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72 Comments
- EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Wow, what a great evaluation! Aside from agreeing with almost everything he said it is a refreshing change from all the rampant fanboyism. There are good features in IE7, and even some things that work better in IE6 than Firefox. Refusing to acknowledge that is not only childish but prevents recognizing features that could improve Firefox. Those who say "Firefox will always reign supreme as the top browser" are delusional. Nothing is constant except change--remember it once looked as though nothing could topple Netscape too.
Regardless of what you think about Microsoft IE7 is good news. The updates (in particular improved CSS support and transparent PNG IMO) are good for web developers and by extension good for end users. More competition is never a bad thing and I hope this lights a fire under Firefox developers.
Bravo for the most intelligent, unbiased article I've seen in some time. My respect for the Firefox team has gone up a notch. Dugg! - Lynn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5He was very positive about IE7. He comments that the Firefox team should copy most of the new IE7 features.
- asadotzler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4staticten, one of the reasons people keep saying that is the very reason that extensions exist.
There are a set of features that pretty much everyone who uses a web browser must have in order to browse today's web. All web browsers should have those features. Then there are a set of features that would make browsing the web a lot easier or more productive for a large majority of users. Most web browser makers should seriously consider including these features. Finally, there are a set of features that only some people need to browser the web or to do it more easily or productively. Those features might actually get in the way for the majority of users and slow them down or make browsing less easy or less productive. It's that set of features that gave rise to the popularity of extensions.
A browser with a successful extension model and community of extension developers can relegate those niche features to add-ons so that the majority of users get the best possible experience and the multitudes of people with less common browser needs can still get what they want.
The problem for browsers like IE and Opera is that they must include everything that they think any important group of users (even a niche group) needs because they do not have a successful extension model or community of extension developers. This means an overcrowded and overcomplicated user experience for the majority of users to avoid angering or losing those users with less common browser needs.
Now, the web is not unchanging, and users adapt and learn and become dependent on new features over time, so there will need to be regular evaluations of which features belong in the core application and which features belong in the world of add-ons. A good example is tabbed browsing. There was a time when tabbed browsing was an extension and not a core feature. But as more and more people used it and as the feature started to become popularized by the Mozilla browser extensions, it started to look like a good candidate for inclusion in the core product. Feed View is another example. A year ago, the number of people consuming web feeds was a lot smaller than it is today. The number of people who even knew what a feed is was a lot smaller, and the number of sites offering this specialized formatting for their content was smaller. Today, we're seeing feeds really take off and people are starting to understand better what they are and how they can be used so it starts to make more sense to integrate more feed features in the core. We attempted to do that for Firefox 1.5 but time ran out and the feature was pushed out to Firefox 2, due out this summer.
The point I'm trying to make is that it does make sense for people to compare core features and extensions. When you understand why extensions exist, it makes it obvious that this comparison can be extremely useful when comparing various web browsers.
- A - jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The common misconception among people is that developers of one product are fanboys and cannot give credit where credit is due. Maybe in some project but in products that are great it generally takes developers with open minds to see the shortcomings of their product and the strengths of their competitor and how to use that to their advantage.
Asa, while often abrasive and arrogant, does recognize the nice little features that IE7 has. But is it going to be enough, the fact that Firefox can (and probably will) impliment the features before IE7 is released either in the form of a core feature or an extension.
Alot of the feature that IE7 has would be in Firefox today if the Gecko engine could handle it.
Full Page Zooming (Opera has had this for a long time so they should really get the credit), will be implimented either by extension or core in Firefox 3 with the new Cairo rendering engine.
