Warning: Internet Explorer is hazardous to your business

Most professionals in the real estate industry are busy. Family, career, and the pursuit of life all demand time and attention. An activity like surfing the web is not often rethought, retooled. However, be careful about habits left unchecked. Some time investigating your current choice of web browser is well worth it.

The new web is creating haves and have-nots. Those that can consume, process, and create content on demand will find success in growing their businesses virtually. The new web asks, “what can you do with your content?” Having a robust, open, standards based web browser is an advantage for the professional that understands its usefulness.

Current browser statistics show that 83% of the readers of this post will either be using IE6 or IE7. While that number is down from an all-time high of 95%, 4 out of 5 have stuck with Internet Explorer and do so presumably because of familiarity.

Security threats aside, IE works. However, IE limits the usefulness of your browsing experience. If you are like me and find yourself spending more and more time utilizing web tools, it isn’t a stretch to think that an inefficient browser might be costing you time and attention away from more important activities. Like making customers happy.

Our job at Brainious is to point out these dramatic shortcomings and convince, cajole, & compel you to get out of your ‘web surfing’ comfort zone. Here is what you could enjoy by making the switch to the open source project, Firefox.

Firefox is fast. I believe it loads significantly faster than IE. The real power is what you can do with Firefox after installation. There are thousands of free add-ons available from the Mozilla Foundation that will allow you to extend the functionality and usefulness of Firefox. This is often described an application’s extensibility.

Here are a few Firefox tips and tricks that I’ve picked up along the way.

• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - Organize your bookmarks once and for all. This plugin allows you to sync your bookmarks amongst all your computers. Before Firefox, I purchased some shareware to do this on IE. I was tired of looking for a bookmark on one computer and discovering that it existed on another. I was thrilled to find this plugin when I made the switch. Bookmark madness be gone.

• Shortcuts - Firefox is filled with shortcut commands that reduce your need to move your hands between keyboard and mouse. Heavy computer use can take a toll. Learn shortcuts to shorten the time it takes to do things & delay the onset of that nagging carpel tunnel problem.

• Adblock Plus - Another great plugin. This one stops ads in their tracks. It removes about 95% of all ads from all sites. Can’t even imagine what life was like before AP.

• Themes - There are hundreds of free themes available for Firefox. You can customize the look and feel of your buttons based upon easy to install themes available from Mozilla.

• Crash Protection - In the rare occasion when Firefox crashes, when relaunched it will automatically reopen all your work at the point it last crashed. Unbelievably useful.

• Tabbed Browsing - IE stole this little idea from the Firefox project. SeattleSoft loves to take good ideas.

• Customization - Simple and straight forward. Right click on a bookmark and customize its properties. Give it a shortcut, display just the icon on the toolbar, etc. I’ve filled my browser with about 25 icons that I use frequently. All fit in my menu bar running along the top. Very convenient. Each bookmark has a shortcut keystroke combination. Opening voicemail, email, to-do lists, etc. is a cinch as its all a few keystrokes away.

• Del.icio.us - Another plugin that makes tagging your bookmarks from within your browser a pain-free process. Tagging is one of the most useful research tools available. Listen to our 2nd Remote Break podcast to hear more about this.

• Google Notebook - Find content that you like online? Wish you had a way to save it for later reference. Once you have this plugin installed, you can highlight any content and right click it to put it immediately into your Google Notebook.

• Much Much More - Keep us posted on your progress. We’d love to hear questions or comments. Keep us posted on cool plugins or themes you are using in your own setup.

The new social web will leave you behind. Don’t be left out. If you are still using IE, give Firefox a try. IE will still be there when a tech-deficient bank or lender demands it (Countrywide, get with it!).

If this is your first experience with Open Source software, empower yourself to discover the geek inside. I suspect, if you give it a chance, Firefox will become a significant piece of your technology platform going forward.

Browse on!