For the past few months I’ve been using Firefox 1.5 and a succession of Internet Explorer 7 betas side by side, in roughly equal percentages. Most of the time, I barely noticed the difference. That’s an enormous improvement over IE6, where Firefox is clearly the btter browser by just about any objective measure.
Last week Microsoft gave me an advance release of IE7 Beta 2 for Windows XP. It’s clearly Microsoft’s attempt to catch up after 18 months of getting seriously whupped by Firefox. Techweb asked for a follow-up to my IE7 preview piece from last February, so I took the opportunity to compare IE7 and Firefox as directly as possible.
You can read IE 7 For XP Beta 2: Has Firefox Met Its Match? (it also includes a gallery of IE7 screen shots that starts here).
If you’re too busy, here’s the conclusion:
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.
The biggest hurdle that Internet Explorer has to overcome, however, is one that doesn’t fit on any features chart. Its tattered reputation — especially when it comes to security — has created an indelible negative impression among the technically savvy users who’ve enthusiastically adopted Firefox so far. Even if the final release of IE7 improves mightily over the current beta, building that new and improved reputation will be an uphill climb.
The security features in IE7 look good on paper, but this week’s release marks the first time IE7 has been thrown into the crucible that is the Internet. The criminal gangs that control the malware racket are going to be gunning for IE7 and mercilessly probing for weaknesses. I’ll need to see a year’s worth of security bulletins before I’m ready to accept the idea that this time it really is different and IE7 is genuinely safe enough to recommend without reservation to friends and family members.
“Good enough” isn’t good enough for Microsoft in the case of IE7. On issues of security in particular, they’re going to have to earn back trust from a generation that’s been burned pretty badly by security flaws in Windows and IE. That will take time, and there’s no guarantee of success.
Meanwhile, Firefox has one pretty huge ally. Visit Google’s home page using Internet Explorer today and you’ll see the first ad to ever appear on that page – urging you to switch to Firefox.
Links
Feel free to leave comments here.
Ed Bott 
I’m impressed with IE7 beta 2. Been running it for two days without a problem. It certainly provides more control over security, and its Help File does a better job of explaining some of the esoteric options. Due to repeated broken extensions, I moved on to Opera as my second browser and it’s a comfortable fit for me.
“Due to repeated broken extensions,…” of Firefox, that is. Sorry.
I had trouble w/ Firefox and embedded Windows Media Player content at CNN a few days ago. I was pissed. Upgrading to WMP 9 worked, kinda, but CNN still bitched at me. What I’m asking is: Do you see WMP nativity as a threat to Firefox? If Firefox requires fumbling around w/ plugin dipswitches to see movies, I think people will get annoyed and see Firefox for what it really is: a tool for geeks with too much free time 😉
Anyhow, I still use Firefox and it rocks my world. And Windows Media Player sucks. And don’t get me started on Quicktime and Realgarbage.
Competition is a such a wonderful thing.
You’ve been dugg (link) … and it doesn’t appear you’re in agreement with the general power-user community…
John, I read through all those comments. I can’t see any consensus there – lot of divergent points of view.
Also, I don’t know that you can say that the commenters on that thread accurately reflect the “power user community.”
At any rate, if you go read my review in full, I hope the conclusion you draw is that 1) FF still will probably be continue to be preferred by power users, primarily for its extensions and 2) more technical users will be suspicious of security changes in IE7 and will want a documented record that they really work.
Firefox better than IE6 by any “objective” measure? You gotta be kidding me, Ed. There are so many — SO MANY — websites that just won’t work with Firefox. Firefox is a piece of sh*t by my “objective” measures because it doesn’t render many sites properly, including many pages on popular sites like Amazon.com and Buy.com, not to mention websites that use ActiveX. (And many legit sites do.) I remember PC World a few issues ago (late 2005?) said the same thing. I think with a good antispyware installed (I use Microsoft Anti-spyware; haven’t upgraded to Windows Defender yet), IE6 is very secure, and I use IE6 day in and day out on several PCs and I visit many sites including spyware sites (for work purposes) and my non-guinea pig accounts have never been infested with a single problem in the last few years, never. And I enjoy the ability to visit every website on the planet. Speaking of compatibility, I worry that IE7 may not play well (like Firefox) with some of the websites that only cater to IE6; so far my limited use of IE7 has been positive, but I’m sure there are sites, possibly including my company’s intranet sites, that may not work properly. For me, IE6 has been robust and likeable, and I don’t plan to switch before Vista arrives. Please, I expected better things from you, a reputable Windows writer (I love your books, by the way), than sounding like just every other journalist in praising Firefox even though it suffered more security holes last year than IE6. 90+% of websurfers still use IE, don’t they?
