The browser wars have officially begun, again. This time, its 2 vs 7. Firefox 2 vs IE 7. Within days of IE going public, Firefox released their long awaited Firefox 2 browser.
Now, even before I get into the browsers, I have a few questions to ask. Exactly who was waiting for Firefox 2? And Internet Explorer 7? What were you not able to accomplish with both Firefox 1.6 or IE 6 that you were anxiously awaiting 2 and 7? Now that 2 and 7 have released, will the internet start getting restless about Firefox 3 and IE 8? Security did you say? Well wait for 2 months and soon the fun shall begin on both Firefox and IE.
Nonetheless, now that both have come out, and sooner or later Microsoft is going to force dump IE 7 on us in form of automatic update, here is a quick take on newer versions of both browsers.
Internet Explorer 7
I consider myself very high computer literate, and given the knowledge we “computer literate” crowd are supposed know about IE and its terrible history, I must say I LOVE Internet Explorer 6. I know about its security issues well enough, but then till date I have not encountered or visited sites which have threatened IE’s security. Frankly except for more advanced active-x control (heck I wish they had done away with it completely), I did not wish anything more in IE 7. I wouldn’t have minded it if they had just renamed their browser IE 7.
But, no. Microsoft did what it loves to do best. Copying and Catching up to others. Hence, they HAD to copy Opera, Safari and most prominently Firefox and make their browsers look like theirs. That they control 85 to 90% of browser market still didn’t given the confidence to innovate is sincerely appalling.
And in what must be one of the most bizarre UI designs ever, IE 7 does away with menu bars – so no more can I find the familiar windows buttons like File, Edit, View etc on top left. This does make sense when you consider that most of Vista too is designed this way, but for Windows XP, this is just lame.
And whose idea was it to move the refresh page button and stop button from their original places to a spot after the address bar? The address bar is now the first thing you see on this explorer, and then your toolbars like google toolbar, and then in a bizarre twist all your settings are now docked on a toolbar below it on the right. I can’t say how annoyed I am with this.
IE 7 maybe more secure (if we believe Microsoft), but packs in many features which I am not sure I want or will use – ever. The inbuilt RSS reader, the anti-phishing checker, the pop-up blocker, etc are all a standard in this new browser, which means get ready for more vulnerability attacks on this poor kid. Tabbing is in-built (and I admit, I love it too!) – Microsoft also developed some kind of new font display, which I must say makes web pages look so much better. Though they screwed around with CSS, which means half the world will now have to spend endless hours fixing their websites for IE 7.
And, the one feature which I really really liked IE 6 over firefox – it was FAST. IE 7, for all its add-ons and what nots takes forever to load, almost the same as Firefox. Which to me is a bad sign for a browser which technically is an integral part of the OS itself.
But more than anything else, what annoyed me most about IE 7 was its crashes. This freaking browsers crashes on every third or fourth tab I open. It crashes if I have too many windows open – it crashes if it has to stop too many pop ups – it crashes if I change tabs too fast. I refuse to believe that IE 7 has gone public, and it keeps crashing on me this way. I sincerely hope Microsoft does something about it, very very soon, or else a lot of people are going to be unhappy, and switch to….
…Firefox 2
Which is what I did.
Though the geek world and many people who consider hating Microsoft cool have gone and on about how Firefox is here to save the world, I am not one of its biggest fans. So frankly I was never really excited or enthusiastic about Firefox 2. I knew from various forums and news reports that Firefox 2 was also going to be more “secure” and have many features.
Unfortunately, the only feature of interest was the in built Spell-check. I must say I am not disappointed by that feature. The rest of the features of Firefox 2 have little or not difference to IE – the standard tabbing, pop-up blocker, anti phishing, etc etc are a given. Nothing dramatic here. Though what they did was to improve their overall UI look. And thankfully, they had the sense to keep the File-Edit Menu bar.
My biggest grouse against Firefox has been its terrible memory leak problem, and the way it loves to eat up memory and CPU. This was reported by many people, yet people behind Firefox refused to admit it, which pissed me off. Especially the attitude and position, the lead engineer Ben Goodger took on Firefox’s memory issues. And now, with Firefox 2, what happens? They have quietly addressed the problem, and suddenly, hey presto, Firefox is no longer the memory-hungry and CPU intensive as it used to be. Heck, its running smoothly and better than IE itself on my system with a measly 256 Mb Ram.
Now, that last part was very impressive to me. The fact that they have addressed those issues and finally made it a light browser had made me happy. Also, the much touted Spell Check feature, actually works and works pretty well. And it is pretty un-intrusive.
Though thats not the end of my peeves. Tighter integration with Google has only annoyed – The anti-phishing feature is thanks to Google. When you try to subscribe to a feed, it takes you to Google reader. I know I can change it, but I don’t like the fact that Google has to be involved with all aspects of my online life! Whats worse, when using Google.com from Firefox, there were several times when the search results redirected off Google. I have never seen this anytime – usually the search results contain links directly to the website, but a couple of times, these results were re-directed through Google. Exactly what is Google keeping track of when you use Firefox?
Other than my concern above, on the whole i think Firefox has done with minimum fuss upgrade.
Overall
Clearly, much against my wishes, I have to say Firefox is a better browser as of today. If only IE crashed less, and they got those damn menu bar back, I would still be inclined towards it, but as it stands, Firefox 2 is the way to go. At least for now.