Quick Tabs, already sort of in Firefox with FoXpose, but it's slow because of the limitations of the Gecko engine, to be fix in Fx3
Furthermore, Ryan, Microsoft didn't steal the RSS icon, they actually worked with Mozilla to decide on a standard Icon and as a result the current RSS icon used by Mozilla was decided the winner. It's good to see the open mindedness (about somethings) of the MS team to work together to fix the web. - j.carcinogen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"IE 7 beta 2 still isn't that bad but uh it still lacks the security. I don't want ActiveX"
did you read? he said activeX is disabled by default. - boohiss, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Microsoft can make IE7, IE8, IE2000...Firefox will always reign supreme as the top browser."
Why? Because you have irrational hatred of MSFT. - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1He mentioned that the new IE7 lacks a menu-bar. I've noticed this becoming a persistent theme in all of IE7... Windows Vista, and Office 12... menu bar going away, and all of the functionality scattered about.
I don't think I like that at all. - BangoSkank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It is silly to talk about IE 7 coping from FireFox. Since as stated Earlier, FireFox copied much from Opera. It is all about who can give use the best features with the most compatibility. I do think that FireFox has more features currently, but IE is really close. IE 7 has been more consistently rendering pages correctly for me, and has less flakyness around things like ActiveX and PDFs. I think I will have both browsers for a time, but it is likely that IE will win. IE's tabs work great, all my toolbars came over perfectly, RSS enhancements work well, Interface is clean.
I know all you FireFox zealots freak out when anyone one says anything positive about IE. but it is not about using non-Microsoft products, or product loyalty, its about the best tool for a users needs. IE will be better for some, and FireFox will be better for others. - Fallout75, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IE7 Beta 2 is clunky and the usability sucks. I found it hard to figure things out and move stuff around where as Firefox is simple, customizable and just works.
One thing I did like about IE is the show all tabs button, which lets you see thumbnails of all the tabs you have open, other than that, IE7 is clunkier that 6.0
I'm sticking with Firefox. - jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1staticten, if you don't like extensions and you want a barebones browser, don't install any, it's pretty simple.
- DevilsRejection, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2what people don't understand is that developers are very cool, laid back people.
it's the fanboys who start the flame wars, Firefox vs. IE, Linux vs Windows, Mac vs. Windows, these are the ***** who go out and about, with a completly biased view of products, and get insulted as idiots. - BangoSkank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It is interesting that IE 7 warns that this link may be "Phishing Website" and it is suspicious.
- tidejwe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0And a firefox team member is going to have such an unbiased view of the competitor's work...problem is that firefox is open-source. . . eventually as it picks up enough popularity, all the hackers will be exploiting it, and even worse than IE, they will now have the source code to make it easy....
- walt100, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There are several features in IE7 that offer an improved experience over Firefox. Will I switch away from Firefox? Not right now. After all, it took me a year to let go of the IE experience and move to Firefox in the first place. I like to stick with a browser once I get comfortable with it, even if something else is a better experience. Was it just me, or did I read a hint of sour grapes? A lot of unnecessary "we already did that" language.
- worbd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ jinexile:
You are getting it all wrong. Extensions in Firefox are *almost the same* as ActiveX in IE. It's a way for malware to find its way onto your computer. No one is saying that FF has ActiveX support. - akinder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0IE7 is going to take most of the umph out of Firefox's adoption rates, but it's good to see the browser 'wars' starting to heat up again.
- whitehatlurker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Mastertech: "Asa claims Firefox invented everything."
Just the stuff that originated in Opera ;-)
He seems to be fairly careful about that "feature Q was popularised by FF" ... it is hard to argue with that, primarily as this is subjective (at best). You can say "Q was in browser N for years", which can be shot down with "Ah, but FF popularised it." - chiklit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0A bit biased towards Firefox with 'firefox invented this and that' but still a good review of IE7 in comparison to Firefox and other alternative browsers.
- leobaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0
There one feature IE has that firefox sorely lacks, and thats a ZOOM feature. Not just a 'make text bigger' feature but the ability to actually zoom a page post render is tremendously helpful for those of us with high resolution monitors reading narrow blog pages. - Gryphon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"IE's inclusion of Firefox features, from tabbed browing, to web feed (RSS and others) support and pop-up blocking, is a validation of the pioneering, user-focused work we've done in building Firefox."
