I can’t help but wonder, considering the number of websites and web developers who insist on ensuring that their websites are still fully compliant with Internet Explorer 6, which was rendered obsolete long ago, should other non-standard browser configurations be considered as well?

Has anyone ever tried to count how many users run Firefox with the NoScript add-on?

How many users have JavaScript disabled in Google Chrome?

Do a lot of IE users have JavaScript turned off or restricted somehow?

Most importantly, if you added up all of the users with JavaScript unsupported or JavaScript disabled in their web browser, how big of a user group would they be as a percentage of all web users? Would that number be larger than the number of people still using IE 6? If so, wouldn’t it be prudent for website owners and webmasters to ensure that their websites function correctly without JavaScript, especially when so many of the elements using JavaScript are superficial like animated menus?

I for one test every WordPress theme or website template in Firefox with NoScript running to see what it looks like when it “breaks” because JavaScript is not enabled in a browser. If it still doesn’t render and function at a basic level, then I won’t use it.

Does anyone else do something similar?

Can the noscript tag be used effectively enough to compensate for non-JavaScript enabled browsers?

The basic speed dial window all browsers have.

I usually don’t like to post stubs or preliminary articles like this, but I went all reviewer on Mozilla.org this morning and, of course, ended up writing a review of my favorite Firefox add-on of all time, Speed Dial. As that review got longer I felt myself wanting to show people how to really maximize productivity with this Firefox plug-in by configuring Speed Dial the way I have ended up tweaking it and setting it up. Don’t get me wrong, my why isn’t the only way, but when you see the power and customization of the Firefox Speed Dial plug-in in use in my setup, you can see why I think that Speed Dial is the most important Firefox add-on anyone can have. In fact, it’s the one real drawback to Google Chrome for me right now.

There is a Speed Dial extension for Google Chrome on the Google extensions website, but it is a pale imitation of this powerful Firefox add-on. It doesn’t have dial groups which is the main powerful feature of the Speed Dial plugin.

Anyway, it would be irresponsible of me to get into posting my Speed Dial Firefox extension review right now when I have deadlines barreling down on my like runaway trucks with no brakes on the side of a steep mountain. However, I don’t want anyone following the link I threw onto my review at mozilla.org to arrive and wonder where in the heck the review I promised is. Therefore, I’m going to post a couple of screen shots that I think will help any user with even a little bit of power browsing experience to understand the kind of productivity gains that are possible with this plugin.

If that is you, either install the plugin and start messing around with it. Just got to Tools -> Add-ons -> Options and start customizing away. (I recommend setting up either a Speed Dial icon on your toolbars, or doing like I did and setting the right click on a page to include the context menu option to Add to Speed Dial. You can make that work by right-clicking on the tab if you prefer, but I’m used to right-clicking on the page itself when I want to do something. One of the best things about this add-on is how much it can be customized to work exactly the way you need it to in order to help out with your own time management by making browsing faster and easier.)

The quick, quick, version of how to use Speed Dial to speed up your Internet browsing and boost your online power goes like this:

1. Use Dial Groups – Every web browser offers some sort of dial based start up screen. Opera was first, but Google Chrome has one now too. IE has a similar concept although it is done via text links instead of actual configurable dials. What makes Speed Dial great is the ability to have MORE THAN ONE page of dials.
2. Set Speed Dial to show up in new tabs instead of waiting to click something. Every time you press CTL-T you’ll get a list of your speed dials to use. Just make your current homepage the first dial on the first dial group to keep instant access to it.
3. Customize the dial group tabs – You can change the colors to make tabs easier to find. Just don’t go crazy or you’ll hate it.
4. Customize the dial groups – Need more than 9 websites for one dial group? No problem. One of the configurations is how many sites to show on a speed dial group. You can change both the default, and even better change on a per group basis. You can have 12 dials under Work and 6 dials under Facebook Games or vice versa, depending on your lifestyle – If you have a widescreen monitor take advantage of that width by setting your default dial group configuration to 3 rows and 4 columns.

