download Firefox 3

Mozilla’s Firefox is a fast standards-compliant free web browser based on the Gecko rendering engine. It contains many useful features including multi-page tabbed browsing, privacy enhancements, developer tools, popup blocking, themes, plugins and hundreds of useful browser extensions. One thing that helps to make Firefox safer than Internet Explorer is the absense of ActiveX support, which is often used by spyware to infect computers.

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The Opera browser is a super fast standards-compliant web browser offering advanced technologies not found in other web browsers. Opera browsers are available for mobile phones, desktops, home media and verticals. It has its own rendering engine and offers great features including tabbed browsing, popup blocking, fast forward, skins, email and chat. Security and anti-phishing features block spyware and malicious web sites. Opera’s Voice function allows you to use spoken commands and have web pages and text read back to you.

You have to stop using Internet Explorer:mad: as your browser (if you are) and switch. Why? Because Internet Explorer is so insecure it invites spyware:twisted: infestation. This, despite dozens upon dozens of security updates. Internet Explorer is also shamefully out of date as a browser, so making the switch will not only make you more secure, it will also give you better browser features. My pick is the freeware Firefox, although you’ll do equally well with the Mozilla Suite or Opera. Opera isn’t free (well, there is a free version but it includes advertisements), but it does have the best security record of any browser. Although Firefox and Mozilla have had their share of security patches and alerts, Mozilla.org patches vulnerabilities in both these browsers far faster than Microsoft, and the severity of the insecurities in the two is, on average, far less than IE’s problems. You’ll still need to use IE to access a few sites – possibly some banking sites that aren’t compatible and certainly the Windows Update site. But use Firefox everywhere else. To smooth the changeover from Internet Explorer to Firefox or Mozilla, read Browse Free.