Mozilla Provides Students with a New Web Browser!

Mozilla has recently released Firefox Campus Edition, specifically made for students to use. It features a few add-ons are not in the regular Firefox. As soon as I found out about Campus Edition, I knew I had to write about it. So here I go!

Firefox Campus Edition has no noticeable difference in the main graphics of the browser. Heck, it doesn't even say “Campus Edition,” but there are the add-ons that come installed. These include:

FoxyTunes
FoxyTunes is an application that lets you play music in your web browser while browsing the internet. It works perfectly, and it even allows you to select what player to play the files with. All the big programs are there, from Windows Media Player to Pandora. The player is located in the lower right corner of the browser. It's great, but I think teachers that use computers might get annoyed if students just started playing whatever they wanted. Of course, it wouldn't be too hard to remove the speakers - or even the add-on itself!

Zotero
Zotero is a very feature-filled add-on, so it is very easy to get confused. I recommend viewing the tour at zotero.org, as it is very informative.
Zotero is a note-taking and archiving add-on that allows you to take a snapshot of a web page, take notes directly on it or about it, export all your notes, save links to pages, get information from online databases, and much, much more. Once you get the hang of it, it is very easy to use. All the buttons are laid out in plain site, and note taking is extremely simple. I just wish they would add a feature that allows easy-saving of emails!
Zotero would be very useful for a student. Unfortunately, I don't have much use for it at home.

StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a tool that allows you to browse to a site, select “I like it!”, and then be taking to the StumbleUpon site, where you can select tags related to the page you were just on. It also allows you to select your interests, and then it brings you to a random site based upon them. You can also tag sites as favorites and send them to people, and see random videos by category at StumbleUpon's video site. I wonder if Tay Zonday has ever appeared!
I'm not too big of a fan of this. It's kinda useless for a person who has things to do. It might be good for a student that's bored, though.

So now you know about Mozilla Firefox Campus Edition. Basically, the only difference is the add-ons, but I would greatly suggest it as a replacement browser for any school that is currently using Internet Explorer. Thanks for reading!

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Comments

I am a grad student, and I really think Zotero has saved my life. It's made keeping track of my mountains of research so much easier.

kellie

September 09, 2007

11:04 PM PT