Lastly, if you are a power user looking for maximum time savings, you’ll end up with a lot of dials that link to a lot of webpages. By default, the speed dial thumbnails refresh frequently which means you could end up with a slow running Firefox when running Speed Dial and switching through several dials because thumbnails are being generated for each site no matter how fast you click. (See the link for details.)

There is lots more power. Read the docs or poke around the settings to see what else you can do to improve online productivity with Speed Dial. Or, come back here in the next day or two when I get time to go on full tilt. Even easier, grab the Best Hubris RSS Feed to make sure you get the updated Firefox plugin reviews as soon as they come online.

Then you can check out my post about Firefox personas if you need to read more about the Mozilla web browser.

When you spend a lot of time in the world of technology it is easy to get jaded. New features that are promoted (self-promoted, and then echoed by lazy writers) are almost never as useful as they are supposed to be, and half the time, they are not even new. I almost ruined my eyes looking at computer monitors full of accolades for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7′s “new” tabbed browsing feature, especially since I had been a power-user of tabs in web browsing since they came out in Firefox years before.

When new features are both truly useful and actually new, like the Ribbon Interface in Office 2010 (updated from a partial integration in Microsoft Office 2007), they are often met with initial resistance.

As a freelance technology writer I not only spend a lot of time in the tech world, I am actually forced to look at and use new software features regardless of how useful I could possibly find them because a client needs a review of new software utilities or a customized newsletter could benefit from a comparison of program features.

Check out a review of Citibank Thank You network rewards program.

The other thing that happens to us technology types is that we stop reading about what a program does. We most certainly do not watch videos that show us how to use new features. (How many seconds of your life does it waste to watch someone show you how to click File then New on a training video?) Fortunately, most of the time it works out just fine because when you are used to how software works, you know where to look for functions you need. However, from time to time, I miss out on a cool new feature or a great new function that would increase my productivity.

Firefox 3.6 Coolest New Feature

When it comes to software development, there are two kinds of functionality. One type of functionality affects the usefulness of the product. These functions make the software, better, faster, easier to use, and so on. The other type of functionality makes the computer software more fun to use, or just makes it look nicer. These days, it seems like there is a lot of action in the latter category.

Most of the “improvements” in the user interface design realm are actually just ways to make a software product look nicer, or most commonly, to make it so that you can superficially customize the application. Think of it as the equivalent of being able to add bumper stickers to your software.

For the most part, I don’t have much use for these beautification features. A computer is, what a computer is, and while using my own wallpaper is fun, it doesn’t really matter what the wallpaper is when I’m switching between eight full-screen windows in a desperate race to beat an important deadline.

As you can imagine, I haven’t played around much with Firefox’s personas feature.

This morning, however, I was bored (actually, I was procrastinating and rendering my ADD planner worthless) and I ended up on the Firefox Personas page after re-installing the Firefox NoScript Plugin.

While I don’t have much need for a new persona for my web browser, I was clicking around to see what was on the Mozilla website when I noticed something happen to my default Firefox browser.

When you hover over the sample picture graphic of a Firefox persona, it previews what that persona would look like if you installed it on your Firefox 3.6 installation. Tons of applications do previews like this, but the fun part is that Firefox previews the persona on your real installation. That is, the browser you are currently using to browse the available personas actually changes when you hover your mouse over the preview.

Now this is fun.

Normally, would have to download and install the browser extension or browser skin in order to “play around” with what it would look like. Then, when I am finished wasting time, I would switch back, and if I remembered, uninstall all the different personas I downloaded to check out. Hopefully they all uninstalled cleanly and there were no residual effects, although that is never a guarantee.

But, with the Firefox persona preview functionality I can see what my browser would look like with a hundred different personas, all without downloading or installing anything. So, I can see what my Firefox would look like if I installed the Kelly Brook persona (First, calculate the odds of the wife using my computer and Firefox…). Or, for a more whimsical (and socially acceptable at a client site) persona I can check out the Snoopy persona.

Here is my usual Firefox (the default) persona:

Here is the Kelly Brook persona:

In the end, personas are a play thing, like putting up a Go Buffs sign on my home office wall, but sometimes, playing is good. After all, all work and no play make Jack go crazy and try to chop up his family at the Overlook Hotel.

