In coming up with the idea for my first “Week With” experiment, I wanted to try something that I knew would really affect my computing life. What better than to use a different web browser. Since I use my web browser more than any other single application on a daily basis, I knew that using a different one would have an impact worth writing about.

I have used Safari as my default browser pretty much since the day it was released. I love Safari. I am very used to it, it’s keyboard commands, the way it renders pages, the handful of tweaks that exist for it. I have tried to use other browsers, even Firefox when Gmail would not work with Safari, but I quickly run back to the safety and comfort of my beloved Apple supplied security blanket.

So, why even think about change and why Firefox? Well, first of all because of the buzz. So many people I know and people I read on the web sing it’s praises, even over Safari. They praise it’s speed, it’s security, the fact that it is open source and therefore has literally thousands of developers and is easy to write plug-ins for that extend it’s functionality. Secondly, since I am forced to use both a PC and a Mac at work and since Firefox is the only sensible (see: fast, safe and secure) solution on the PC, I would like to try using the same browser on both platforms for all of the obvious reasons. Lastly, I figured that since I am so tied to Safari and use my web browser so much it would make for an interesting experiment to see how I do using something else for a week.

Tune in on Friday to see my report on how things went.