18 October 2003

Mozilla Firebird I've been trying out the latest browser from Mozilla, called Firebird. It's a much leaner browser than the standard Mozilla, and is completely re-written. The idea is that you get an elegant but basic browser to which you add your own extensions (there are already well over 100), so you end up with a browser that has exactly the features you want, no more and no less. It's still in beta - the current version is 0.7 - but is stable enough to use as a good second browser. It doesn't actually install into Windows - you simply download the 6 Mb Zip file and Unzip it to your hard drive. It will create its own directory and you run MozillaFirebird.exe from there (you can manually create a shortcut on your desktop). If you decide you don't like it, you can remove it by simply deleting the entire directory and its contents - no messing around with uninstall programs and registry entries. It's just like it used to be in the days of Windows 3.1. But here's the clever part - your Mozilla Firebird profile is stored in your Windows directory, so if you later re-install it or replace the 0.7 beta with a later version, it will look for the profile file and apply your preferences. Not only that, it automatically finds your Internet Explorer favourites and imports them when it first runs. It comes with intelligent default settings such as automatic popup blocking, which you can turn off either globally or on a site by site basis if you wish. This bit isn't really necessary for me since I do that via my firewall software, but it's nice to see a program where some thought has been given to what the majority of users are likely to want, and making those the defaults. Micosoft could learn a thing or two here. Mozilla Firebird is free, and I find that Web pages display almost identically to Internet Explorer. I've already dumped the standard Mozilla and Netscape 7.1. You can find more information and download the program at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/ where there are also versions for Linux and the Mac, amongst others. 11:30:39 PM     comment on this entry []

We're moving.... To coincide with the start of the winter broadcasting season, we're changing the way we publish media news. Starting from Sunday 26 October, ALL breaking media news stories will appear as items in the NEW Media Network Weblog at medianetwork.blogspot.com which I can update at any time from any computer with an Internet connection, also by E-mail if required. The existing Media Newsdesk on our main Web site will be updated once a week, and will include more analysis. This Weblog will continue after we launch the new one, but will become a personal Weblog and will contain non radio-related items. 7:44:59 PM     comment on this entry []

© Copyright 2003 Andy Sennitt.