Update: And we’re back again

It looks like the issue is caused by having an unsaved “custom theme.” Don’t think you made a custom theme? Think again.

Any change to the “personalize” settings like background image (desktop image), colors, font-size, etc… results in a custom theme being generated with those changes. In other words, if your desktop background is not a stock photo that came with Windows 7, you have made a custom theme. So, that picture of your kids, or dog, or cats, or whatever, is a customization, and it has not been saved with the rest of your personal choices as a theme yet.
Click save and give it any name you like. My Logitiech mouse buttons started working again in Firefox right after I did that.

Update 02/13/2010: It appears that my cruise up and cruise down buttons are once again broken inside of Firefox. Still working on it…again…

Not long ago, I complained bitterly about how disabling transparency in Windows 7 caused cruise up and cruise down to stop working in Firefox. My wireless mouse, part of a wireless keyboard / mouse combo from Logitech, had until recently been cruising (scrolling fast) up and down within Firefox with no trouble. Then, shortly after the latest Firefox update (I didn’t notice right away, so I can’t say for sure) these mouse buttons stopped working.

As it turns out Logitech’s keyboard and mouse mapping software, called SetPoint, has numerous well documented errors and glitches inside of it. For Logitech, it seems to be a low priority since the mass market user it targets doesn’t generally make use of all the advanced features modern mouse and keyboards have. It is misleading to advertise that their product does something that actually doesn’t work, but that is another matter.

Windows 7 Update Fixes Keyboard Function Keys or Shortcuts

The January 26, 2010 Windows Update pushed out by Microsoft includes “stability and reliability” updates including on that targets “Keyboard function keys or keyboard shortcuts…that may not work correctly.”

This is interesting because the Cruise Control feature on my Logitech mouse is not the default setting for those buttons. Rather, it is a function assigned to those buttons manually through UberOptions which is the software that Logitech should be releasing instead of the choke-ware it puts out.

This mouse button assignment works very similarly to programming a keyboard function key or shortcut. One goes into the UberOptions interface and the selects which mouse button to program and then what functionality to assign to that button.

I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it would be interesting if this Microsoft fix corrected the mouse button error in Firefox that I was getting.

Have a nice day.

(Needed to add that last part to avoid the Google no man’s land of sub-300 word pages of content.

What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?!?

Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder what is it that makes computers so difficult?

Today, I noticed that my Cruise Down and Cruise Up buttons on my Logitech mouse stopped working in Firefox. The odd thing is that they continued to work fine in Chrome, IE, Word, and so on. But, for whatever reason, my Logitech Cruise Mouse buttons broke in Firefox.

Since there was recently an upgrade to Firefox, I figured there was some sort of glitch. My first guess was that someone’s accessibility settings or compatibility settings were messed up. Accessibility settings allow people with disabilities or impairments to tweak how a program behaves. For example, you can’t really expect someone with one arm to hold the shift key while clicking the mouse button. I’ve never really understood why this comes pre-installed on Windows and so many other systems when the percentage of users that need that functionality has to be pretty small. I’m guessing it is political.

So, I checked through all the Windows 7 Accessibility Settings, which have been nicely renamed to Ease of Use Settings. I wonder how many people see that heading and thing, "Gee, I’d like for my computer to be easier to use. I’ll go ahead and turn on the easier mode."

Anyway, it seems that none of those settings were on. Just to be sure I checked and unchecked all the boxes to get everything manually reset. Still, my cruise control scroll buttons wouldn’t work in Firefox.

Next up, an Internet search reveals that several Logitech products suffer from horrible glitches in their software implementations. Unfortunately, the cruise up and cruise down features are one of these trouble areas. However, none of the specific models mentioned matched up with my Logitech Wireless 3200 Laser Keyboard Mouse combo. Nonetheless, I read through several of the threads to find nothing that worked.

I had forgotten just how bad Logitech’s SetPoint software was, because I have been using UberObtions on my computer for a while now, and it actually does what SetPoint should do! Unfortunately, it turns out that while UberOptions fixes SetPoint glitches and allows any key to be mapped to any function setting, it doesn’t really do anything other than expose all the hidden options in the Logitech software. In other words, if it’s broke at the Logitech level, it’s broke in UberOptions too.

