Slashdot Mirror
Firefox and Thunderbird Garage
The book is split into two parts, covering Firefox in the first half and its complementary mail app Thunderbird in the second. The first chapter discusses the open source software development concept, a brief history of Firefox and the unique features of Firefox including popup blocking, tabbed browsing, enhanced security, built-in Google search, live bookmarks, and Web developer support. Included are system requirements and instructions on installing Firefox on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X systems, as well as how to import settings from other browsers. The chapter continues with an overview of the application window and the various options screens, Firefox help and links to help on the Internet.
Chapter 2, "Protecting Your Security and Privacy," gives the authors a well-deserved soapbox to air the best reason to use Firefox. Yes, Firefox is small and fast -- but it was also built for security. In this chapter, there are some nice explanations of what's out there to worry about (viruses, worms, trojan horses, adware, search hijackers and keystroke loggers) and best practices on how to avoid them by using a proactive software application like Firefox: setting security options (history, passwords, cookies and cache), limiting Web access and setting Web features options (allowing software installs, enabling Java and JavaScript).
Popups are the most annoying aspect of surfing the Web, and chapter 3 dedicates itself to dealing with popups and banner ads by setting specific options built into Firefox. If you learn nothing else but how to control these annoyances then you've made your Web browsing experience infinitely more pleasurable.
Chapter 4 is titled "Searching the Web" and highlights Firefox's Google search toolbar, shortcut keys, using other built-in search engines (Yahoo, Amazon, eBay), searching within pages, using smart keywords and creating your own smart keywords. The authors include an amusing "fridge" aside on search games (NetBullseye or Googlewhacking) and a more practical "toolkit" aside, which describe how to use Google's advanced operators and where to get more information on optimizing Google searches. At the end of this chapter is a "blog" on "Websites to Waste Your Time With" and includes a long listing and description of Web sites on a wide variety of subjects: words, news, science and technology, silliness (unavoidable; we all partake), music, films, cartoons and...other. Just plain fun to be reminded of the vast variety out there.
Chapter 5 returns to seriousness with "Bookmarks and History" and illustrates how to: create and modify bookmarks, create live bookmarks using RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), use the bookmarks toolbar, organize bookmarks with Firefox's Bookmarks Manager and how to use the sidebar to view all your bookmarks. Manipulating these options gives the user more management control over their bookmarks and can make browsing easier and more productive.
Tabbed browsing is covered in chapter 6 and will be of particular interest to many IE users. If you've never experienced tabbed browsing, now's the time: download Firefox, read this chapter and never go back. Tabbed browsing allows you to open multiple browser screens within one window and simply select whichever one interests you without having to open yet another separate instance of the browser. The authors give nice direction on how to set tabbed browsing options, open links in new tabs, closing and reloading tabs, bookmarking multiple tabs simultaneously, opening live bookmarks in tabs and even using windows and tabs together.
The next chapter, "Customizing Firefox with Third-party Extensions and Themes," begins with a topic that comes as a natural consequence to having a small, powerfully built, open source app like Firefox: extensions. Folks will always want to add more functionality to what they have. Instead of building a bloated app that holds absolutely everything a developer and a user can think of, the Mozilla Foundation team built lean and expandable, which leaves the developer to bring specific functionality to a particular extension and, with the numerous extensions cropping up daily, allows the user to pick and choose only what they need or desire. Here, the authors explain extensions, where to find them, how to install or update them, and what to do about conflicts (disabling and uninstalling), and then give a detailed look at some featured extensions to enhance tabbed browsing, security, bookmarks, toolbars, sidebar, downloading, email (the Gmail Notifier extension is very useful) and searching. The second part of this chapter deals with third-party themes: Firefox includes a theme manager that aids the user in installing themes that customize the look and feel of the browser. There is an official Mozilla repository of themes that the authors use for their instruction in installing, switching, uninstalling and updating themes. The last section of this chapter includes a Garage Series "blog" on "Managing Your Blog With Extensions" and includes references to several popular blog-management extensions that can be installed in Firefox, and advice on how to choose one based on which blogging format you use.
Chapter 8, "Other Interesting Features," concludes the first half of the book with how-to's on using Firefox's Download Manager for downloading files, printing Web pages, customizing the Navigation and the Bookmarks toolbars and tweaking the display to set options for Website font, color and size. The chapter ends with a blog on "Literary Blogs Through the Ages" which is a bit of a rambling discourse on whether great writers like Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, beatniks like Jack Kerouac and Ginsberg, Voltaire, Mark Twain or even Dr. Seuss would have blogged. The message here seems to be that it might be a bit refreshing to revisit literature and occasionally venture away from experiencing only what the Internet offers us. Having read books of all the authors represented here, I was intrigued and I did wonder whose voice this dialogue belonged to.
