Scott Granneman

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Home > Web Dev > Browsers > Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape > Great Features

Why Mozilla is So Great

Tabs

With 0.9.5, Mozilla introduced the ability to use tabs. To get tabs, upgrade to 0.9.5 or 0.9.6 at http://www.mozilla.org. Open Mozilla. Do one of the following:

  1. Hit ctrl-t to open up a new tab/tabs.
  2. Right click on a link & choose "Open in new tab".

It's a fabulous feature. I use it constantly.

Built-in Popup Windows Blocking

Mozilla now has the ability to block popup windows that open when you enter or leave a site. Simply add the following line to your prefs.js file while Mozilla is closed:

user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);

You can also control popup windows that open when you click links as well. For a very complete explanation of this feature, check out:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/configPolicy.html

Built-in Banner Ad Blocking

If you right click on an image, one of the options is "Block images from this server". Unfortunately, it only uses the fully-qualified domain name, so sites that serve ads like this - http://www.nytimes.com/ads - don't work (unless you want all pix from www.nytimes.com blocked). But still, I've found that I can block a lot of annoying ads.

Now that I'm using Mozilla as my main browser, I'm not using Junkbuster or WebWasher nearly as much. Mozilla takes care of most of my needs.

Standards Support

Mozilla has the best standards support of any Web browser in the world. For a list of standards supported, see:

http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/mozilla/general02.php
http://wp.netscape.com/browsers/future/standards.html