InformationWeek compares the latest IE7 beta to Firefox 1.5, and concludes: “On a straight, feature-for-feature comparison, IE7 stacks up well against Firefox. If its improved security model lives up to its design specs, malware distributors will find it much more difficult to make a dishonest living, and the tabbed browsing features in the new release should make it much easier to deal with multiple pages.”
Unfortunatly IE has a huge stigma now. It will take ALOT to convince users of other browsers to use it.
Unfortunately IE has the dominant mindshare. Most people think of that little blue E when they think of browsing the web. It will take a ALOT to convince others to use Firefox because of this. So it works in reverse.
On the positive side, most people you switch to Firefox don’t turn back, either because they don’t care or because it’s a better product
I turned back from Firefox after 1.0 Seamonkey came out. I liked having mail and browser reintegrated again. It is a really nice browser. Funny thing is I don’t really miss Firefox at all.
Me, Firefox then Opera now IE7
While I prefer Firefox on a day-to-day basis, IE only holds that stigma for the more technically inclined for reasons of security, interoperable standards support, and cross-platform capabilities. For those who don’t use an alternative browser, IE7 is just gives them more reasons not to use an alternative browser.
Is it only for Windows? I believe so, and thus I won’t be using it… I prefer FireFox because it can be used in OS X, Linux and Windows…
IMHO Jb
it’s always nice to have a piece of good software like Firefox that is cross platform. then you can have the goodness wherever you are
Right, there was an IE for Mac but it was discontinued a while ago, and they’ve blocked people from downloading it starting January 1st of this year.
Personally, I use Camino and Safari, but as long as people start supporting standards instead of browsers it wont matter what people use.
One, I use BeOS, IE7 is worthless to me.
All my Windows friends use FireFox, will IE7 offer the same range of extensions and themes? And can they be trusted, updated like FireFox’s?
i keep looking for the comment “this studdy sponcerd in part by Microsoft”
I think you are right! Everything he tries to say is weaker in FireFox in fact has been fixed by an extension or a theme.
Example, he claims IE7 has a simpler layout. Simpler than the minial themes available for FireFox?
Also claim IE7 layout is easyier of an old IE user to use. Hello, there are IE themes too, I just don’t use them.
The picking on RSS on FireFox avoids the fact of the number of messaging extension that FireFox has.
And tying your browser directly into Outlook does not give me a warn and comfortable feeling at all. This is just openning more way to attack the system.
IE7 fails to pass the ‘so, what?’ test.
It’s absurd to compare the already-released Firefox 1.5 to the not-yet-released IE7.
Firefox 2.0 will be released this year, probably before IE7. Hence, it’ more fair to compare Firefox 2.0 to IE7.
Firefox 2.0 will be released this year, probably before IE7. Hence, it’ more fair to compare Firefox 2.0 to IE7.
Excellent point. Comparing MS beta and vaporware to actual shipping products has been standard fare for the tech media for more than a decade. “OS X 10.2 Jaguar vs. Windows Longhorn!” “OS X 10.3 Panter vs. Windows Longhorn!” “OS X 10.4 Tiger vs. Windows Vista!”, “Firefox 1.5 vs. IE 7!” etc etc etc.
That’s why MS always hypes up (lies about) what they’re working on instead of focusing any attention on their actual ready-to-ship and shipping products. It keeps the tech “journalists” writing articles like these, and giving people the impression that they should wait for MS to get its shit out the door instead of use something that has all those features today.
Yet, invariably, once MS’s product gets released, it’s a shadow of all the hype and is full of bugs and glaring security holes. Remember all the tech pundits writing articles about how Windows 95 was so secure, it would mean the end of anti-virus companies?
Shouldn’t IE7 have been released sometime before Firefox? Oh, my bad I forgot about the fact that MS need to make money out of these….urm, integral parts of their OS
By the time they release it Firefox will be better, again-again!
…and it still work on Linux/BeOS/Solaris/SkyOS/XP service pack (ALL)
😉
Don’t forget that FireFox works on every version of Windows, it can go as far back as Windows 95 with some required OS updates if I remember correctly.
