When I first started using the internet, I used to browse through Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape. Netscape was just dying then. And I shifted to Internet Explorer completely. Internet explorer had many issues. One big issue was what we called as “pop up ads”. Pop up ads would literally pop up randomly while you browsed any website. There were many websites that promoted advertisements through pop ups. Almost every website used pop up ads to make some money.
These pop ups became irritating after a point. Some websites would throw multiple pop ups. I remember juggling to close the pop ups. And then we had some developers who came out with pop up blocking softwares. But even these softwares were trial versions and couldn’t fix the pop ups. The settings on internet explore could stop a few pop ups. But then that also failed.
Maybe it was year 2001 or 2002, a new browser took us by storm. Mozilla Foundation had come out with the browser Mozilla Firefox. It was an open source software. Probably the first open source software I used. Later, I started using VLC media player and other open source softwares. Firefox had a great design. The menus were minimal. You had settings to control most of the things. You could open multiple tabs, instead of opening multiple windows. The most important feature was that Firefox had a built in ability to block the pop up windows. I was surprised how effective it used to be. While firefox was famous in Bangalore and Mysore areas, my brother who was in Delhi told me that the internet parlours in Delhi weren’t aware of firefox and were still using Internet Explorer!
I guess a few months or a year later, we got Chrome browser. But in my usage experience, Chrome used to get infected or hijacked by some malwares. I used to manually fix the Chrome browsers that used to be inferred. Internet Explorer was the browser that could get infected very easily. Firefox is still the best browser for me on PC as well as mobile. Long live firefox.
