So I finally made up my mind. Mozilla has won over my heart once again….well not the current Mozilla browser, but their ‘next-generation’ browser and email programs, Firebird and Thunderbird, respectively.

I was sitting around watching football and started searching around for a good newsreader. I had given up Mozilla a couple weeks ago and started using those tabbed IE browsers, but today I couldn’t find a good newsreader. One that could let me bottom-post if I wanted. So lo and behold, I went back to revisit Mozilla, specifically those new-fangled technology previews of Mozilla’s future browsers. I had downloaded both before, but wasn’t impressed with Firebird’s rendering at that time. Reminded me alot of Opera’s engine….

But now they’re up to version 0.7, I must say they’ve come quite a way since then. The browser is much crisper in rendering pages, and more plug-ins and skins are being built for Firebird than ever before. And, most impressively, I noticed Thunderbird (the email/newsreader program) now has a ‘Vertical Layout’ option, which makes its interface look almost exactly like the new Outlook 2003 layout I just love. So when I saw that, and made sure a few more bells and whistles were there, I knew it was time to switch. (You’ll notice my mind is sort of like the Friday the 13th movies; just when you think it’s settled on an ending, it springs back to life, looking for something new to seek out.)

So be sure to download them both; they’re both small in terms of size, no installer program needed (just unzip the files), and of course they work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Once done, you may want to check out:

• Firebird user-agent Switcher
• Calendar program
• Yahoo! companion plugin – Note there’s a bug currently causing problems with the bookmarks button enabled. See site for details.