If there’s one thing I hate about Microsoft products, it’s the upgrade ladder. It shouldn’t be taken for granted that people upgrade all the time, because before I could work and afford my own computer I had to deal with whatever my parents got me no matter how outdated. I couldn’t run VS, Office, and a whole lot of other software. OSS software is why I know how to program now, why I had an office suite to do my homework on, and how I found my niche. People shouldn’t have to pass up opportunity because some company wants to fatten its wallet.
I’ve got bad news for you then. The trunk (what will be Firefox 3.0) has dropped support for Windows 95/98/ME. There was some talk about how a “compatibility” layer could be implemented if someone wanted to do that but it really didn’t seem likely to get done.
Alot of people still use Internet Explorer by default .Those who haven’t made the switch to Firefox as yet Microsoft hoping to catch them before they do with this.
I dont think those who already have will switch back.Firefox has alot of momentum.
Does this include more WGA?
No, just more cowbell
Firefox is getting heavy day-by-day. I can’t use it on OSX. It takes huge memory and speeds up fans of iMac. So, I had to switch to camino, also based on firfeox, it’s really cool browser. It’s so fast compare to Safari, firefox and other browsers on OSX. Well, I’m missing some cute extensions on firefox. But sometimes I fire up firefox to use some extensions like dTa..
On windows there’s still no alternative to firefox for me. Same for linux.
IE6/7, NO WAY…
Maybe you could try Dr. Orca on Windows.
It’s not quite finished yet, but mostly usable.
It’s worth giving it a shot anyway.
on windows, there is kmeleon http://kmeleon.sf.net/ and on linux, there is skipstone http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/ and epiphany http://epiphany.gnome.org
I also find the new SeaMonkey to be quite snappy. It is still off the Mozilla codebase, but compared to “lightweight” Firefox it doesn’t seem bad at all.
I’m running an iBook G4 here which is probably light years slower than your iMac. I found Safari to be faster than Camino. Quite a bit faster…
another browser will appear on the windows desktop, some time after vista has appeared: konqueror. likely, faster than both other browsers by then, and very standards-compliant. enjoy 😉
I think porting all the goodies over to Windows is a bad idea. Konqueror belongs in KDE, KDE does not belong under Windows…..
And in no way whatsoever should Amarok go anywhere near Windows
Someone is comparing a yet to be released, 5 years in development IE with a firefox that has been around for years?
That is just dumb. First of all, all IE7 will have is what firefox ALREADY has. So, IE7 is just playing catchup. Secondly, IE7 should be compared to Firefox 2, not 1 or 1.5.
I really don’t understandy why people even are looking at IE anymore (aside from the web designers who will have to support it).
Until IE7 is finally released, its not terribly accurate to compare them. Who knows what the final product will look or operate like.
Its like comparing Ubuntu Breezy to Windows XP SP1, not terribly accurate being that they were released at totally different times.
Plus by then, Firefox might be 15 revisions ahead.
Anyways, if you are going to compare them, then the author needs to mention the IE7 bugs, stability, etc. After it is all taken into account I imagine Firefox will still win, I mean comon we are talking early beta VS a 1.5.2 release, its not a really fair comparision.
Oh and I am a user of free software, I have no love for IE, but lets at least compare apples to apples now.
Apart from tabs IE7 doesn’t really do well, not to mention that several sites don’t work with IE7 (or Firefox for that matter).
The menu layout is also quite confusing in IE7 so it’s one step forward and 2 steps backwards.
For windows, I’ll still recommend K-Meleon.
The only thing I think that is really nice about IE7 is the security model that it will be using on Vista (don’t think it will be available on the XP version). That is, running in protected mode.
I hope to see other browsers make use of this on Vista as well.
I hope to see other browsers make use of this on Vista as well.