Back to the book, and in particular Thunderbird, Firebird's companion email application. Again, the authors cite security as a major reason to choose Thunderbird for email, and their praise is well deserved. Thunderbird doesn't permit scripts to run by default, has options to block images, contains message encryption features, and has support for certificates and digital signing. Thunderbird also sports accurate junk mail management, an integrated spell checker and RSS reader, powerful search capabilities and the ability to manage multiple email accounts. Chapter 9 walks the reader through hardware and OS requirements, download and installation on a variety of platforms, and making Thunderbird the default email client.
Chapter 10 concentrates on configuring Thunderbird for email, RSS and newsgroup. Since email is so critical to most of us, the authors take a cautionary step and provide various scenarios for either setting up Thunderbird with no previous email client used on the machine or migrating from another mail client. They include important considerations for using POP (Post Office Protocol) or IMAP (Internet Messaging Access Protocol) as well as migrating from Outlook and other standard email apps using the Thunderbird wizard or by manually importing. There are step-by-step instructions and accompanying screenshots for setting up email, RSS and newsgroup accounts; using the Global Inbox to view multiple email accounts in one inbox; creating and managing multiple identities (to manipulate your "from" address when sending and replying); basic composing, reading and sending email and adding and removing accounts. The Thunderbird address book is also described (importing and exporting addresses; creating a mailing list and sending an instant message). The end of this chapter includes a "toolkit" aside that discusses backing up the Thunderbird profile in order to move Thunderbird to another computer or to simply create a backup. In particular, they mention MozBackup. This is a Windows-centric approach, though: Mac and Linux users will need to look elsewhere for info.
Chapter 11, "Protecting Your Privacy and Blocking Spam," should be required reading for everyone. Not only does this chapter describe the many ways the user can manipulate Thunderbird options to optimize security and minimize spam but it has some good cautionary lessons on how pervasive and dangerous spam and phishing are and how to be proactive in protecting against the bad guys. They cover how to train Thunderbird's junk mail filter, configuring junk mail controls (white lists, handling, logging, adaptive filter), blocking remote images, using anti-virus programs, signing and encrypting email, using certificates and using the Password Management tool.
Organizing email is the subject of Chapter 12 and looks at ways Thunderbird can help manage mail: creating folders and subfolders, labeling mail (important, work, personal, etc.), marking mail (read, unread, junk, etc.), creating saved searches (which essentially creates virtual directories with shortcuts to the original messages), creating and using filters to sort related messages, and searching mail. An amusing "blog" ends this chapter with an invective against how the masses abuse email. Not just the spammers and the phishers, but the daily drones who forward lame jokes, litter their emails with smiley faces and use Reply To All indiscriminately. Ultimately, what I liked about this section wasn't that it held obvious information but, like the bit above on literary blogs, the authors humanize their subject matter by interjecting some personal reflections.
The final chapter of the book looks at customizing Thunderbird through the use of extensions and themes. Like Firefox, Thunderbird can also be enhanced through the use of their common Extension and Theme Manager. A thorough description follows on how to find extensions on the Internet and how to install and update extensions. There is also a good list of featured extensions and URLs to their download locations: getting and sending messages, productivity, configuration, privacy and security, RSS and companion extensions, among others. The next part of the chapter deals with using themes or skins to alter the Thunderbird look and feel: where to find them, installation, switching themes and updating them. Finally, there is a brief overview of customizing the toolbar and using either the built in icons or extensions that allow third-part icons to be added to the toolbar.
The end of the book is dedicated to the appendices (keyboard and mouse shortcuts for Firefox and Thunderbird; menu commands for each app; hacking configuration files and security, certificates and validation). These are followed by a brief glossary of terms.
Prentice Hall PTR's Garage Series books utilize a two-color layout with casual typography and art. The book reads comfortably with plenty of screenshots and appropriate and interesting asides like the "blogs" and "fridges" described in this review. As an introductory book, Firefox and Thunderbird Garage succeeds in providing valuable instruction on how to get the most out of both programs. There are lots of tweaks, tips and basic information on how to make these two applications powerful additions to any desktop system. I particularly like the FAQ asides as they provide a lot of troubleshooting advice throughout the book that clearly anticipates common problems, queries and gotchas. Obviously, there are choices of browsers and mail apps out there but, in putting together this great manual, the authors have given Mac, Linux and Windows users plenty of reasons to choose well and to ultimately choose Firefox and Thunderbird above the others.
Reader honestpuck (Tony Williams) also reviewed this book, and writes about it:
I currently work on a large campus supporting Macintosh users where I find the most common browser unstable and lacking in features and the most common email client just a little buggy and lacking in good support (neither are the free products provided by Apple). I think that a quick install and a copy of this book would solve a number of my problems. I would recommend this volume to all those who want a good beginner to mid level user volume on two excellent pieces of software. I would prefer to recommend this book to a beginner than any other I have seen on the topic, as it doesn't attempt to cover too much of the learning curve; rather it goes for width, covering both pieces of software and more of each that might be of interest to the early user.
Mary Norbury-Glaser is an IT Director at a University of Colorado Health Sciences affiliate center in Denver. You can purchase Firefox and Thunderbird Garage from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
you don't have to think in Russian. Though I am beginning to suspect that my geeky friends are having some at my expense...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?