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I have to admit, for the past few years, Firefox has been mostly a curiosity for me. I usually had it installed on one or two computers, but it wasn't my default browser and I rarely used it for things other than checking compatibility issues and seeing if IE bugs reproed in Firefox. Lastly, when IE 7 shipped with Tabs, that kind of sealed the fate of Firefox for me... I didn't need it enough to use it a lot.

I have also collected a lot of t-shirts over the years. A few years ago, before there was an IE 7 I purchased a Firefox t-shirt. I did so for a few reasons.

1. I  wanted to support a browser that had a number of features that I found critical to my web surfing needs (tabs, extensions)
2. I wanted a cool looking t-shirt
3. It was cheap.
4. I thought it would be fun to see what happened. I mean who would care?

And I wore the t-shirt to work. I got a lot of interesting comments. Most folks on my team sorta laughed. However at the time the climate at Microsoft wasn't Firefox friendly. In fact, Windows Live Hotmail didn't even render well on Firefox. Today that's a different story and Firefox is a fully supported browser on both the Full and the Classic experience. Most Live Services generally support both Firefox and IE parity.

However, as the shirt is fading, a lot has happened in that time. IE 7 released, with the most prominent feature being tabs and improved standards compliance, two hallmarks of Firefox. IE 7 has also gained a substantial amount of marketshare. Interestingly, over that time period, my usage of Firefox has actually increased since the release of 2.0.x with features such as inline spell checking. In fact on at least one of my machines, Firefox is the default browser... not so on my laptop or work desktop since IE is necessary for rendering and authenticating to intranet sites.

My favorite Firefox features today are:

• Extensions. Google Browser Sync allows me to sync all my cookies, saved passwords and favorites between all my computers. This is AWESOME. I cannot stand re-personalizing my web surfing experience on new computers. I also use things like GreaseMonkey to mashup Amazon and Google Reader. Neat stuff. There are dozens of other useful extensions.
• Inline Find. Love this.
• Spell Checking... I need this more than you know it.
• This is a weird one, but I can keep Firefox running when I install programs on my machine. I've lost count of how many programs and updaters require that I quit all instances of IE and Outlook. This is a sorry PITA and a reason why I can't stand updating software. FireFox updates much better.
• I'm curios and View Source pretty prints HTML.

What does this have to do with my t-shirt?

Well, a few weeks ago my old college roommate asked me if I was wearing a Firefox t-shirt. I was like, um yeah, how do you know what that is? He is a pilot for Virgin America and just got his first laptop a few months ago... but yet he had Firefox installed and he said another pilot told him about it. I was not expecting this.

The other day a developer that used to work on Hotmail looked at my t-shirt and was like "Firefox t-shirt"? and I was like, yeah, so what (smiling of course)? As far as I know I can't buy an IE t-shirt, and if I could it wouldn't mean the same thing.

I guess I bought the Firefox t-shirt to make a statement. That statement was that I support Firefox for what it represents... an attempt to continue to bring innovation that us web users need and to ensure that IE doesn't go for another 5 years without an update. It's a really nice product.

I find it amusing that I almost always get a comment on the t-shirt no matter where I am.