Application: Firefox

Alright, we have to get the big stuff out of the way first...

The web browser is a big part of most people's experience on a computer these days, especially as more and more applications migrate to the web.

My web browser of choice is Firefox, because it:

• is mature... it's been around since 2004 (that's old in Internet years); version 3 was released in May of 2008
• is stable... although I must add "mostly", as in an ironic spasm, it just crashed as I was writing this post. Yay, technology!
• is secure... vulnerabilities are patched quickly!
• has good performance, including how much memory it uses and how fast it loads pages (although some browsers are sometimes faster)
  
• is full featured and arguably, innovative... Internet Explorer was sort of resting on its laurels after kicking Netscape's ass until Firefox came along
  
• is available on most platforms, including Windows, OS X, Linux, etc.
• is free (although nobody really pays for a browser)
• is standards compliant, which is geekspeak for following the "rules" for translating the source code into the site the user actually interacts with, which is better for everyone except people who have to use a site designed for a non-compliant browser (ahem, Internet Explorer 5)
• is open source, which means the code is not owned by a company such as Apple or Microsoft (and so is less likely to die along with such a company) and oodles of smart people can openly work together on making it better
• has a rising market share, up to second place at around 20%... the more popular a browser is, the more web sites will be tested against it
• is certifiably geek approved!
  

... but for me the kicker is the plethora of Firefox extensions available, also known as Mozilla Add-Ons, which allow you to tweak your version of Firefox to fit your needs or preferences by adding features or changing the interface. Much more to come about those! (Note: other browsers certainly do have extensions, but not nearly the variety that Firefox has available, as far as I know).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good browsers out there and new ones arriving all the time (e.g. Chrome by Google). Competition is a great thing, but it would take a lot for me to leave all my extensions behind. It may yet happen though!

So if you're still poking along on the browser that came with your computer... give Firefox a try!

Heard about it from: Way to long ago to remember, undoubtedly a geek
Get it from: Mozilla! Be sure you upgrade to version 3 if you haven't already!