| By Joseph Mercola, DO Don’t you just hate pop-up ads when you are browsing on the Net? I know I do. And you want to know something else? They are one of the most ridiculous and ineffective ways of marketing because they annoy about 99 percent of the people they hit and are typically unrelated to what is on the site. If you’re like me you are probably interested in a simple and inexpensive (how about free?) way to remove pop-up ads from your Internet browsing experience. Not only does this free new browser get rid of all your annoying pop-up ads forever, it will also do the following: - Saves you time, it renders pages much faster the Internet Explorer, and your entire web browsing experience will feel more fluid
- Google is integrated into the toolbar for your searches which is another big time saver.
- Easily and painlessly imports all your favorite bookmarks from Explorer.
Marc Andressen is the person who developed Netscape. He released the first browser, Mosaic, ten years ago. Interestingly, the "father" of the Web browser is now using the open source Mozilla browser as described in a Wired article last week. The new browser I will tell you about in this article is one of the best implementations of the open source Mozilla browser Those of you who have experienced a problem with pop-up ads are likely Windows users as, for the most part, Mac’s wealth of pop-up-blocking browsers makes this a non-issue for Mac users. Mac newbies might still be using Explorer as their browser, as it is the default browser, but most of the vocal minority has already switched to Safari, which is not available for Windows users. Another benefit for Mac users is that viruses aren’t a problem for the Apple operating system. There are only a handful of viruses that affect Macs so hardly any Mac users use anti-viral software. Quite a compelling reason to switch to Mac if you ask me, which is exactly what I will be doing once they release their 64-bit chip later this year. My computer choice will be the PowerBook G4, the world's first 17-inch notebook, which will be released on February 28. The display offers the same viewing capacity as a 19-inch monitor. In the meantime I have been suffering with Windows and their default browser, Internet Explorer, just like many of you. However, my programming ace, Jonathan Rentzch (who is a high-level Mac programmer), recently told me of a brand new browser, which he reviewed. If you are technically oriented and are interested in viewing Jonathan Rentzch’s technical Web log you can subscribe to it on his site: www.rentzsch.com. If you are familiar with RSS feeds, I subscribe to a dozen or more for this newsletter along with several for my tech passions, he is one of my RSS feeds. (Hint: you might also find the article Combat Boots in Paradise amusing) The new browser is called Phoenix*, and is the near twin of Safari as David Hyatt is a member of the team that built both browsers. It is from the open source project from Netscape called Mozilla. It is only in beta at this time and the current release is 0.5. Phoenix can be downloaded for Windows as a zipped file. I have been using this browser for several weeks now and am absolutely stunned and delighted by it. It is far more elegant than my last browser and absolutely removes all pop-up ads for free. Yes, I understand there are other browsers you can use such as Opera that also block pop-ups, but Opera has many ads that cannot be removed once you purchase the program. Additionally, Phoenix is a far better browser than Opera is. Phoenix is a stealth program, and many of the tech computer sites do not even know of it yet. Amazingly, even one of my favorite tech sites, ZDNet, did not mention the Phoenix option when it recently reviewed the Opera browser. There are also non-browser software programs that remove pop-ups, but you still have to pay for most of the better ones and you don’t get the many other features that are hidden in Phoenix’s customization tabs. For example, Google comes as an option for searching in the toolbar without you having to load it from Google. You can also remove all the colors from a site and use your own instead, which is useful for those unreadable white on black Web sites. It has other features too like if you enter an improper URL in the browser window it will tell you that rather than taking you to a Microsoft search engine to look up an obvious mistake. Also, the program transfers all your Explorer favorites over so it is a snap to install. A really great feature is something called tab browsing (activated by clicking the "open in tabs" menu), which allows you to have an entire row of tabs on the top menu bar. These can be your most frequently visited sites, which will save you plenty of time, as they can all be active so you can rapidly switch back and forth between them. This is very similar to the bottom tab view in Windows, with one exception: you can fit a dozen or more tabs in the browser window rather than the five or six in Windows. Another neat feature that Phoenix has is the ability to convert web sites that are 100% clueless and use painful to read white text on a black background. The user preferences in Phoenix allows you to convert the pages to your favorite colors and automatically convert the web page to easily readable black text on a white background. It only takes you a few seconds to change the settings to do this. In summary, Phoenix is an amazing piece of innovative software that is light years ahead of Internet Explorer in giving you much needed functionality. Best of all this puppy comes to you free. It is important to know though that Phoenix is a pre-beta program and the current release is 0.5. However, if you can open up a zipped file you should have virtually no problems installing this program. You will just have to play with the Tools Preferences menu tab to customize the browser. You can also click the smaller second window to select "Google" as your default search engine. Also, if you right click on the middle bar on the top you will get a window that allows you to further customize Phoenix. I hope you enjoy not having to contend with wasted time from pop-ups as much as I do. *The browser's name "Phoenix" was officially changed to "Firebird" as of May 19, 2003. Release notes. Furthermore, the browser's name was again changed, in February, 2004, to "Firefox". Release notes. Here is a download link for the most current version of the browser, as of March 2004: |
|
|
|
|
Did you find this article interesting?
|
|
|
|
|