What kept bugging me was that the Cruise Control mouse buttons worked fine in all the other software. So, I dug into the about:config settings in Firefox. It seemed the cause of Firefox problem with cruise up and cruise down features would be in the settings related to mousewheel. Another troubleshooting article suggested using the mousewheel about:config settings to fix some other mouse button problems in Firefox. However, that didn’t work either.

Although I like Google Chrome, I’m not ready to give up my array of Firefox plugins that make it do exactly what I need it to do. My NoScript Whitelist alone would take forever to reconfigure on Chrome.

About the time I was ready to give up, I was 5 or 6 pages deep in the search results on Google for my tenth try at crafting a search that would return useful results instead of gamers that have trouble with WoW and Logitech mouse reviews, I stumbled upon a programmer forum where a user asked a question about a glitch in Firefox when something called wmode was set to transparent.

Sometime in the past few days, I had changed the wallpaper on my Windows 7 PC and used the Personalize feature to tweak some colors as well. I also turned off the transparency of the title bar, because it reminds me of a shower door, not a cool user interface design.

It was a long shot, but I was tired, and getting ready to just flat out give up fixing Cruise Control in Firefox on my Logitech wireless mouse. So, I right clicked the desktop, chose personalize, window color, and rechecked the box that says Enable Transparency. And, you can about guess what happened based on the first line of this post.

Yes, folks, Disabling Transparency breaks Cruise Control Mouse Buttons in Firefox if you are using a Logitech Wireless Mouse and the SetPoint software. Can you freaking believe it?

I’ve been thinking about writing up a review for Firefox plug-in SkipScreen for a while now. SkipScreen has quickly become an important time saver with file sharing sites getting more and more belligerent about making even one time users wait excessive amounts of time and jump through more and more hoops.

What is truly ironic is that 99% of Mediafire’s business is hosting copyright violating files which it takes down one at a time in an effort to “steal” the value of the copyrighted files. Then, it has the nerve to demand that an organization take down a file that does not violate any copyright laws.

You can read the MediaFire Takedown Notice Response here.

It seems as though the EFF lawyer may have missed the most important thing. Even if SkipScreen did do something illegal (which it does not), the same legal precedent that says you can’t sue an ISP for providing the connection that allows a user to do something illegal (like downloading copyrighted files from MediaFire) would apply to this situation.

Mozilla cannot be held liable for UNAFFILIATED USERS violating the terms of service of a website by using UNAFFILIATED SOFTWARE. If Mediafire has a legitimate complaint, it must pursue it against SkipScreen and its users directly. Of course, it isn’t doing that because it has no legitimate legal claim and would quickly lose any such action. Instead it is trying to scare Mozilla with the threat of having to pay legal expenses in hopes that they will cave in before Mediafire has to actually prove anything or cite a relevant violation of law.

It’s the oldest trick in the book, legal extortion. Make it so expensive for the party that is in the right to fend off the party that is wrong, that the good guys decide it isn’t worth fighting.

Shame on Mediafire for its outrageous hypocrisy and its shameful attempt at legal intimidation.

Recently, I wrote about why Firefox is better than Chrome in a head-to-head browser comparison between Firefox 3.5 vs. Google Chrome 2.  In the end, it basically came down to certain specific features that I just cannot live without because I use them on a daily basis to increase my productivity.

However, I do switch back and forth between Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox a lot. In doing so, I have developed a list of things that I wish Firefox did that Chrome already does. For the most part, these are little things that make surfing the web faster or easier, rather than make or break requirements.  That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t really like to see these Google Chrome features show up in the next version of Firefox.

Chrome Better Than Firefox Features

The biggest one here has to be speed.  You have to give it to Google and their open-source browser project Chromium. What they have put together is hands down the fastest web browser. Each browser developer out there from Microsoft, to Opera, to Apple’s Safari, all have specific tests that they construct to showcase their browser’s speed. But, when it comes to real-world browsing speed, Chrome is undeniably the fastest.

