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Mozilla Books Media The Internet Book Reviews

Firefox and Thunderbird Garage 84

Posted by timothy from the for-your-neighbor-perhaps dept.
norburym (Mary Norbury-Glaser) writes "Firefox and Thunderbird Garage, written by Chris Hofmann, Director of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation; Marcia Knous, Mozilla Foundation Project Manager; and John Hedtke, president of JVH Communications (and an accomplished technical writer) is published by Prentice Hall PTR. This is the most recent addition to their Garage Series of books, which aims to bring the newest topics in technology to print in an engaging and readable manner. Firefox and Thunderbird Garage does not disappoint: the authors have covered all the bases on these two popular apps with a combined writing style that keeps the subject matter alive and interesting." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.
Firefox and Thunderbird Garage
author Chris Hofmann, Marcia Knous, John Hedtke
pages 384
publisher Prentice Hall PTR
rating 8
reviewer Mary Norbury-Glaser
ISBN 0131870041
summary Master Firefox and Thunderbird

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.
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Firefox and Thunderbird Garage More

Firefox and Thunderbird Garage

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  • Wait a minute (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:25PM (#12445874)
    Isn't this a show on the Discovery Channel?

  • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:27PM (#12445886)
    Why would someone read a book about something as simple and lame as a web browser?

    I can understand programming, photoshop, premier...

    • My sentiments exactly...I picked up most of the information in the first 8 chapters of this book by installing Firefox and playing around with it for about 30 minutes. I suppose I could do the same for Thunderbird as well, if I didn't use web-based email exclusively.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by carnivore302 ( 708545 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @06:22PM (#12446379) Journal
      Not entirely true. I bought Firefox Hacks: Tips & Tools for Next-Generation Web Browsing [amazon.com] a while back because I was intrigued by what kind of "secrets" firefox might have. Did you know about about:config? Well, there's a whole lot more of these goodies. I guess the reviewed book will uncover those just like the one I mentioned does.

      By the way, do you have any idea how many people watch the mozilla website almost daily to check if there are new themes, upgrades etc? They certainly don't view a web browser as being lame.

      And, while we're at it: do you have any idea how many man-years it has taken to develop the html renderers up to the point were it is now? It's certainly not simple.
      • By the way, do you have any idea how many people watch the mozilla website almost daily to check if there are new themes, upgrades etc? They certainly don't view a web browser as being lame.

        I'm fairly sure that most people would regard these individuals as well... lame.

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by northcat ( 827059 )
      I got modded down the last time I said the same thing. Apparantly you can't figure out things about a browser by looking at the blaringly obvious menus and the UI. If you do, then you're a retard with no life and too much time on your hand. But not so if you spend much longer on reading a book.

  • what...? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Eternal_Flame ( 822984 )
    One of the things I love to use as an incentive for XP users to switch to something more secure than outlook and IE is the fact that mozilla's browser and email client are both really quite easy to use.
    I could understand a couple info sites that give insight into altering the core of firefox or thunderbird, but is devoting an entire book to just that really necessary?

    • Re:what...? (Score:3, Informative)

      by superpulpsicle ( 533373 )
      I have converted to firefox at ease. I still struggle to stick with thunderbird. In fact, I still highly prefer outlook (not express). I have given thunderbird a real consideration, it's just riding the firefox marketing bandwagon unfortunately.

      • Re:what...? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by VStrider ( 787148 )
        If you prefer outlook, why don't you try evolution? It's got all the bells and whistles of outlook and loads alot faster!
        • How about because Outlook is a Windows program, and (apparently) Evolution isn't?

          If I'm wrong, correct me, because I'd love to see what Evolution is all about.
        • I've used Outlook and its predecessors at work for about a decade. While it's not as evil as earlier versions, especially the early Microsoft Mail, and it has some features that are fairly useful, it's fundamentally a broken system designed to keep people locked into the whole Microsoft package rather than to provide them with good email. The worst part is that your email is stored in One Big Bloated Undocumented Binary File, rather than separate mailboxes or separate messages, and if anything breaks, you
  • "Protecting Your Security and Privacy"
    What has firefox and thunderbird got to do with it? In the wonderful world of Phishing there is no discrimination based on browsers. An idiot is an idiot no matter what browser he/she is using.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jjoyce ( 4103 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:37PM (#12445985)
    I can't justify buying a book about a web browser. Most of the good info about firefox (greasemonkey, preference hacks) is on the web.

    • Oh Yeah? (Score:1, Funny)

      by AssTard ( 684911 )
      Well, smarty pants! What if you don't have Internet Access!?!? Yeah!

      • Precisely

        1. Find yourself a nice wild fox, or steal one from captivity if they aren't native to your locale.
        2. Get yourself a few litres of fuel, or steal some from Flander's.
        3. Buy large box of extra length (safety) matches.
        4. ????? -- This must be where the book comes in!!
        5. Profit!!

