"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
Pablo Picasso
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
Pablo Picasso
Using Mozilla Firefox Firefox is a large and powerful program. Fortunately, it is also quite simple to use efficiently. It is your gateway to the World Wide Web, which is an enormous and potentially hazardous place. Firefox does a very good job of protecting you, and we'll see how you can improve the task of finding and storing the right information.
 Launching the ProgramOnce installed, Firefox provides two mechanisms to launch the program. The first is the desktop icon, which should look something like this:
 Double click on the icon to launch Firefox.
The second method is to choose the program from the Programs list:
 Click on Start, then select Programs, then Mozilla Firefox, then click on Mozilla Firefox.
The program will now be launched, and will either display the home page, or an error message if you're not connected to the Internet. At this point in the tutorial, you don't need to be connected, so don't worry about the error message. Let's take a look at the running program:
 There is the menu bar, and underneath is the button bar, with navigation buttons on the left, the location input box in the centre, and the search input box on the right. Beneath that is the navigation tool bar. We'll look at modifying some of these elements in a moment.
In the location input box I typed about:, which produces the version information page. This is similar, but more detailed than the About dialog that you can see by selecting Help from the menu bar, and then clicking on About Mozilla Firefox. There are two other useful pages using this technique; about:plugins, and about:config. The first shows all installed plugins (external applications which can display special content, such as Adobe Flash, or Java), and the second shows, and allows you to modify, all the configurable preferences of the browser.
Careful - about:config can be dangerousMost (but not all) of the browser preferences can be modified by selecting Tools from the menu bar, then Options..., which is the guide's preferred way of making changes. The about:config page allows you to make changes which could be dangerous – the browser might even stop working correctly. Use this page only if you can't find another way of making the required change. The preferences are described in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base, and the most interesting ones in this article.
Make a copy of your profileAll information, preferences, passwords, bookmarks, etc., relating to Firefox are stored in a profile, which was created for you during installation. This article, from the MozillaZine Knowledge Base, gives instructions on how to make a copy (backup) of this information. That way, if anything goes wrong making changes, you can always put things back as they were from your copy.
The program also provides detailed help documentation, including a search engine, which you can see by pressing F1, or by choosing Help from the menu bar, then Help Contents.
Personalising the BrowserSelecting View from menu bar allows you to modify the display of the Toolbars, Status Bar and Sidebar. The default settings are probably perfectly adequate for most people, but I prefer not to have the Bookmarks Toolbar displayed, for example. The Toolbars can be further modified by adding or removing buttons, by selecting View from the menu bar, then Toolbars, then Customise....
The browser options (also known as preferences) dialog can be opened by selecting Tools from the menu bar, then Options.... Again, most of the default settings are perfectly adequate for most operations. The Options dialog provides a large number of settings, but I will limit this discussion to just a few essential points.
The main options panel allows you, among other things, to set the folder where downloaded files will be stored:
 The default value will download files to the desktop. My desktop is already too cluttered, so I changed this to a different folder, internet/downloads.
The content options panel lets you specify the default font type and size for web pages that don't set a preferred font:
 I find that a serif font, such as the one I'm using now (Times New Roman), is more trying on the eyes than a sans-serif font, so I set this to Verdana, and a slightly smaller font size, 12 pt. The text of this page is set to Verdana 11 pt.
The security options panel provides information about the passwords used for various sites:
 This is a very useful feature, but it does have a potential security breach with the default values. If you don't share your computer with anyone else, this probably isn't a problem, but if you do, or worse, if your computer is stolen, then all those passwords can be seen by another user very simply. Click on the Show Passwords... button, then in the Remember Passwords dialog click on Show Passwords, then click Yes:
 That's my Google username and password, but it could easily have been the username and password to my online bank account.
There are two solutions to this problem. Either make sure that Firefox never stores your username and password to sensitive sites (it always asks the first time, and you can choose Never for This Site), as shown here:
 Or, in the security options panel above click on the Use a master password box, then click on the Change Master Password... button, and type in a password. Now, when you click on Show Passwords... you will be asked for this master password. You will also be asked for it if you try to change the master password itself.
Don't loose your master passwordDo not loose or forget your master password, as there is no way of recovering it afterwards. I suggest you use a line from your favourite poem, or some other difficult to guess phrase which is easy for you to remember.
Finally, the advanced options panel allows you to select, in order of importance, the preferred languages for the web pages displayed.
 The installer sets default languages according to information from your computer. It may be that this is not correct, or that you know other languages which you'd like to add. Click on Choose... and the Languages dialog appears:
 Use the drop down list and the Add button to add a language you understand to the list, and set their order using the Move Up and Move Down buttons. You can remove incorrect languages by highlighting the language in the list and then clicking on the Remove button.
Although this doesn't seem to have much effect on search engines, such as Google (which always seems to assume I know the language of the country I'm in, rather than those I have specified in my browser), it will usually be acted upon on multi-lingual sites, which will present the web page in your preferred language, if available.
Browsing the World Wide WebObviously, you're quite good at browsing the World Wide Web already, or you wouldn't have found the guide. Browsing the Internet requires a certain amount of self-discipline, because it is very easy to loose focus of your objective by fascinating, but unrelated hyperlinks that you find as you browse.
Firefox provides three mechanisms for browsing from one web page to another:
In the picture below, I opened the bookmarks sidebar (press Ctrl+B, or click View from the menu bar, then select Sidebar, then click on Bookmarks), and then clicked on the first item in the bookmarks list “Get Bookmark Add-ons”. This changes the contents of the current browser window, on the right. The cursor is positioned over the “Foxmarks Bookmarks” hyperlink. Mozilla's add-ons site is also a secure site, which is why the location bar has a yellow background.
 With the Ctrl key pressed, and then clicking on the “Foxmarks Bookmarks” hyperlink, a new tabbed window is created in the same browser. Unless you change the behaviour in the tabs option panel (select Tools from the menu bar, then click on Options..., then in the options dialog click on the Tabs button), the current web page will continue to be displayed, but you can click on any of the tabs above the web page display window to change the web page displayed:
 Finally, with the Shift key pressed, and then clicking on the “Foxmarks Bookmarks” hyperlink, a new bowser window is created which then displays the requested web page:
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Searching the World Wide Web...
Searching for lake GardaSome years ago I was searching for information on lake Garda, but most of the search results for “Garda” came up with the Irish Police Force. Fascinating, and correct as far as the search term was concerned, but irrelevant to what I was looking for.
Nowadays it is all too easy to find too much information, rather than too little, which then raises the question of dependability. Search engines provide lists of hyperlinks based on information found in web pages. Some search engines, Google in particular, provide those lists using additional information, such as the number of other web pages that link to a specific web page. While this usually gives a better popularity rating, it is not necessarily a guarantee of quality.
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RSS Feeds...
Bookmarks...
Further ReadingThe built-in help documentation provides a good starting point. With the program running press F1, or choose Help from the menu bar, then Help Contents.
A good explanation of most features is available in the well written eight part tutorial “An introduction to Firefox” by Nidelven IT, based on an earlier but similar version of the program.
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