Lessfeet

Yes you can take your Firefox browser with you and use on any computer. With “Portable Firefox” where ever you go, what ever computer your using you will have the same great functionality of Firefox and the Firefox extensions goes with you. You take you homepage, your bookmarks and all of your customizations. Stick Portable on a flash-drive then stick it in your pocket and go!

While your there take a look at the other portable applications

Delicious – Organize, manage and tag your bookmarks (favorites in Internet Explorer) online. Share with others and search bookmarks of others. The best thing about Delicious is the Firefox plugin. I use it as my personal bookmarks manager on my computer.

A few of my favorite alternative software are:

1. GIMP – alternative to Photoshop (for Windows, Macs and Linux)
2. Inkscape – alternative to Adobe Illustrator (for Windows, Macs and Linux)
3. Open Office – alternative to Microsoft Office (for Winodows, Macs and Linux)
4. Ardour – alternative to Pro Tools or Adobe Audition (for Macs and Linux)
5. Foxit – alternate to Adobe Acrobat Reader (for Windows and Linux)
6. Firefox – alternative to Internet Explorer or Safari (for Windows, Macs and Linux)
7. Thunderbird – alternative to Outlook Express (for Windows, Macs and Linux)
8. InfraRecorder – alternative to Nero or Easy CD Creator (for Windows)
9. GnuCash – alternative for Quicken (for Windows and Linux)
10. Quicktime Alernative – alternative to Quicktime Media Player (Windows only)

Why would you use alternative software:

1. Price – The Adobe software while very good the cost of it is astronomical. Microsoft Office is getting creaper but it’s still not there.
2. Bloat – Lets take the example of Nero Burning Rom. It was a very good program. It had only one function and it did it well. Now it has turned into this massive program that does everything. It is now slow! It is to bloated! It is time to use something else!
3. Security – The bigger and more complex these programs get the more they open themselves up to many security problem. Example: There are always reports of some major security holes in Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Recently the reader had a security hole in Javascript. Why does a PDF reader need Javascript. Short answer, it doesn’t! It’s a document reader! You see Adobe was not satisfied having a good document reader they had to start adding functionality to it. Adding functionality adds complexity thus security problems. Foxit is just a PDF reader it doesn’t know what Javascript is and doesn’t care! It displays documents!

This tip from Gena Trapani of Lifehacker.

Here are my favorite must have free programs:

K-Lite Mega- I think contains all of the media CODECs that you may use and some and some you will never use. For Windows.
Firefox- Superior web browser with many features like the many extensions that I can’t do without. Windows, Linux and Mac.
Open Office- Has most of the functionality of MS Office but it’s does not cost many hundreds of dollars. For Windows, Linux and Mac.
Juice- Easy to uses podcast receiver. For Windows
Gladinet- Turn your Internet storage into virtual drives on your desktop. For Windows only.
Gimp- Powerful image editing program like Photoshop but it doesn’t cost $800. Windows, Mac and Linux.
Sandboxie- Sandboxie runs your programs in an isolated space which prevents them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer. For Windows.
Jing- Free screen capture program from the maker of Camtasia. Windows
7 Zip- Best file archiver program. For Windows
Audacity- Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. For Windows, Mac and Linux.
Gnu Cash- Free personal accounting software similar to Quicken. For Windows, Mac, Linux and everything else.
Truecrypt- Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Infrarecorder- Free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows

Here is an easy but useful Firefox Tip. If you see a word or phrase on a webpage you want to find out more about select the text, right-click on it and select Search Google for “!@#$%^&*%”. Then a Google search opens in a new tab.

Aardvark is a very useful Firefox extension. Powerful and user-friendly selector utility for selecting elements and doing various actions on them. It can be used for cleaning up a page prior to printing it (by removing and isolating elements) and for web development.