All things that were around long before Firefox with the use of browser shell modifications, just because they weren't main stream, doesn't mean that makes Firefox first because it is. However, maybe they did invent "tabbed browing". - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@walt100
"There are several features in IE7 that offer an improved experience over Firefox."
what features? - cbags, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Also the RSS icon was apprently adopted by more than just MSFT...
- opera, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'm using Opera to read what a Firefox team member writes about IE7...
I dunno why, don't think I'll ever use IE again, and I'm sceptic to FF. Used it a long time, but it's too slow, and I don't want all the extension-based features. - blowdart, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1And lets not forget they asked permission to use the RSS icon.
Interesing definition of stealing Ryan has. Maybe all the koolaid has warped his brain. - zweben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am definitely looking forward to the release of IE 7. Hell no i'm not going to use it, but I honestly believe the people at Microsoft this time when they say that they are going to do their best to fix CSS support (mostly because they already listed a lot of specific problems they had on their list to kill).
IE 7 with better CSS support = my life as a web designer is much nicer. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0[quote]There one feature IE has that firefox sorely lacks, and thats a ZOOM feature.[/quote]
It will probably be added eventually. For now, there is an extension you could try:
http://www.memb.jp/~deq/mozilla/pagezoom/ - Lynn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ RyanJones
Did you read the story? Asa Dotzler explains the new features that he would like to copy into Firefox. - mesostinky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1IE 7 beta preview is a beta so I expected to find bugs. But personally I found it unuseable. Major sites like Slashdot don't render properly and leave miles of extra blank space on the bottom of the page and scrolling is jerky. Scrolling on my laptop where IE 6 and Firefox work perfectly is too painful to bother with. Plus the button setup is totally fubared beyond belief. It make the latest version of Netscape look sane. Home button all the way to the right away from back and forward? Yea, that makes sense...
Either way even if it turns out to be a good browser, why would anyone use it? MS has lost the public's faith and rightly so. Browsing the web with IE just isn't a safe thing to do. - gsnedders, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Quick tabs originally come from Omniweb, where they have been for years.
What I care about IE7 is standards support. For me, a browser on an OS I don't use is fine, as long as it has decent standards support. - herrin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I really liked this breakdown. He shows respect, points out things he dislikes, give props for things he likes and gives a great breakdown of the differences in the new IE.
- fennec, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wish I could somehow port my favorite extensions to Opera, since I'm so used to them. Opera is lightning fast, even compared to the old days firefox (when it was still called phoenix).
But firefox is good enough for me. Hopefully, release 1.5.1 will have fixed the constant crashes firefox experienced when doing simple operations (so far, so good).
IE7 looks good. The anti-phishing feature tends to err on the side of caution (as it should). Some java applets behave odd it ie7, tho. Still, I'll reserve my final judgement for when the final release comes out. - jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"ActiveX in IE is extensions in Firefox. If you hate ActiveX you should stay well away from Firefox.
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i think we'll see exploits soon for firefox. it is really not that secure."
The ActiveX plugin (not extension) for Firefox is not even listed on the plugins page, it only works (last time I checked) with WMP and only on whitelisted sites. This implimentation is far more secure than IE's - ihybridora, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0thats great...it ain't going to be my main browser of use. but maybe become my alternative.
- MOGua, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The more competition, the better.
O9, IE7, Fx1.5 all have their pros and cons...
but with all three alive and well, the browser scene is exciting again. - naples, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thank god for this, I thought this was going to be another "lets bash IE because FF is sooooo cool" type of comments.
Good to see the fanboys are starting to grow up. =] - NoahK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Asa has a huge ego. Did you see that Chris Wilson from MS posted a comment?