Brett, it really sounds like you haven’t used Firefox in a long time. I use it at least 50% of the time and very rarely run across a site that doesn’t work with it. These days, even many sites that use ActiveX controls provide alternate plug-ins for FF.
I am on Amazon.com all the time and can’t find a single page that doesn’t render perfectly in Firefox.
I would bet you’d find a hard time finding anyone even at Microsoft who will agree with you that “IE6 is very secure.”
Oh, and I don’t base my reviews on what other people write or on what has the most market share.
Firefox has a lot of trouble rendering Chinese and Japanese websites correctly (specifically Chinese/Japanese fonts). Oftentimes the Chinese text becomes fuzzy and distorted (too much anti-aliasing) and aesthetically very unpleasing under Firefox as the characters lose their square form. Firefox clearly doesn’t give a damn about the East Asian market.
Brett above might be speaking from Chinese text experience on Firefox as well. Firefox is clearly a disaster with respect to most Chinese websites.
Okay…
I’m a 55 year old woman who is very peeved at MS and “preferring” competition. In fact, I beta’d and then supported Lotus SmartSuite for a long time (from 1995.) It was FAR better than the MS Suite (still is!), but sheep being sheep for whatever reason, people still don’t get that it is better?? I run a home network with all dual or triple boot machines. I write code here and there (differing kinds.) I’ve learned alot, but manage to get stumped everywhere. Bottomline, I’m far more apt than the average user, a geek, some might say… But I digress…
At anyrate, after many years of using Netscape, then the Mozilla Suite, I installed FireFox hearing all the raves (I try to REFUSE TO USE IE.) FireFox doesn’t work with Zone Alarm if I want to pursue an attempted connection to my machine, it shows it isn’t the default browser? Now I have to go figure out what is up with this.
It doesn’t work with Windows Media Player on a number of pages? Try this…
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/whyValidate.aspx
Scroll down to “How can I tell if my copy of Windows is genuine?” and click the “Watch the Windows validation online demo.” I spent about 3 hours trying to make FireFox work with that… Do a registry edit (ShimInclusionList), add dlls to the plugins dir (npdrmv2.dll, npdsplay.dll, npwmsdrm.dll), do a FireFox GreaseMonkey thing (IEMediaMimic), a FireFox ActiveX thing (mozactivex-ff-15.xpi)…still no good.
And if I do something as simple as go to Amazon to listen to a sample piece of music (testing for my husband’s sake, as he now has FireFox) no way can I get the tunes most of the time, not in WMP or Real Player. Oh…but if I crank up IE it whips right up. What’s up with that? Conspiracy?
But I’m not into “sample music.” That was a test for another household user (or I will hear SCREAMS when he tries to use FireFox.) I work with other things…so try this:
http://www.arvd-symposium.org/lpmradio.shtml
Scroll to “Clinical Presentation and Diagnosis of ARVD” and try to launch the presentation in FireFox. Good luck. Now…try it in IE.
Want to use McAfee? Want to login? Oh…well you better find the solution (if you have the stamina). IF you can, you will learn that you must shove the NPMGWRAP.DLL into the FireFox plugins directory.
I don’t have time to chase this type of problem… Very few of my geek friends do, with many of them “giving in” and just using IE. IE works with all of the above. Why? Because everyone has given in and written their webdesign and code for IE?
What normal user can tolerate dealing with the special plugins, extensions etc. of FireFox? So please…help me understand what I am missing in the midst of all of this frustration? Do do tell me how FireFox is better? More secure? What good is some type of better security? But wait, is FireFox really more secure, how? If you are trying to get work done on the web…and can’t get to it due to the frustration of a browser that won’t let you, what risk is IE?
There is something wrong with this whole picture. I WANT to use FireFox…but I don’t want my time wasted piecing software together so I can use it.
Tink
I used FireFox until I got my new Dell with IE7 with windows 11 media player now ff won’t let windows media work on web pages so I have went back to Ie7 I works great And installed quickly. I will never go back to ff