Firefox 19

One of the reasons many tech-savvy folks have moved from the independent, truly open-source Firefox Web browser to one from the Web search and advertising giant is that that company's browser, Google Chrome is not only fast, but that it also has most of what you need to browse the Web built right in. Among those built-in features is support for viewing Adobe Flash and PDF content. Well, the latest version update of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser addresses at least one of these voids: Firefox 19 adds a built-in PDF viewer.

Ironically, Mozilla and Google have long been proponents of a plug-in free, open-standards based Web, in which all the interactivity and visuals are handled by Web standards like HTML5 and CSS3. But they're clearly pragmatists when it comes to content in PDF format, and even more so in Google's case with Chrome's built in Flash viewer. The only other browser with built-in Flash playing that I'm aware of is Maxthon, but, who knows, Firefox may join their ranks in a future update. With Firefox updates coming at a pace of every six weeks. Or maybe they'll stick to their "no plugins required" guns.

Last time around, faster browsing speed was on the menu with the Firefox 18 update. Mozilla's faster new IonMonkey JavaScript compiler replaced the previous version's TracerMonkey for faster Web app performance. Before that we got the nifty Social API, which allows social networks like Facebook to integrate notifications and info panels right into the browser skin. Each update usually brings more standards support and crushes more bugs, too. Let's dig into more of the numerous features and capabilities of this excellent, feature-packed yet lean Web browser.

A longstanding Firefox highlight has been the best extension capabilities among the Windows browser competitors, including Internet Explorer 9 (free,? 3.5 stars) and Opera 12 (free, 3.5 stars), as well as Chrome. Firefox's "Panorama" tab organizer is also unique. While you can get all this Mozilla goodness for Windows, Mac, or Linux, I evaluated the Windows version for this review. On the mobile side, you can read our review of review of Firefox for Android.

Install
A simple 19MB download gets you the Firefox 19 Windows installer. When you run it you'll lose your old version of Firefox. The latest Firefox is available for Mac (37MB) and Linux (21MB) as well as for Windows 7, Vista, and XP?the last of which even Internet Explorer 9 (Free, 4 stars) can't claim. You can import bookmarks from any other installed browsers on first run, but setup is as uncomplicated as it is for Chrome. Firefox also now makes it easy to choose a search provider other than Google, but surprisingly, not as easy as Chrome does. Mozilla also offers a Firefox with Bing version, which uses Microsoft's Web search built in.

If you're a Firefox user in good standing, all you have to do is restart of the browser to get the new version. The Firefox installation gets around Windows' User Access dialog in a more orthodox way than Google Chrome's automatic updates. Chrome installs in a non-standard, non program folder, which some consider a potential security risk. Firefox, however, uses a "service" rather than a standard program process for the update to avoid the UAC dialog.

Interface
Firefox's interface is in line with the trend started by Chrome of "less is more"?less space taken up by the browser frame and controls and more space for Web pages. The page tabs have moved above the address bar, and as with Opera 12, there's just a single menu option in the form of the orange Firefox button at top left. You can re-enable the standard menus by hitting the Alt key.

Firefox's new-tab page has tiles for most-accessed sites on the new-tab page, and includes lots of settings on its default home page. As in most other browsers, you can customize what's on these thumbnails, and they shrink and enlarge as you resize the browser window. You can also remove sites and pin and unpin them to the new-tab page. But you can't specify which sites to include: They're chosen by frequency of your visits.

It's not quite up to the level of Safari's beautiful 3D Top Sites page or Opera's Speed Dial, which even offers live information on its pinned tiles. But since version 18, Firefox now supports Retina dislpays on MacBooks, for crystal sharp images. Most other browsers let you re-open closed sessions?Firefox's default home page lets you do this, but I'd like to see the choice on the new-tab page, too. If you don't want the tile view, a button at top right turns it off, reverting to the plain white, blank tab page.

The Home button is to the right of the search bar, and a bookmark button appears to the right of that. That bookmark button only appears when you don't want the bookmark toolbar taking up browser window space. This gives you one-click access to frequently needed Web addresses. But I wish that, like IE's star button, the button also let you see recent page history. You can still call up the full bookmark manager, which lets you do things like importing bookmarks from other browsers, search, and organize. And the full History dialog does let you see all recent visits, but it's not as convenient as IE's star dropdown.

Firefox is one of the last remaining browsers to still use separate address and search boxes, which is good for those who like to keep those two activities separate. That doesn't mean, however, that a search won't work in the address bar, aka the "awesome bar." That tool, which drops down suggestions from your history and favorites whenever you start typing, was pioneered by Firefox and copied by all other browsers. Another tweak is that when one of its suggested sites is already open in a tab, you can click on a "Switch to tab" link, preventing you from opening more tabs unnecessarily?a useful tweak.

As part of its leading extensibility, Firefox has always been the browser most open to allowing different search providers, including specialized search like shopping, reference, or social. It was one of the first to support the OpenSearch format. The other popular browsers now do so, too, but Firefox can automatically detect search services on a page and let you add them from the search bar. And Firefox's built-in Twitter search option makes it easy to find Twitter personalities worth following as well as popular photos and videos on the social network.

Viewing PDFs
It's unavoidable: You'll still occasionally run into sites that link to a PDF file rather than a webpage. Firefox finally includes a convenience that's been in Chrome for over a year, built-in PDF viewing. These are often business documents, and the last thing you want to have to do during your busy workday is install software just so you can read a document. And there's another big benefit to having the viewer built-in: Security. PDF readers are a notorious vector for malware, so if the browser updates the reader software automatically, you're more likely to be protected.

Firefox now simply displays PDF documents in the browser window. But there's a caveat: As with most non-Adobe PDF readers, you won't get 100 percent compatibility with documents created by Adobe Acrobat. In the rare case that the built-in Firefox PDF reader doesn't display your document, you can still install a third-party plug-in like Adobe Reader, Nitro PDF Reader or Sumatra PDF. If you really want 100 percent Acrobat compatibility, stick with Adobe Reader, but the built-in viewer works in most cases.

I tested the feature with a few downloaded documents, and in fact, a doc I received from Adobe itself wouldn't display, but everything else did. The viewer is impressive in that it's built entirely using Web-standard code. You can view thumbnails for each page on a left sidebar, print the doc, zoom in and out, and search using the standard browser on-page search (Crtl-F). Helpfully, the viewer will inform you if the document is suspected to be displaying incorrectly, in which case you can use its download button and open in other software.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/PYgvqyddT6o/0,2817,2349494,00.asp

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