Today is a world of internet and online fascination. We can do almost everything, which was only a dream a few years ago. You can watch movies, enjoy your favorite songs, download or play games, get the latest news, find any information and find references for your research. It has almost anything for anyone from a newbie to a research scholar.

There are technology giants like Microsoft, Netscape, and Mozilla who have web browsers with product names such as Internet Explorer, Navigator, and Firefox subsequently.

Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser client all over the world but a few years ago open source web browser Firefox fascinated the world with its features which are reliability, add-ons, spell checker, and operating system compatibility .

Evolution of Firefox (Mozilla web browser) Firefox, which is the product of Mozilla, is the fastest growing web browser client and which is expected to be more popular then Internet Explorer. According to W3Schools stats 31.0 % of the total population of internet surfers, which used it in January 2007, 31.2% in February 2007, 31.8% in March, and 32.9% in April. You can see the growth of FireFox. A meager rise means a lot when you are talking about the total population of internet surfers.

Features of FireFox2 This browser is full of features and utilities. It is also supported by Google, which is the biggest search engine on this planet.

Probably the best feature is that it is an open source project. Everyone can get it free from the official Mozilla site. There is no reason for pirating the software, thus a major reason for its rapid growth. It is the result of an open source project arranged by Mozilla and Developers from all over the world, which contributed in the build and design. Just like Linux, you can get its source code and can do necessary changes according to your needs.

Firefox introduced Spellchecker features which was never been introduced by any other browser. It is the easiest way to check your online document for spelling mistakes. Internet Explorer has introduced this feature in its new version, but Firefox has the lead.

Built-In java console make it possible to display all applets and application without any further third party tools installations.

Bookmarks in Firefox are well managed. It is a sophisticated way to manage your favorites like IE or any other web browser.

Firefox Add-ons are external programs, which are being programmed by developers to increase the efficiency of Firefox. Anyone is free to build his or her own Add-on and publish it on the Firefox site. There are thousands of add-ons, which are very helpful for daily life tasks and to manage these tasks very easily. Official definition of Add-ons on the Firefox official site is “Add-ons are small pieces of software that can add new features or tiny tweaks to your Firefox. They can add new search engines or dictionaries in other languages; change the look of Firefox with a new theme, or much more. Take a look around and see what add-ons can do for you.”

Some of recommended Add-ons are • ChatZilla-A clean, easy to use, and highly extensible Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client. • FoxyTunes-FoxyTunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios, and much more with a click from your browser. • Yoono-While you are surfing Yoono instantly reveals what others have discovered You can find several more add-ons at the FireFox website.

Tips and Tricks for Firefox You can speed up your Firefox, so try these simple steps to do so. (These tips were found on a technical forum and they do speed up the your browsing efforts)

1. Type "about: config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally, the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you are using a broadband connection, you will load pages 2-30 times faster now.