Fashion your Firefox (+audio)

I can't make it to New Zealand Fashion Week this year, but I can make-over my Firefox Browser. At Mohawk Media I use Google's Chrome browser for studio logins, and run Internet Explorer for testing pages, but prefer to use Firefox for visiting my creative spaces.

Firefox is run by the open source Mozilla Foundation and to start with you need to download and install a copy on your machine. Firefox is fun to customise graphically, and the easiest way is to install Personas.  They give you a gallery of graphics to add to the 'Chrome' areas of your browser, which are the space at the top behind the address bar, and the small bar at the bottom .

To wear a new Persona go to the Mozilla site and choose Products > Firefox > Try Personas then Get Personas for Free. This will download the Personas Add on, and you will be asked to Allow the Install, then prompted to re-start Firefox to complete the update of this Add-On. This is how you install all Add Ons and you maintain their preferences using the Tools > Add-ons option in the Firefox menu.

The Personas gallery ranges from abstract images to nature, popular music, tv, or websites. You can also create your own Personas by setting up a user id and uploading your own graphics. You can even see how many people are 'wearing' your Persona each day.

The Fashion Your Firefox page outlines some of the best Add-ons according to the type of creative user you are. Finders and Seekers can use tools like Stumble Upon, and Social Butterflies can receive social network alerts using Twitterfox or Shareaholic. Shutterbugs will love Cooliris for finding pictures and video, Rock Stars will get down with Foxytunes, and News Junkies like me will adore Feedly.

Feedly lets me subscribe to RSS feeds using Google Reader, and view them as a personalised daily magazine. I can customise the views according to topic or site and it saves me hours of searching and brings my news right to me.

Lifehacker has a brilliant article on How to use Firefox to Fix some of the Web's Biggest Annoyances. Stop auto-refresh, browser resizing, pop-ups, multi-paged articles or never see another web advert ever again.

Firefox makes it easy to see the web your own way, thanks to the power of open source and not for profit creativity.

• Listen to MsBehaviour on Radio Wammo for Kiwi FM talking about Fashion Your Firefox.