Where Internet browsing surfing speed really counts is in a user’s ability to get to the Internet and then do what they need to do without having to wait for the browser program to load or refresh, or whatever. Start the timer when you click to run the program and stop the timer when your favorite website or homepage has finished loading and nothing comes close to Chrome’s speed regardless of which carefully chosen website the developer wants to use.

The reason is that Google’s Chrome browser has the fastest start-up speed. True, it cheats a little bit by displaying the interface and giving control to the user before it is actually ready to do anything productive (it keeps loading in the background), but even if you account for that extra boot up time, Chrome is still the fastest to start.

Firefox, on the other hand, is a NIGHTMARE to start-up, especially if you purposely left a bunch of tabs open to automatically reload the next time you started Firefox.  Here is the rest of the list. (I do know that some of these things can be done by plug-ins or add-ons for Firefox, and that is one of the great things about Firefox, but, frankly, I already have a TON of plug-ins loaded. I’d like to start cutting down on the number of Firefox add-ons I have, not increase them.)

Things I Wish Firefox Did More Like Chrome

1. Load Faster
2. Search from the Address Bar – It’s awesome, but it doesn’t do this.
3. Paste and Go in the Address Bar – Nothing has saved me more keystrokes.
4. Incognito style privacy – I get why Firefox does privacy mode the way it does, but I really like being able to have a private session going concurrently with a normal browsing session. Getting to choose between the two types would be ideal.
5. One Tab = One Process – For research purposes, sometimes I right-click a dozen or more search results before I go look at what opened up in those tabs. Sometimes one of those websites is junk and ends up hanging the whole smash. In Chrome, I open the task manager find the garbage site and shut it down without even looking at in. In Firefox I have to wait until I get back control and then hunt down the offending site myself.

How about you? What features from Chrome would you like to see in Firefox?

How weird is this?

I’m using Internet Explorer 8 today; not by choice, but because some Microsoft websites whine about you using other browsers and I was doing research for a Microsoft related article. I have a favorite of the page I want to open.  (The proper term is bookmark, but Microsoft insists on pretending that they invent everything, including all the stuff they steal from other software, so they didn’t use the term bookmark, like everyone else.)  So, I press CNTRL+B.

Now, Control + B is actually the keyboard shortcut for another browser (Firefox).  As proof that Microsoft knows full well what the real terminology for a saved Internet location in a browser should be, CTL+B opens the "Organize Favorites" window in Internet Explorer.  This is a nice touch of Microsoft user interface usability from the boys in Redmond to understand that those of who don’t just use the software that came preinstalled on our computers are very likely to be used to the keyboard shortcuts of other browsers.

Still, it’s a little bit unexpected, because I’m expecting the sidebar or toolbar, or whatever that opens when you click on the little gold start to show up, but the Favorites window is fine, too.  What is very weird, however, is trying to open a bookmark from this window.

Technically, the Organize Favorites window is not where you are supposed to be browsing and opening your favorites from.  Nonetheless, following the standard Windows user interface paradigm, right-clicking on a bookmark brings up a context window which includes the option to Open the IE favorite that was clicked on.

At this point, I’m a little bit bummed, because what I really want to do is open the bookmark in a new tab, but it is still better than nothing, so I choose Open from the pop-up menu and…nothing.

I choose Open again.  Again, nothing happens.  After a few tries, I roll my eyes, give up, close the Organize Favorites window, click on the gold star, and open the bookmark from the sidebar.  A few minutes later I switch over to Firefox for something else, and notice that there are 4 tabs open.  Those four tabs are the ones that opened when I chose open.

Seriously?

Just to prove it to myself I tried it again, and sure enough, choosing Open from the context menu in Organize Favorites in IE 8 opens the bookmark in Firefox. 

It is undoubtedly because Firefox is set as my default browser, but I still assumed that choosing Open in a IE favorites window would open the favorite in Internet Explorer.

I wonder if this behavior is intentional, or if in all of their testing, no one ever noticed this behavior.  It is likely a felony at Microsoft HQ to have another browser installed as your default browser, so maybe it just never came up.  Either way, Microsoft amused me today.

