There's no need to settle on just one Internet browser
Ready for a new Web browser? I've been having second thoughts about Firefox lately and have been toying with the new version of Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corp. And thanks to a wonderful little tool that runs on both these browsers, it has become easy to hop back and forth.
Firefox, of course, is the upstart browser that has snatched more than 20 percent of the global market since its debut five years ago. People downloaded Firefox to get away from the security bugs that plagued Microsoft's IE at the time. But they kept on using it because it ran well and offered hundreds of exclusive add-on programs, from news and weather updates to filters that block unwanted Internet ads.
Meanwhile, a humbled Microsoft has overhauled its browser. The new version, IE 8, delivers faster performance and a bunch of innovative features.
Firefox is rather slow for my tastes; on a four-year-old PC of mine it takes about two minutes to launch, and even on a new machine it can take 20 seconds or so. The new IE launches much faster - about 30 seconds on the old machine and well under 10 on the new one.
Firefox helped teach me the joys of right-clicking. For right-handed people, most mouse commands are activated with the left button - dragging icons, launching programs, and the like. But clicking the right mouse button opens a secondary menu full of handy little commands. Highlight a word in Firefox and right-click, and you're given the option to look up the word in Google, in a separate browser tab.
IE 8 smartly expands on this concept with its Web Accelerator feature. Right-clicking opens up a host of powerful options. Say you're reading about Fort Wayne, Ind. Highlight those words in IE and right-click, and a map of the place pops up in a mini-window on your screen. Want to share the page with your friends on Facebook? Right-click to activate the Facebook accelerator, and you're done in seconds.
Microsoft designers have also come up with Web Slices, a new way to track your favorite sites. Web Slices are little icons you can mount on the IE browser toolbar. Say you want the latest from The New York Times. No need to open a new browser window. Click the Times Web Slice, and up pops a mini-window full of headlines.
The biggest problem with Web Slices is there aren't enough of them. Web developers must choose to add them to their sites, and so far only a few major news services, like the Times and sports website ESPN, have gone to the trouble.
Like Firefox, IE 8 has a little search window in the upper right corner. It uses Microsoft's own Live Search service, though you can set it up to use Google, Yahoo, or Wikipedia, or even retail sites like eBay or Amazon. And the IE search window has a clever bonus: instant image search.
Type someone's name; singer Miley Cyrus, for instance. If you're using Live Search or Wikipedia, you'll see thumbnail photos of Cyrus as well as text results. Run an Amazon search and you'll see images of her CDs.
Perhaps the smartest new IE 8 feature is nearly invisible.
Ever want to cover your tracks after visiting a website? Get your minds out of the gutter. You might just want to do online banking at the office, without leaving sensitive financial data on the machine. On Firefox, you can click a menu command to completely erase your browser's memory.
But what if you only want to erase that one visit to the bank?
IE 8's got the answer. At the click of a mouse, you can activate InPrivate Browsing. A separate window opens on your screen, and nothing you do inside that window is ever recorded. Close the window, and IE 8 forgets everything.
The problem is switching browsers. I've got hundreds of pages marked in my Firefox browser, on every subject from video games to crock-pot cookery. Until recently, I filed them away with help from Foxmarks, a Firefox add-on program that stored the bookmarks on an Internet server and shared them with the Firefox browsers on every computer I use - the Mac, several Windows machines, and even my Linux box. But since Foxmarks was a Firefox-only program, switching back to IE was out of the question.
But Foxmarks recently changed its name to Xmarks, and is now available for users of IE and even Apple Inc.'s Safari browser.
Just download the free software from www.Xmarks.com, sign up for a free account, and hit the sync button.
So shall I use IE 8 or Firefox? Luckily, thanks to Xmarks, I can use both.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
