Okay, I crossed over.

I am a faithful Microsoft user. Wait! Don’t close the post yet, don’t hate me yet!! It’s not because I love Microsoft… it’s just what I know. I used to train Microsoft products, I know Office in and out, and am comfortable with it. Even the updates that come are what I know – it’s very hard to move from something you know to something that is completely foreign.

So, after quite awhile of turning down FireFox, I downloaded it. What were my reasons for not using it you ask? Well, why use it? IE worked fine for me, for what I used it for, why change? If something’s not broken, don’t fix it right?

Well, I was wrong. (Oooh a certain someone will probably copy and paste that comment several times over just to see me say it.)

The differences that I’ve seen aren’t truly THAT huge. An internet browser is just that, a browser. It translates the HTML to look pretty, that’s about it. I’m told there is so much more that it can do, and while I’m not concerned about that right now, maybe in the future I will be interested.

I clicked on a link for a music video in YouTube, and the stupid thing wouldn’t play. I of course, being the impatient person I am, got frustrated. After the small meltdown I was reminded that the plugins/addons are browser specific. So I installed Flash, and then STILL couldn’t open my video. I was again gently reminded to close the browser and reopen… and did so without remembering that I was working on something in another tab. So shit, everything I was working on was gone!!! I was so upset… and frustrated. Then it reopened and…

EVERYTHING WAS STILL THERE!(#@*%)!#(&%)(!@*#_@)%&#@)(%

I’m easily excited, what can I say? My favorite, absolutely wonderful feature? Restore my tabs and windows. Who knew that a browser could make me so incredibly happy?! (Wow I feel like a geek after that statement!) Not only did my video play, but everything I was working on was still there. I was so tickled, I was giggling, even my brother asked why the heck I was giggling. (Not the most observant person in the world, and he definitely doesn’t usually care about what I’m doing.) I keep repeating over and over again how thrilled I am with that feature, you’re probably sick of it, so here’s one more – I LOVE restore!!!

So I was browsing happily in FireFox, opening new windows, loving life, and my technology buff whispered to me about syncing my browsers. The thought had never occurred to me. I have always lived my life with two separate computers, and thus, separate sets of shortcuts and favorites. (Now bookmarks – a term to get used to!) Because I don’t use my laptop as often, my Favorites – ack, Bookmarks – are severely outdated. I haven’t really taken the time to update them because it would be a huge pain to update both computers, because both of them really need it. A link was pasted, and voila! I can update both of them, and they will sync.

There are a lot of neat things about the syncing option – especially with the Bookmarks. However, what is my favorite feature you ask? Hold on to your seat you’re going to be shocked. RESTORE!!! How badass is it that you can restore windows and tabs across computers!!! I’m so amazed I can hardly speak. Okay I lied, it’s rare that I can’t speak. But still, it’s pretty friggin cool. I closed out what I was working on on my laptop, and one of the tabs included this post. A lot of words to have to retype… that would have really sucked. So not only would FireFox restore that tab on my laptop, but now because the two are synced, it was restored here on my desktop too!!!

*Sigh* I’m in love.

This is especially nice considering the amount of online tools I use now for things that used to be local only – spreadsheets, documents, email, etc. How cool is it that I can be working on something, and not have to save it to a disk or USB drive to bring it to my other computer?

Okay I will stop here. I’m sure that everyone reading this is way ahead of me in the world of technology, so you probably are reading this thinking “Well Duh… I’ve known about this for ages.” But just in case you haven’t used these fabulous tools, here are links to get them.

http://www.getfirefox.com

http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/