Sinan Yüce - HOW TO

Recently, one of my friends sent me an interesting shockwave flash file (swf) and asked me to look at it and wanted to hear my thoughts about it. On the other hand, I could not find a program that opens swf files. Here, Internet Explorer, since it is a browser, is supposed to view it. On the other hand, every time I tried, I got a silly error indicating it is belong to forbidden sites. That drove me crazy and I started to find workarounds.

Hundreds of trials, I could not come up with a player that plays swf files. Even Macromedia web site lacks of it. Therefore, something occurred my mind and I asked myself that “Why don’t I use another browser?”.

Since, I am kind of using an advertisement program of Google (yeah, those huge ads), I clicked the link at the left of my web pages and downloaded the Firefox with Google Toolbar.

Well, prior to this, I had some experience with Firefox, and to tell the truth, I did not really like it since I am true fan of Internet Explorer and I really stocked with it. Well it is always easy to get habits, and it is always difficult to quit (though I am one of those quite a few lucky people who witnessed the Netscape Navigators’ triumph over IE).

But the work that both Firefox and Google community put together is quite fascinating just after a few trials of which-button-does-which-job.

Well, I gotta tell you that Google Toolbar is bundled with Mozilla Firefox so perfectly that it enables you to exploit the web faster and efficient than before. Let me briefly discuss the advantages of Firefox over IE:

• Firefox loads pages faster than IE and the reason for that it browses the content just after it is downloaded. IE waits for all the components to be downloaded in most cases.
  
• Firefox uses the technology called taps that it offers great flexibility in terms of navigating for those of me who has at least five pages to be opened in any time.
  
• Firefox has more quite efficient system of error handling. It gives the details of error codes along with proper suggestions that can be useful for us who are involved in web design projects.
  
• Well, having a project leader who is former drum-acrobat, Firefox has flexible and pleasing interface that looks quite stylish.
  
• Last but not least, it is OPEN SOURCE.
  

Moreover, I really like to point the perfect tool: Google Toolbar. I think that Google is one of those things that become necessity in our lives. My eight-years-old cousin complained me he can’t find gogle (Turkish pronunciation of Google) just after I set-up his new computer. And I was quite surprised when one of my uncles who is technologically illiterate -he uses his 3G mobile phone just for calling-, suggesting my father to use Google, to get the address of the bank he works with. Google is becoming so popular that, perhaps, Bill Gates should review his claims that their main rival is IBM.

Enough with anecdotes, here is the list of what Google Toolbar offers:

• You can search via Google, any time while you are using Firefox. And it also provides search in other Google services (images, news, etc) along with current site, and Gmail (that is another super service from Google after Gmail notifier).
  
• Page ranks can help you for the importance of the page, that is very helpful especially when you are looking for something.
  
• Spell checker, can help you while you are filling web forms.
  
• Autolink and Autofill are very useful tools that help you to find your way between the virtual and real life.
  

Well, I have to acknowledge that Google Toolbar can be used with IE but it always seems to me that Google Toolbar becomes superficial and it is not integrated to IE as tight as Firefox.

Of course, there are some weak points for FwGT (odd to remember using abbreviation for that at the end of writing). Turkish is not allowable when you download the product (though Firefox has Turkish version). And similarly, some functions of GT is only limited to English and other popular Western languages and some services of GT is offered in limited geographical places (well US or UK for instances).

Well, back to the point that I started, with Firefox, I was able to open the swf file just after I downloaded flash plug-in. That is very unlikely in the internet age, -to be able to get back where you start.