In my endless quest for the fastest, most reliable, and most useful software available, the web browser has until recently been the most difficult application to settle on. For a long time I used IE6, or variants like MyIE2, etc. Then I tried Opera, and I liked the speed, but the featureset and general style of it just weren’t for me.

Flash forward to 2004, when I tried Firefox (or firebird, as it was called at the time). This browser basically had everything I wanted. Speed, tabbed browsing, native popup blocking, and an intuitive extension (plugin) environment with a lot of great extensions available. Over the months I have endlessly tweaked and tried new things with Firefox to get it as perfect as it could be, and I believe I have finally accomplished this. This article will detail, step by step, how *I* personally achieved browser perfection. What’s great for me may suck for you, but I think just about anyone can find *something* in here that’s useful for them. Read on…

1. Download Firefox 1.0.

2. Install extensions. For me, that means getting the latest versions of Tabbrowser Preferences, Tab X, Gmail Notifier, Webmail Compose, and AdBlock. I have it configured to function as a one-window browser, all popups etc open in new tabs. You should expirement to get it comfy for your needs.

3. Download and install a build of Firefox optimized for your specific hardware. I use Moox M2, optimized for AMD chips with the SSE instruction set. Your needs will perhaps vary. Moox has a build for you, however. You can expect 20% or better speed improvements by getting optimized. My results seemed even more dramatic than that.

4. Perform tweaks. Hopefully most Firefox users are familiar with using about:config, if you arent, I have found that the article at TweakFactor is fairly comprehensive.

After these steps, you should end up with what I believe is the fastest and most usable browser available today. I topped it all off with the GreyModern theme, and in my opinion it looks as good as it works now. See below for evidence.