There is a better way...
Firefox (currently at version 3.0.4) from the Mozilla Project provides a nearly standards compliant internet browser with built in pop-up blockers, search boxes in the toolbar for quick access to Google and many other popular search engines.
In the newer releases, upon connecting to a secure site, the location bar and any text-entry fields (such as for usernames and passwords) appear in yellow, so you can instantly tell whether you are connected to a secure (SSL) connection. The tabbed browsing option will be a revelation to those of you used to versions of Internet Explorer before 7 as you can open multiple webpages in one browser window. (Opera also has this functionality.)
As this is an open source product, there are thousands of additional software add-ons called extensions available to download and customise your browser.
Some of my ones you shouldn't we without are:
MouseGestures with allows use of the much neglected right mouse button to perform navigation tasks.
If you get irritated by the shockwave flash adverts on pages, then you can add an extension called Flashblock to stop them appearing. A clickable Flash logo is available to select them should you wish.
Firebug allows you to inspect and validate and debug HTML/CSS/Scripts from within the browser
FireFTP is a FTP client that runs from within your browser from within which you can edit files with your favourite editor and upload to your website with ease.
Tab catalog shows an Internet Explorer 7 feature whereby you can see an overview all open tabs.
I would also highly recommend installing the appropriate dictionary for your locale as it will spell check text fields which should lessen the number of typos in web forms
To Firefox's inbuilt list of search engines you can add many others (i.e. the PHP function Reference, BBC News, Perldoc).
Firefox is available for the following Operating Systems from
- Windows 98 -> Server 2003 (XP recommended)
- Linux Kernel > 2.2.14
- Mac OS X 10.2.x and later