I do a lot of reading online.  Some of it is for my freelance writing business, other times, it is research for my own projects like my saving and investing advice website, and other times, it just shows up in my RSS Feeds which I never used to read, but now read all the time because I like reading them on my phone (via Google Reader on Windows Mobile).  Plus, I’m a reformed IT professional, and you can take the techie out of the computer world, buy you can’t take the computer world out of the techie.

Anyway, a lot of sites and feeds I read are starting to trickle out articles about why people are switching from Firefox to Google Chrome as their primary browser. 

When I read the reasons why these people think that Chrome is better than Firefox, I realize that they don’t use their browsers like I do.  They may think they are power-users, but until you’ve done 24 Google searches (still open in their tabs in case you still haven’t found what you need), opened 100+ sites, twenty or so online PDF files, clicked every one of the reference links at the bottom of eight or nine Wikipedia articles (Wikipedia is a good way to find sources, Wikipedia is not a good source for professional writers.) read through page 188 of a 533 page SEC public comments posting in order to find out just where the regulatory agency stands on what type of disclaimer is required in an investment related corporate email, all while still messing around on Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu, you don’t know what a power browser is.

Ironically, you don’t even have to push the browsers to advanced capabilities to see that Firefox is better than Google Chrome (at least for now.)

Why Firefox Is Better Than Chrome For Main Browser

When you are done running tests and calculating that Chrome loads a Javascript page in 1.834 seconds while Firefox takes 2.122 seconds, the choice comes down not to speed, but usability and functionality.  There are several critical features that are missing in Google Chrome, either intentionally, or someone just hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

I’m not talking about playful little plug-ins and things like moon-phase calendars or digital clocks or skins.  I’m talking about things that interrupt my workflow so dramatically, that it causes me to sit stunned for a few seconds while I try and figure out what the best way to proceed is.  Do I work around it in Chrome, or do I wait forever for Firefox to load and copy and past the link over there?

Here are the Top Reasons Firefox is Better Than Chrome As a Default Browser

1. File Handling – I don’t care if Chrome’s built-in download manager is better or not.  Sometimes I don’t want to download the file (or technically, I want to download it in the background instead).  PDF files come to mind.  There are hundreds of PDF files that are linked to out there.  In Firefox, it opens Foxit Reader and loads the file.  I can scan it and decide whether to read it, save it, or get rid of it and move on.  In Chrome, it downloads it, puts a button at the bottom of the screen and waits for me to decide what to do with it.  That’s after it asked me where to save it.  I had to create a temporary directory just so I have a place to put all of those little files that I have to fully download and store in Chrome, just so I can access it.  I also get no choice to Open, Run, or anything else.  You can’t get through 40 PDF files on a website by doing it this way.
2. Google Updater – Yeah, I know, they finally pulled their head out and started doing it in a way that makes sense, but I spent so many months killing, deleting, closing, and stopping Google Update from starting automatically with Windows, that I don’t even know how to go back to letting it run.  By the way, even if it doesn’t run all the time it still runs every single hour and doesn’t bother checking with you to see if now is a good time to update.  If you are pushing a tight deadline and trying to download, proof, and re-upload some big files, too bad.  Google Update will be wasting your bandwidth (and number of connections) downloading the upgrade from version 2.1.03.2 to 2.1.03.3, because we all know that is more important.
3. No Print Preview – Seriously, how hard is this to code? There is nothing quite like printing out what you think will be 2 pages only to get 14 pages thanks to all the extra stuff that prints funny.  I also hate that one extra line that prints on a new page. I never print without preview first, and Chrome doesn’t have one.
4. Plug-ins – No Zotero, no default browser. The same people that used to say plug-ins were one of the main reasons Firefox was so much better than Internet Explorer, now say they don’t need them. Not me.  Some of my plug-ins are optional, but plenty of my add-ons are not optional.
5. Bookmark Tags – No tag support for bookmarks? I long ago passed the point where folders were sufficient to find my bookmarks efficiently, this is a deal killer.

Notice that I didn’t say anything about Ad-block Plus or NoScript or other Firefox add-ons that make browsing less annoying.  If those are your main reasons for using Firefox, then by all means, switch over to Chrome.  But, until I have usable bookmarks, usable printing, usable file handling, and my can’t-live-without-them add-ons, Chrome will be my secondary browser.

