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Since the 1980s, personal computers have been moving into our lives (and taking over?).
Operating systems became a necessity to manage both hardware and software, as well as provide us with easy-to-use graphical interfaces.
But where did they come from? To answer that question, I worked up a brief history of the three most prominent players in the game.
They say that email is dying, but I have yet to see evidence to back that particular claim.
On the average weekday, I receive and send an average of 50-75 emails from one or another of my email addresses.
It quickly becomes difficult to manage multiple email addresses, so I have a simple solution.
Thunderbird.
Similar to the widely-known Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird is a program that allows you to manage both emails and news feeds.
And the great news?
Thunderbird runs (for free) on both Windows and Linux!
Firefox provides a set of keyboard shortcuts that allow you to perform common tasks quickly.
You can open and close windows and tabs, navigate through pages and open tabs, create bookmarks, open history, zoom in and out, and much more, with just a few keystrokes.
For those of you unfamiliar with how keyboard shortcuts work, I would recommend reading my introduction to the subject really quick.
Firefox add-ons are applications that allow you to enhance your browser by adding functionality and style.
You can check the weather and news, block ads, download videos, take full-page screen shots, customize tabs, play games, compare prices, backup, interact with social media, and so much more, just by utilizing Firefox add-ons.
From your menu bar, simply click Tools > Add-ons, and you can browse or search through the hundreds of thousands of add-ons available.
After installing Firefox, my first move is to enable the menu bar by right-clicking the tab bar and selecting Menu Bar.
In my experience, the menu button (found on the navigation bar and characterized by 3 horizontal lines) lacks several valuable options that are found on the menu bar.
With the menu bar now visible, I can find Tools > Options and explore the options available.
Here, decisions are made such as what home page you see every time the browser starts, what directory files are downloaded to, and whether or not your passwords are saved.
Decisions, decisions.
The Firefox browser is open source software, so it’s free, and there are versions that work on either Windows or Linux.
Firefox comes packaged with Fedora, as well as most other versions of Linux, so Linux-users should already be covered.
For Windows-users, you can download the latest version of Firefox from the Mozilla website.
A browser is the computer program that you use to browse the internet.
Browsers work by reading files that are written in a mark-up language called HTML, which tells the browser how to structure a web page.
Browsers also interpret CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which turns basic web pages into the colorful, aesthetically-pleasing web pages we all know and love.
Operating systems are essential to electronic devices because they handle all of the operating details, such as controlling hardware and running programs.
A common shorthand when referring to an operating system is “OS” (pronounce each letter).
There are several types of operating systems available, but the most common are Windows, Linux, OS X and Android.
Software is the driving force behind the devices that we use every day.
Without software, our computers, tablets and phones are just marvelously assembled parts, with great potential and no actual function.
With software, you can power up a device and explore its unlimited possibilities… or you can get some work done. How about both?
In this technology-driven age you are inevitably going to hear terms such as “hardware” and “software” and be expected to know what they mean.
These two terms are the most basic categories of technology in existence, into which everything else is divided. In other words, they’re kinda important.
I’m sure that, at one time or another, we have all heard the term hardware, used in reference to tools or machinery. Computer hardware is not much different; it refers to the physical components of technology, such as your computer, monitor, mouse, keyboard, printer, cell phone, tablet, etc.