Obtaining and Installing Firefox

This article is the first in a series on making use of the Internet. It is a simple tutorial on how to get and install Firefox. In future weeks I'll be covering some of the special features available with Firefox, and how to take advantage of various different Internet technologies. Much of it this series comes from an adult-education Internet course I gave in the Saugus Senior Center. The entire series will thus have a bit of a Saugus focus in the sense that all the examples will relate to things that Saugonians will find useful and/or familiar, but it should be useful to anyone wishing to learn the basics of the Internet.

All of the screenshots in this article come from a current version of Windows XP SP2 using Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) to do the download; if you are using an earlier version of MS-Windows or another operating system there will be small differences. If you're using another operating system, you may also be able to skip over this lesson as the browsers pre-installed on Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc. are modern enough and secure enough that you don't have the same pressing need to upgrade them that MS-Windows users do. I won't go into why you should upgrade if you're using and old browser like MSIE; that has been covered pretty well on Saugus.net and elsewhere.

The first step is downloading the current version of Firefox. As of this writing, it is at version 1.0.1. If you browse to Saugus.net and scroll down a little, you'll see a "Get Firefox" button on the sidebar. You can either click this button or go to the Firefox download site directly. I include this screenshot not just to point out the "Get Firefox" button (you'll see a lot of these on other web sites as well) but also to point out the white area around the "Get Thunderbird" button -- that's not supposed to be there, but is in fact due to a problem with MSIE. Once we have Firefox installed, we'll take a look at this same button and you'll be able to see the difference yourself. This particular problem is due to something called a transparent PNG. Millions of web sites use them, but MSIE doesn't properly handle them.

This will bring you to the Firefox site. From here you can read about Firefox, get Firefox support, and of course download Firefox. We'll be downloading Firefox. Look for the big green "Free Download" on the right hand side of the page. Note that it'll even state your computer platform right beneath it; if you're installing Firefox in English on the machine you're currently using, you can just click that green link. If you want to download Firefox for some other machine, you can use the "Other Systems and Languages" link below it.

You'll get a prompt from your browser asking you whether you want to "Run", "Save", or "Cancel". Choose "Run". This will download the Firefox installation application.

After the download completes (it may take awhile depending upon the speed of your Internet connection) you'll be prompted again about running the install application. Choose "Run", and the installation will start.

Once the installation starts, you'll see a screen welcoming you to Mozilla Firefox. Click "Next". You'll be asked to read and okay a license agreement.

You'll get another screen giving you the chance to customize your installation. You probably don't need to do so and can just click "Next" again. This will bring up a screen confirming that the install is about to begin. Just click "Next" again.

The install will work for awhile before completing. Click the "Finish" button to complete it.

After the installation, Firefox will start itself up. Initially it'll open to a Google search page into which you can enter general Internet search queries, but you can set your home page to anything you'd like.

For now we'll go back to Saugus.net. You can do so by entering saugus.net in the text box in the top middle of the Firefox screen and hit the "Enter" key. Scroll down a little and look at the Thunderbird button on the sidebar. You'll notice it's now displaying properly. You'll also see a little Saugus.net icon in the top text bar; MSIE is unable to display some icons while Firefox will handle them all.

You can change your home page in Firefox by using the Tools -> Options menu item. Clicking the "Use Current Page" button in this case will set our home page to Saugus.net. You can also verify that Firefox is your default browser by checking the appropriate checkbox and clicking the "Check Now" box. You'll probably also want to uncheck the analogous checkbox in MSIE's Internet Options menu item.

Next time we'll look at a few of Firefox's features and see how to make use of them.