Chrome Is Faster

Don’t get me wrong.  Chrome is faster, way, way, faster.  The quicker start-up time alone is worth the extra resources I use up having another browser.  When I need to check something out quickly, Chrome is my go to browser.  But, when I’m settling in to get some real work done, it’s worth the wait to start up Firefox.

Nothing says "simple minded" like calling the latest privacy innovation built into browsers "porn-mode".

Seriously?  You can’t think of a single reason other than surfing porn that you would want a privacy mode for?  If so, you are either too naive or too obsessed with porn.

Let’s start by saying I don’t want other people accessing my computer to know what I do on my personal time no matter what it is.  It’s none of their business if I play fantasy baseball, if I shop at Costco, or if I’m looking for a new dentist.  So, yes, I’ll be using privacy mode for that.  Just because it isn’t red-faced embarrassing, doesn’t mean it isn’t private.

Then, remember that privacy mode doesn’t just keep websites from writing new cookies, or tracking, or whatever to your computer, it also keeps them from reading the ones that are already there!

If it weren’t for people manually deleting their cookies, or installing new programs to do it for them, websites both legit and not could track you FOREVER with your cookies and other things on your computer.  Are you really OK with Sears knowing (before you enter any personal information or tell them who you are) that you bought tires from them in 2001 and then searched for wiper blades but didn’t buy any in 2006, and that now you are back looking at the automotive section?  Since you paid full price the last two times you visited, maybe they should not display the sale prices while you are browsing?

Does Sears do this? No. Could they? You bet.

There are dozens, or maybe hundreds, of very useful thing that can be using the new privacy modes whether it’s Google Incognito, Microsoft InPrivate, or Firefox Private Browsing.  The only reason it seems like you don’t need private browsing is because users developed tons of add-ons, plug-ins, and settings to control their privacy. 

Controlling what a website keeps track of on you and your computer used to involve downloading a whole new program like CCleaner, or having to dig into the Tools-> Options-> Privacy menu on your browser. Some people even resorted to learning how to use the semi-hidden profiles feature of Firefox and then creating a separate profile in order to do certain tasks.

Doesn’t privacy mode sound a lot easier?

Here are some great reasons to use your browser’s privacy mode including some that used to take much more complicated measures to get the same results.

Top Reasons to Use Privacy Mode That Are Not Porn

1. See what your Google search results would look like without "personalization" – Now you don’t have to listen to SEO consultants who tell you that just searching something to get results is not an option.
2. Research Products and Services so that when you are ready to buy, they don’t know that you have ever been there before.
3. Use Coupon Codes, Shipping Discounts, and more that are only good for "new customers" or those who have never been to a website before. Thanks to privacy mode, they won’t see that cookie or authenticated session that makes you ineligible.
4. Get a new registration or user name at a website or forum that you already use without the hassle of having two registrations. (Just always use privacy mode for the 2nd one.)
5. Keep your boss, co-workers, or spouse from knowing how much time you spend on Monster.com.
6. Avoid "personalized" offers from online merchants.
7. Or research whether those offers are really personalized, or just the same ones everyone else gets.
8. Respond to a post, debate, or review without giving away who you are.

The list could go on and on.  Research info on new banks, doctors, jobs, services, and more without them knowing and without the next person on your PC knowing.

Let’s also not forget that the world is full of embarrassments that are not porn.  What about online dating, weight loss, plastic surgery, medical conditions (unusual bowel movements, anyone?), collections (you still collect stamps? figurines? baseball cards? beanie babies? – Do you want the creepy guy in accounting to know that?)

So, let’s give the whole "porn-mode" thing a rest.  You’ve made your point, if you every had one.

Actually, nobody has ever been better at getting along without a privacy mode than those who surf for porn, because they knew that they needed to watch their privacy-backs.  It’s all of those other things that people naively do on their computers that are leaving things that they wish wouldn’t be left there that need privacy mode.

Enjoy.  I’m off to get credit for a referral to a website that I’ve already been to once or twice in the past.