Firefox 2 Vs IE 7

[Fost]

I suppose everyone has noticed Firefox 2 and IE 7 are both out. Here's my experiences so far:

IE7: Adds tabs - but they seem pretty slow (they might be targeting more powerful machines than I have though). Can't see much else other than anti-phishing. Bad points - there's still blatant CSS margin bugs (they can be worked around in the same way though). Some types of rollover seem very laggy - check out the buttons on our front page for instance, they were ok in ie 6. The big benefit of ie7, is that all those sites that insist on running active everywhere should work. Also, flash performance seems about 15% better in ie6 and 7 vs firefox. Although this is based on gut feeling rather than actual tests. (so I'm probably wrong )

Firefox 2: Small install, always had tabs (and they aren't slow to use), loads of really useful extensions like adblocking, page ranks, bbcode and any self-respecting web developer will be using the HTML validator plugin - just 'look' at your website to know what's wrong with it. Haven't seen much new in Firefox 2, except that they've improved the already great updating system - whilst writing this I downloaded an update, it had to restart, but re-opened all my tabs including this half written message!

However - the ultimate feature, that is worth the download in my opinion, is the built in spell checker. As I write this message, firefox is underlining in red any words that are wrong! This is just brilliant! I've never been one to think criticising people who spell badly or miss letters out is that important (it's the message that counts!) but I think for people who have a problem, it should at least help them improve the clarity of their message - just right click on the offending word, and it gives you the option to change it. It won't help with grammar, but at least you can add that extra bit of precision to ones posts.

My opinion: FF 2 has kicked IE7's ***. I doubt IE is going to stop being the most popular browser out there (people stick with what they know) but I think Firefox users aren't going to be migrating, and there will be new converts too.

GET FIREFOX 2 HERE

[SethP]

I have to agree one hundred percent. Firefox 2 is a step up over Firefox 1.5, which in and of itself beat IE 7. I'm forced to use IE7 for a web-based application my school requires me to use, and here are my impressions:

Speed: Firefox. There is no debate. Firefox always has and continues to start faster and load pages quicker. The Mozilla team also did a nice job cleaning up a bit of FF's memory usage (a big turn off for some users). The memory sucking feature that keeps a cached history of each tab is still present, but IE7 is certainly no better for memory usage. It seems to require a minimum of 10 MB of memory for each tab the user has open (brand new tabs that I've navigated to exactly one site with), and doesn't do much about freeing that space when tabs are closed. Oh, and did I mention how much faster Firefox loads pages?

Compatibility: Again, the winner is Firefox. Firefox works on almost any platform in existence, whereas IE is a windows-only app. In addition to cross-platform compatibility, Firefox can correctly display almost every page on the Internet (even the ones built for and only tested with IE). A notable exception to this rule is the Acid 2 test, which tests a browser's ability to correctly display not only CSS, but invalid CSS. Even though Firefox fails, Internet Explorer's failure is so much worse it's funny.

Windows integration: Not so much of a category as a way to give IE some credit, IE7 is much more highly integrated into Windows than Firefox. It's probably not a good thing, but Microsoft does provide (through IE's back end) a pretty solid API for those who want browser based web access in their program without having to write a browser themselves. Plus, IE comes bundled with every copy of windows, so the developer knows the built-in browser will work
on any Windows system.

User Interface: Winner: Firefox. IE7's UI feels overdone to me. There's too many buttons to push (and it's not at all clear what they all do). There's simply too much stuff to fit in anything less than a maximized window, which just wastes screen real estate IMO. Firefox, on the other hand, has a very streamlined UI. It's identical to IE's in functionality (with some parts added), except it takes up a lot less space and is much more intuitive. The only part of IE's interface that I like is the ability to view thumbnails of each tab, a lot like OS X's expose feature. Of course, there's always the Tab Catalog extension for Firefox which provides the exact same functionality.

In addition to all the above, Firefox has all sorts of neat features. It has the ability to re-open a crashed session just as you left, not to mention the same anti-phishing protection that IE comes with. Plus, spell check! Oh, how many times it's saved me already.

The final decision: Firefox clearly takes the overall win. Since I'm sure all of you skipped all that text up there (I know I would ), the short version is that it's faster, easier, and just better. Nick's right: you all should get Firefox 2!

[HunterXI]

Yeah, FF2's great. Well, except for those rampant bugs that have been making rounds. Either way, though, IE7 still targets simplicity without giving the user the option for more – a never-ending annoyance for us geeks.

Not that any of that matters to me since I use Maxthon.

[Vyseblues]

I know this topic is dead, but I think there should be a similar topic but with FF and Opera. So which one is better?

[Ren Fraggle]

[Poo Bear]

I used IE for a long time, but it started to feel a little basic.

Then I tried Opera (a long time ago) and a lot of websites didn't like it, presumably because they'd only been tested on IE.

Then I switched to firefox, but the bugs and occasional website incompatibility made me switch back to IE.

Then a major version of firefox was released. Very rarely does a web page fail to display properly and if it does I have a handy plugin that can render it with IE - sweet. The built in spell checker is wonderful. The fact it remembers what you were doing after a crash or an update is great (as this is a development machine crashes are usually down to me interacting with Windows rather than a firefox problem). Of course the tabs are also a major improvement.

So I'll use firefox as long as nothing better comes along - which is as it should be, no point being a fan boy, just use whatever delivers the best features at the current time.

It would be nice to have a browser with a built in rss reader I suppose. Rss feeds in firefox don't work quite as I'd like. Perhaps there is a plugin. I know google have some kind of online rss reader, I should check it out.

[Konedima]

Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) = awesome. Nice clean UI, easy keyboard navigation (I hardly ever have to use the mouse ), but the main reason I use it is because its easy to check it from school/wherever I am, etc.

Sage (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/77) is usually considered the RSS reader for Firefox. I don't use it (as explained earlier) but I hear it's great.

About Opera... its starting to grow on me. I mainly use it while I'm playing WoW, cause it uses barely any memory (at least compared to Firefox... I have both of them open right now and Opera is using 80mb less), but it doesn't have nearly as much support (or addons, which I love) as Firefox.