Downloading Firefox

Firefox is a great web browser, and (in my experience) once you've used it for a few days, Internet Explorer will begin to seem old school in an uncool way: not up to speed, not with the times, not very user friendly.

Step by step instructions, with screenshots, for downloading and setting up Firefox in Windows: here. (For Macs, just download the file, open it, drag it to your Applications folder, and go.)

An article about why to switch: here.

More articles about Firefox: at PC World, which made Firefox its 2005 Product of the Year; an older article at Forbes; one from CNet. A newer article about the release of Firefox 1.5, at PC World. Here and here are December 05 articles on Firefox 1.5 extensions, from ExtremeTech and Wired, respectively.

For power users (and power user wannabes): Here's a December 05 article form TechSpot on tweaking Firefox's performance.

And if you'd like to have access to Firefox on any computer, here's a program called Portable Firefox. It will give you a version of Firefox you can store on your USB drives and use on *any* computer with a USB port. This gives you the advantage of having access to your bookmarks and special Firefox plugins anywhere you go.

Speaking of extensions: Lifehacker recommends these.