- scottt106, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's funny to see how many of the features of IE7 he considered picking up and adopting for firefox. All for the better, I suppose, but how long until IE and FF become clones of each other? And then it's hard to say which will ultimately "reign supreme"-- Firefox has the advantage of a vast selection of extensions, but IE will have the advantage of further integration within Windows.
Either way, it's good to see such an improvement from IE6. It's a benefit to users using IE, and obviously FF users will also benefit in later versions when FF implements some of MS's ideas. - Artifez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Baaaaaaaaa Microsoft is bad Baaaaaaaaa
sucsessful companies are bad baaaaaaaaaa - thetruth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Too bad it's still integrated with Windows and its dumb security zone *****, making it inherently inferior no matter what features it copies.
- vypergts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I agree with his initial impressions of IE7. I like where they are going with this version. I still prefer Firefox simply because this is a beta and not going to have all the support of a final build and as mentioned there are security problems. One thing I think could be improved upon in IE is the options for tab browsing. In Firefox not only are the options for tabs more extensive to begin with, but there are extensions to give the user even more options. Maybe I'm just clueless but I can't find anything in IE7 that gives me the option to open links in a new tab and Firefox's tabs are mobile, meaning I can put them at the top or the bottom of the window. It's a good start but I think there are a few luxuries that still Firefox affords over IE7.
- CheapDigWannbe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is a great thing for every PC computer user....
...but the little immature fanboy inside me is screaming... F.U. F.U You sell out =) - BrianBillow, on 04/08/2008, -0/+0Glad to see that he want to implement a quick tab like feature into FireFox, I love the quick tab feature. I hope that Apple will end up doing the samething since quick tabs is so useful.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ActiveX in IE is extensions in Firefox. If you hate ActiveX you should stay well away from Firefox.
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i think we'll see exploits soon for firefox. it is really not that secure. - worbd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0
ActiveX in IE is extensions in Firefox. If you hate ActiveX you should stay well away from Firefox. - diggnationdevon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I agree with all of you, that was a postiive non-negative faboy type of review. I have to tell you IE 7 beta 2 on XP is definetely a huge improvment over IE 6. But the one thing I absolutely cannot stand with IE is the fact that it has ActiveX. Sure its features are nice, but the security vulnerabilities with it just aren't worth the features. People don't mind just clicking a download button anyway.
- worbd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh, there have been exploits for Firefox. You just didn't notice because no one was using it.
- kcmcgruff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am a Firefox fan. Have been for some time now. HOWEVER, I got ie7 beta to test it out and have fun looking for reasons to hate it. Problem is, I can't hate it. It is a HUGE improvement over anything MSFT has done browserwise in a LONG freaking time. Will it supplant FF as the top browser? Doubtful. It does have some great features, enhancements, etc. I actually intend on using it for the visitations of hotmail and live.com which I use, as well as any site that is not very friendly to FF. Not at all bad. DIGGED.
- staticten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"staticten, if you don't like extensions and you want a barebones browser, don't install any, it's pretty simple."
That's not my point........my point is.....people keep saying "well, that feature can be found via extension"
know what i mean!!!?!
It's like, people seem to compare what's buit-in and what's available via extension, which doesn't make sense... - staticten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@jinexile
oh yeah, and when i said "i'd still use ie....blahblah.."
I meant to say, I USe FIrefox mainly, but keep IE handy for those site who strictly require IE to run properly or even run at all. - Jorg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"IE 7 beta 2 still isn't that bad but uh it still lacks the security. I don't want ActiveX"
ActiveX controls are no more a security then any other software you download and run on your computer. The only thing that was insecure about them was that at one time they installed automatically, which has not been true for a LONG time. Now they are just like any other plugin, you must choose to install them. (And when I say plugin, I mean something like the 'Flash Player' plugin, NOT the flash content that it plays.)
They are no more dangerous then any .exe file you get from any shareware site. They can actually be much safer because you can configure the browser to only run them if they are signed by a trusted vendor. When was the last time you got a signed exe from winfiles? :)
Jorgie -
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