I’m with you on that one. It might be naïve but I’d like the security model to become a competitive factor in the eyes of users. But that’s probably to naïve
well… i have been using something similar for some time already. on windows xp.
if you import this reg file, any program which was launched from internet explorer folder will run with regular user privileges. that is internet explorer too. it really works
and if you change the directory and pick another id in {}, then you can make any program run from it’s install directory with reduced privileges.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsSaferCodeIden tifiers131072Paths{effe5233-e320-4c3c-a06b-c178921c6746}]
“Description”=”Internet Explorer”
“ItemData”=”C:\Program Files\internet explorer”
“SaferFlags”=dword:00000000
oops, can’t edit: single backward slashes are gone…
I installed IE7 beta 2 on a VMware install of Windows XP SP2, and the first thing I noticed was that Google was the default search engine. Now THAT is amusing.
I use it off and on. I use Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x for 85% of my web browsing.
IE 7 beta 2 is pretty good, but I don’t like it’s UI layout. I honestly thought it was broken when I started it up the first time.
As IE is trying to arrive in the browser world again and adds such features, I hope the development of firefox, opera and co won’t be focused on feature count as it will end up in bloat/norton products.
It would be interesting if Gecko and KHTML became the most portable and the most resource-friendly engines so that they can appeal at slower computers, mobiles/portables and so on.
Just think of wireless devices accessing a webserver which would cost just a bit more than hardware costs, but be as powerful as the server is. It would be just perfect for industry where such things are needed. The point would be – write once, run everywhere and Gecko and KHTML could be jokers for such devices.
No need to advertise with bloat as integrated tetris etc. Do one job, but do it good. And especially Firefox with its plugins is doing it right, but it still requires just too much (no I’m not thinking of plugins as flash etc turning the performance down)
Edited 2006-04-27 19:33
I don’t think Gecko can be made into the “most portable and most resource-friendly engine”. KHTML, maybe, I don’t know much about it.
Currently, Opera probably holds that title, as can be illustrated by the fact that the same engine powers the desktop browser and their mobile versions.
There is Minimo, but I haven’t heard much of anything about that lately. They are hacking this stuff into Gecko now, whereas Opera designed it with that in mind from the beginning.
I had not read everything when I first posted. Now I have finished. What a piece of junk (read lazy) writting.
It is one thing to come IE and FireFox, another to not see major faults.
In talking about how secure IE7 the author glosses over ActiveX. I don’t care what controls you install in your system, the very idea of ActiveX code destroys secuity from day one.
The section on tabs is also a waste. Yes, I use to have a problem with multiple tabs, then I got the extention Colorful Tabs 1.1, at which when I have the number of tabs open as to get confuse I clearly need to step away from the machine and look at the real world again. The is a large number of tab extensions out there. IE is now where close.
Extensions, extensions, extensions.
And Firefox, Konqueror, Safari (and yes, Opera too) are still much much better in CSS.
And no, I won’t say anything about IE7’s looks. Ugly. Look, I’ve said it.
People are naturally lazy, and not that technically adept.
Vista will have IE7, as standard on Vista. It will probably auto-update for XP. firefox has a really really small share of the market, and only has that becuase IE6 is increadibly bad.
Why have two browsers on your computer when the one that comes with it is good enough?
I can’t answer that one. It may be not as pretty; have tabs not as good;no extentions!! But thats not going to cut the mustard with most users.
The other side of the coin is. I think those who are already firefoxed, will need to be clawed away from it with a crowbar.
“Out of the box, closing a Firefox tab is a potentially awkward two-click operation”
Well, yes, if you’re using an old mouse, or a Mac mouse. Modern mice have wheels. They rock–and they close FF tabs with a single click.
Overall, I think it was poorly researched and too suferficial. If you’re just going to compare for features it has, accept that Opera is the winner and be done with it. I think it missed several good things FF has (FI, arguably the best UI of any browser out there, obeying Fitt’s law, and considering the user’s focus sacred), and while I haven’t used IE 7 much (I’m using Win2k, so only have used it a couple times on XP boxes), I’m sure there are other good points for it, too.
And if you use the mouse with your right hand, using your left hand to hit Ctrl+W to close a tab is pretty easy 🙂
Yes, but only the current tab, which still leaves it a two-step process, which is that the article criticized. If I wanted to go farther, I’d also plug Tab Mix Plus, which is invaluable for checking news and forums, where I might get 150-200 tabs open
.
