In the world of browsing the web there are many options available. If you use Windows, the standard is Internet Explorer. For Mac users, it’s Safari and for Linux it could be a number of different options. Fortunately, no matter what platform you are running, Mozilla Firefox is available for you to use.
If you don’t know much about Firefox then you could easily find a lot of resources with Google where you can learn more, but I would like to give you an overview of some of the features provided that make this my favorite browser and the favorite for many other users.
First, Firefox is open source which means it is free and developed by people voluntarily. The Firefox community has gotten huge with the release of Firefox 3 which has added a great deal of stability and benefit over its 2.0 predecessor. The browser supports tabs (meaning you can have multiple websites within a single window), session restore (to automatically restore all of the tabs and windows when you first sign in to your computer account), and tons of Plugins/Addons/Extensions.
If you use Internet Explorer or Safari or Opera then you probably aren’t familiar with these extras, but they are a huge part of what makes Firefox great. Addons are third party mini-programs that add capabilities to Firefox to make it more powerful and customizable. For example, the Addons called NoScript and AdBlock Plus provide a great deal of extra security for when you are browsing the web by blocking all Javascript from running until you allow it (Javascript is code built in to websites that can often exploit vulnerabilities on your computer and infect you with malware) and blocking Flash ads from showing (which speeds up how quickly a web page loads and runs).
Additionally, Firefox gives you the power to completely customize the way it looks and acts. Check out this Lifehacker article listing some of the more popular Firefox tweaks that involve the way tabs act, the spellchecker, and many other things using the "behind-the-scenes" configuration called "about:config." You can read all about the hundreds of about:config options here, or you can use the Configuration Mania addon to create an easier interface for customization. Give Firefox a shot and see if you don’t love it a lot more than your current browser.