I'm unable to view any videos from online sources like MSN. Programs always prompt me to download Foxfire. I read the info on Foxfire and it appears to be another web browser, but don't I already have what I need with Safari? Maybe I need to have a program open before clicking on the video link?
Some sites are incompatible with Safari. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with Safari; Safari is a great web browser, but there will be times when you will need to use a different web browser to view a page correctly. The sites are recommending a browser called Firefox, which is one of the most popular browsers today. There is a Mac version of Firefox that can be downloaded at www.firefox.com. However, I suggest using Camino instead. It's the same basic thing as Firefox in terms of how it loads web pages, meaning that sites will load up correctly in it, but it loads up much faster and is built specifically with the Mac in mind. You can get Camino at www.caminobrowser.org.
Safari just won't work with my bank's (Chase) web site. Actually it mostly works, but it will not download transactions. I have to use Firefox for that.
Believe it or not, there are some sites that won't work with a Mac at all, usually specifically requiring Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and visual basic. Stupid web programmers.
One of the reasons that FireFox has been my choice for the last two years is that I've already gone through the "unable to use secure sites" problems with Safari, and Safari is just boring. No extensibility. Not much innovation.
Western Union, my bank and other sites with a lot of security checks didn't like Safari for whatever reasons. Since FireFox is a well known, and supported, PC browser these sites were set up to work with it.
With FireFox, you get a hugh assortment of Themes (skins), and hundreds of extensions that have been built for or by windows users. They work with the Mac version also, because they are not using windows specific tools.
I've installed 8 or 10 Extensions for several reasons. McAfee SiteAdvisor lets me know a sites reputation for messing with machines with Trojans etc, which I also interpret as to their overall purpose. Adblock Plus blocks many of the most intrusive animated adds at MSN.com, Yahoo.com and many others. I just don't see the ads at all. ForecastFox adds the next week's weather to the status bar and is available on every web page. The search box lets me choose to search Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers.com, eBay, Wikipedia, IMDB, and even offers Microsloths "Windows Live" searches without going to these sites home page to run the search.
Oy-Oy is a great web site developers toolbar for search engine optimization. Web Developer is another toolbar that can be very useful. Xinha Here! allows an online store owner (like for Zen Cart) to insert html code into a web page while adding products to the store.
Everytime Firefox is updated (rather often in the last 4 months), security experts around the world have had a say on what exploits should be taken care of. When FireFox does update the program, it automatically checks all installed Extensions to see if they are compatible or downloads the updated extensions.
The only new, compelling feature I've seen Safari come out with in the last couple of years is it's ability to save a portion of a web page to be a Widget. I guess that's something, but not very useful for my purposes. Oh yeah, they added tabbed browsing, but FireFox had already had it for quite awhile. The FireFox developers don't have to worry about anything other than creating a great browser.
There have been problems with FireFox over the last couple of years, most notably, there were memory leak problems with early versions, but nothings perfect and the developers are very active. With FireFox you get the advantage of Windows and Linux programers developing these enhancements that also work with the Mac version, even if they don't care about the Mac.