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)

      by ShaniaTwain ( 197446 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:49PM (#12446104) Homepage
      This is for people without the internet you insensitive clod!
    • I can't justify buying a book about a web browser.

      Who says it's YOU who's gonna read it? (i.e. you could give it to a friend along with a CD with the latest Firefox version). To "spread the word".
  • I've used thunderbird for a while and get a bit bummed when it loses my bookmarks and profile, which it seems to do about twice a year.

    Ook

    • I've used thunderbird for a while and get a bit bummed when it loses my bookmarks and profile, which it seems to do about twice a year.

      I have no idea how you manage to get tbird/firefox to lose your bookmarks or profile so consistently (only happened once for me... was win2k's fault acutally), but you know, backups are possible. I keep my local folders backed up (esp. useful for POP3, not a big deal for my IMAP stuff) every month or two in tbird, and my whole profile directory in firefox. It's easy, and ma

  • alive and iteresting + dinosaur and scary bird = real life Jurrasic Park!
  • Call me a devil's advocate but to me, the title "Firefox and Thunderbird Garage" is not good enough. It sounds geekish. Having read the submitter's summary, I see that a better title would be "Getting the most out of Firefox and Thunderbird" or "The insides of Firefox and Thunderbird".

    How about that?

  • Unique? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and the unique features of Firefox including popup blocking, tabbed browsing, enhanced security, built-in Google search, live bookmarks,

    And by unique, we mean "has existed in Opera since version 5".

    • Re:Unique? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And by "has existed in Opera since version 5," we mean "has been stolen from Mozilla a decade ago."
  • you don't have to think in Russian. Though I am beginning to suspect that my geeky friends are having some at my expense...

  • Tweakage (Score:4, Informative)

    by baadger ( 764884 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:47PM (#12446078)
    I personally don't use Firefox. But I do use K-Meleon [sourceforge.net] (uses Mozilla) and, just 15 minutes ago, found all the mozilla preferences in a nice table. [mozillazine.org]

    Not sensational, probably offtopic, but nice to be able to tweak some of the settings even Firefox doesn't give you GUI access to. I couldn't resist pointing it out.

    • Re:Tweakage (Score:4, Informative)

      by gfody ( 514448 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:55PM (#12446164)
      just browse to about:config

      • Re:Tweakage (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Clearly that's where you change these settings, but as someone who uses about:config (some of the default settings drive me batty, so I use about:config on every new Firefox install I do), it's nice to find a table of descriptions for the settings. Otherwise, when you go to about:config and find arcane.setting.pref.name and the only data is that it's a Boolean and currently true, how do you know what setting it to false will do?

      • Re:Tweakage (Score:3, Insightful)

        by baadger ( 764884 )
        true but about:config doesn't tell you what they mean and the options :P

  • Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:49PM (#12446101) Homepage
    Phew, for a second there I thought I had clicked on an Article. I almost had a heart attack right there.

  • IE Garage (Score:3, Funny)

    by FenrisProject ( 881189 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @05:58PM (#12446191)
    Stay tuned for IE Garage, a 45 volume guide to making IE nearly half as cool as firefox.

  • Firefox on the Mac (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gestalt_boy ( 586219 )
    For me, where Firefox really shines is when you start using extensions. As a web developer, things like Colorzilla and Web Developer are essential. Unfortunately, Firefox on OS X has some faults. I've managed to fix the main concerns (scrolling, using the delete key to go back in history, trackpad issues on the powerbook) but the most glaring problem is that you can't use the up/down arrows or home/end keys to get to the beginning/end of a line in any text box. A horrible UI oversight. It's the only re
  • Although some applications really benefit from this kind of book (Photoshop), is Firefox really complex enough to merit a book, particularly when it is a moving target in terms of basic things -- like the changes in the preferences system under OS X? It doesn't seem complex enough that even my grandmother would need a book like this and anyone who DOES need the level of depth in the book would be perfectly capable of researching it online. It seems like a waste of money when it'll be out of date in three months.
  • Would anyone happen to know if a pocket guide of any sort for Firefox/Thunderbird exists? I find that pocket guides are also quite useful.
  • ..if it had the words, "Don't Panic" written on the cover in large, friendly letters.
  • When I saw the title I thought it was a reality show about mozilla developers trying to churn out features. I'm not sure how well that was going to work. I just can't get really worked up over mozilla source code.. :)

    sri

  • Unique? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Khuffie ( 818093 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @10:43PM (#12448105) Homepage
    unique features of Firefox including popup blocking, tabbed browsing, enhanced security, built-in Google search,

    All of which come from Opera, and are present in other browsers. How's that unique?

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