These days we're doing more and more inside the Web browser, including using programs like Gmail for sending and receiving mail.
With the browser becoming the new hub of PC use, why not consolidate your reading matter there? We all find things daily on the Web that we'd like to read later. A free "bookmarklet" that attaches to your browser toolbar can help. Called ToRead( toread.cc), this little button makes it easy to send a long article to your inbox, and if you take advantage of other browser features, you can reformat it for easier reading.
Wouldn't it be useful, for example, to strip away all the extraneous menus and advertising on a Web page? You can do that by using a tool like Readability ( lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability), which removes all the clutter. It's likewise a bookmarklet added to your browser toolbar - one click and the article is reformatted - and Readability lets you adjust the fonts, as well as the page margins.
But wait - what happens when our toolbars begin to fill up with these nifty applications? I'm wondering the same thing, and thinking that this is where today's new era of browser innovation can come to the rescue. Apple, for example, includes in its new Safari browser a built-in "reader" icon that, like Readability, removes the clutter from any article you're reading. Add in the kind of jazzy graphics Apple is famous for and the new Safari ( www.apple.com/safari) becomes a compelling choice.
I haven't mentioned the new Opera ( www.opera. com ), and if you're into social networking, you can consider Flock ( flock.com), which sets up a sidebar with updating tweets and feeds from the various services like Facebook that are all the rage today. The point is that while the browser wars seemed to be over some years back, we're now in an era when browsers are hot property again. It will continue because we're moving to more cloud-based storage and drawing more resources from the Web.
Using only one browser in today's world makes no sense. One of the early arguments for using Firefox, for example, was that it allowed developers to create "extensions" that dramatically added to its range and allowed users to customize their Web experience. An early release of Firefox 4 will soon be out ( www.mozilla.org). But take a look at Google Chrome ( chrome. google.com ) and you'll see that extensions for it have begun to proliferate as well. Many, though not all, of the best tools on Firefox havealso appeared on Chrome.
New iterations of browsers try to outdo themselves in terms of speed, too, so it's worth trying them out to see which suit your work preferences.
I run Chrome and Firefox all the time, preferring Chrome for daily use, but Firefox for particular extensions, like the research-oriented Zotero, that cannot be found on any other browser. But as the browser battles heat up, we'll start to seemany of the best extensions folded into the browser itself. And I try to find extensions that will work with multiple browsers so I can switch easily back and forth.
One extension I recommend is Xmarks, which can keep the bookmarks you've set up on one browser synchronized with any other computers you use. Xmarks ( www.xmarks.com) works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome, though features vary between browser editions. Another handy extension is Diigo ( www.diigo.com), which allows you to highlight text on a Web page and remembers the highlights.
Today's browsers are pushing new features into smartphones and other mobile devices. Who would have thought the monolithic hold of Internet Explorer would be challenged by so many alternatives, all free for the taking? Try a new browser, then another, and look for extensions to boost the power of each.
Google is building an entire operating system around the browser, a bet that the Web and the way we view it will become the central feature of our computing.
