A Blog About Nothing

...with Firefox, that is. :tongue:

All this time, I've been using IE. I've used it since it was the default browser, and I had no significant problems with it. Besides, I feared that some sites wouldn't work properly without IE. Not to mention that all of Firefox's extra features seemed like fluff.

Boy was I wrong. After having some trouble getting external links on this forum to work for me when the "automatically parse links" box was checked, I decided to try Firefox at the recommendation of a certain member here. (You know who you are. :wink:)

All I have to say is that I wasn't disappointed in the least. Adblock Plus is a godsend. It does a much better job than IE7Pro's ad blocker (which seemed to automatically shut off sometimes when you opened a new tab or window O_O). The layout is quite similar to IE, so the learning curve was pretty low. And it's fast. I recall looking at a speed test that compared IE 8 to Firefox, and it said that IE was faster. The only thing I've noticed is that it might take a few seconds longer for it to start up, but after that there isn't much difference. In fact, I think it handles certain things better than IE, such as Flash. This might take a while to explain...*starts new paragraph*

On this site called Gaia Online, there is an aquarium feature that allows you to take care of virtual fish. These aquariums allow you to play a game called Booty Grab in order to net gold for use on the site. In order to gain access to the game, the fish in the aquarium must be "glowing." You can usually tell whether or not they're glowing by looking at the miniature version of the aquarium in the person's signature. When you click on that part of the signature, the game starts up. This has led to an entire forum dedicated to playing the game. Users post a thread dedicated to their tank, and people bump it while it's glowing.

One difficulty with using these "glow threads" is that other people's aquariums are often displayed too. (The only exceptions are designated "low lag" threads that only have one post on the first page. I'm not sure how that's accomplished.) This slows everything down, and by the time the OP's aquarium is fully loaded, it may have already stopped glowing. Someone posted some filter rules specifically made for Adblock Plus that blocked out unnecessary features to speed things up. I tried them in IE7Pro. It blocked them to an extent...but it was subpar. As I mentioned before, things seemed to leak through half the time. When I downloaded Firefox, I decided to try those same filter rules. Boy was I amazed! Not only did they work, but I didn't have to wait as long for the tanks to load as I did with IE 8+IE7Pro. I love this wonderful fox. :proud:

Another thing I kinda like is the concept of "personas." I decided to try one, hoping that it wouldn't slow anything down. Thankfully, there's not much of a speed difference, if any. Here's the one I'm using now in case anyone is curious: [url=http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/23747]Fire Fizzle.[/url]

If anyone has some suggestions for some add-ons other than Adblock Plus or NoScript (I'm not sure whether I should get that or not), I'd love to hear them! ^_^