort keywords and phrases should be done carefully. That's a minor headache
compared to sorting all that mail by hand or worse yet, leaving them in one huge
"in box" folder. Figure 2 shows the Mozilla e-mail screen.
I can't tell you how annoying those pop-up advertisements in Web pages can be.
Mozilla's pop-up ad blocking is a very valuable feature for me and does a great
job of getting rid of those time-wasters. To enable the pop-up blocker go to the
Edit| Preferences| Privacy & Security and un-check the "Allow pop-ups"
selection. The feature is easily configured so you can set it to handle the job
just about any way you like. Now, when a known pop up advertisement is sent to
my browser it will be blocked. No more clicking to close a window, that I didn't
open. Can you see the smile on my face?
Listening to Web based music stations or download video content makes me smile
too. Mozilla can be configured to open Real Player, WinAmp or XXMS
automatically, whenever an audio formatted file is downloaded. Microsoft
Internet Explorer has a similar feature. The feature also works the same way
with video files. Look under the Edit |Preferences | Navigator and Helper
Applications menu selections.
Wrap Up
Mozilla represents the cutting edge of browser and e-mail client development in
the Open Source world. It's a solid product (both Windows and Linux versions),
is very stable and is easy to use.
It's also available for a variety of other hardware/operating system platforms.
If you've ever wanted to try some Open Source Software and still use your
Windows based machine, Mozilla is a great way to get started.
And just think, you won't have to switch browsers or your e-mail client when you
move over to Linux.
About The Author
Rob Reilly (aka: "Dr. Torque"),
robreilly@earthlink.net, is a writer and consultant involved in technology,
wireless and integration projects. He is a strong advocate of recycling and hot-rodding
obsolete PC hardware using Open Source Software and is always on the lookout for
stories and projects about interesting products, Linux and business
applications.
Reprinted from the November 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