IE7 promises to fix many of the most critical bugs and do a better job at following Web standards.
This is what interested me. Only one other comment even mentioned CSS so far.
Of course, these days I only use IE when I want to see how it renders a particular page, but if I were a regular user I would be very interested in how the tables for “Web technology support”, “Protocol support”, “Image format support”, and “Accessibility features” will be updated here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparing_browsers
I couldn’t care less how good IE is in relationship to Firefox as long as it is standards compliant and there aren’t websites written to work only with IE’s specific broken implementation. The problem with the current IE isn’t so much that it is insecure, as that only effects people who use it, but rather there are sites written so that you have to use it in order to view the site as intended, although this has gotten MUCH better in recent years and I am perfectally happy to not have IE anyware near my computer.
Seth
Firefox sometimes crashes while viewing PDFs (probably a problem with the acrobat plugin). IE is also marginally faster at starting and rendering pages, so I also use it for quick tasks. Tabs, the better find in page experience, and gestures keep me with firefox for normal browsing, on the other hand.
If IE7 can give me these firefox features along with the speed of old, I might switch back.
I’ve been using Firefox since 0.2
And to compare IE7 with a Product that is already out is absurd.
Unrelated, it seems that the comparisons are always done, ie. Comparing Vista to OS X 10.4
People forget that 10.5 will be out before Vista comes out.
After using IE7 on the Vista test builds, the entire UI was terrible, no Stop button, no Home Button etc, and the Tabs were in a weird place.
After all people are starting to wise up and buy PC Magazines and learn about some of the dangers associated with computers.
Apart from needing it to access a handful of IE only sites, I can’t understand why anyone would bother to use IE when browsers like Opera and Firefox are available.
I also find it crazy that there are browsers that are unusably slow on fairly high end computers. I do a lot of my web browsing on a 400Mhz Celeron laptop, on that Opera is very fast and responsive even if I open a 20+ tabs. It seems crazy that a app that’s simply displaying web pages can cripple hardware as fast as a 1Ghz+ G4 or P3.
I also find it crazy that there are browsers that are unusably slow on fairly high end computers. I do a lot of my web browsing on a 400Mhz Celeron laptop, on that Opera is very fast and responsive even if I open a 20+ tabs. It seems crazy that a app that’s simply displaying web pages can cripple hardware as fast as a 1Ghz+ G4 or P3.
Are you talking about Firefox here? I don’t have any problems in it with 40+ tabs – unless I run out of memory
. CPU is fine though.
Their code for starting plugins isn’t very good – it stalls the rest of the browser – so if you are constantly opening pages with Flash ads it can cause lots of temporary slowdowns. Flashblock or Adblock is your friend.
Edited 2006-04-27 23:55
IE 7 is light-weight, faster than FF. But last time I tried, there is still some bugs at back button/history. And also, url autocompletion list is sorted alphabetically, compared to FF or Safari, by the most accessed first. What I like from FF is its adblock extension; this extension is second to none. But now I started to forget them both and use Safari more.
I do like the Print Preview feature in ie7 however, must say that… Other than that, it seems very similar to firefox I guess… I have it on my machine here now just to check out, but found myself back using Firefox again this morning… If I need to print something however, who knows 🙂
If they are doing a strictly feature for feature comparison they should include other browsers besides Firefox and IE7, Opera and Konqueror come to mind (i know konqueror is not on windows but it will most likely be with the insception of kde4).
I personally would take konqueror over firefox or ie7 any day of the week, i think it’s faster, feature rich, and very secure.
Attention internet users the word alot is not a real word. It is really two words, for example a lot of internet writers spell a lot as ALOT and it just looks bad.
I’ve been telling people precisely that for alongtime. I just want to thank you awholebunch for pointing it out again.
—— by raver31
I think porting all the goodies over to Windows is a bad idea. Konqueror belongs in KDE, KDE does not belong under Windows…..
And in no way whatsoever should Amarok go anywhere near Windows
——
well, yes, i agree. but i think its going to happen anyway. and at least, if ppl start using it, KDE gets more exposure, and maybe more developers, too…