I personally don’t like Firefox very much… I might even write an article about why IE is so much better. Don’t get me wrong… the FF article is excellent, makes many valid points, and is hard to argue with… Firefox answers a growing concern for all the crap that has infested the Web…
I mean the purpose of a browser is to actually BROWSE… and Firefox is lacking in so many areas. It is slow to render, image “pop” happens alot (the page layout is thrown off while images load and “pop” in one by one)… it doesn’t support alot of the WYSIWIG features IE support natively… and not to mention is a LOT less forgiving of HTML and javascript code.
I know you FF zealots will say “well, everyone should write their pages according to the W3C standard!”. But remember that most of the web content nowadays is written by average people like you and me… a more forgiving browser is really needed rather than forcing everyone to write “perfect” code…
Yes, Firefox has some features that make browsing many pages more efficient and fun… and it definately halts malware… by taking a pessimistic approach. For the average user this is great… but nearly everyone else needs more dynamic features than the “static” WWW can provide by its nature… Flash and ActiveX have filled the voids where static HTML and javascript cannot compete, and make web pages much more dynamic and “appliaction-like”… and installing these extra components isn’t automatic and is a pain in the butt on Firefox (if they can be installed at all!). For example, it is IMPOSSIBLE to use MSDN on Firefox because of the necessary security ActiveX software that must be installed.
The usability of FF is pretty good, but using tabs isn’t intuitively obvious. Firefox’s “killer feature” – tabs – isn’t immediately obvious on how to use. What brand new user knows to click the middle mouse button or press Alt+T? Microsoft has always had excellent usability by having multiple ways to do the same thing; so people who prefer to use only the mouse can do the same things as a person who only uses the keyboard.
I’ve been using IE7 for a long time (starting with beta 1), and Beta 2 is leaps and bounds ahead of Firefox. It supports multiple tabs, an easier way to open and manage them, and a “preview” feature of all open content. It has implemented customizable search functionality right in the toolbar, a streamlined interface, anti-phishing, anti-spyware, and popup blocker technology as good as any third-party software (or even Firefox)…. all while keeping the fast and accurate rendering and automatic features that IE fans like about the browser.
I just with IE had a download manager…
I’m glad that Firefox is around… Microsoft was starting to get a little lazy being “king of the hill”. But FF will have some major catching up to do once IE7 is officially released.. You can download IE7 beta 2 right now… and even the “beta” is way better than FF 1.5.
