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Is Firefox Really Better Than Internet Explorer?
By John F | March 18, 2008
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What web browser do you use? There’s a big possibility that it’s Internet Explorer or smaller possibility that it’s Firefox. Why do I suspect that it’s one of the big two browsers? Well, Internet Explorer’s world market share as of Jan 2008 was 67% with Firefox coming in at 16% [I have also seen a figure of 21% for Firefox]. With the following browsers Opera, Netscape and Safari straggling behind.
If you are using Internet Explorer [IE] please, please be using version 7. If not why not? Anything below version 7 is leaving whacking great big security holes or vulnerabilities when you browse, especially using Internet explorer 5 or 6. Upgrade now to version 7 before your computer is likely to be compromised.
Now, that’s not to say that IE7 is the bee’s knees, because it isn’t. It’s much better than version 6, and even includes tabbed browsing. So you don’t have to open up a new window [quite memory intensive] if you wish to have 2 or more websites open on your computer.
If you are using IE7, how many updates have you downloaded recently? Since I’ve been using it, I’ve downloaded at least 2 security patches, and that’s a worry as I do bank online. With its known security vulnerabilities Internet Explorer, hackers target this web browser specifically. they also target IE because they know that a huge percentage of people use it.
Microsoft gained its massive market share buy bundling Internet Explorer free to all computers sold with Windows as the operating system. At the time Netscape Navigator was its main rival, but you had to pay for Netscape in the early days. So IE raced ahead, as it was the main web browser for Windows based computers.
Mozilla Firefox was released in late 2004 as an open source, free browser that has been developed by volunteer programmers at the Mozilla Foundation, which is a non profit organization. The Mozilla Foundation took pieces of the old Netscape Navigator browser code and developed Firefox.
Firefox has three main features than raise it above Internet Explorer and these features mean Firefox has slowly but surely eroded Internet Explorer’s market share.
- The first feature was tabbed browsing. As I said earlier, tabbed browsing ensures a less memory intensive program and thus means less chance of program freezing up and crashing the computer.
- The second main feature is the security. Pop-up ads are dealt with much more firmly. Also Firefox does not use Active X or VB [Visual Basic] scripts. IE does. Active X and VB allow software to be installed on your computer without your knowledge.
- The third main feature is the scalability of Firefox with the amount of Firefox plug-ins that can make browsing the Internet a breeze. From security plug-ins to Flash video plug-ins. The list of them is quite impressive, and something that IE just cannot compete with [at the moment at least].
So am I saying that IE is not as good as Firefox? Well on paper [or a webpage], yes. However I find that I still use IE a fair bit, because, there is a slight flaw in the Firefox empire. Some web pages that are written specifically for IE, when viewed with Firefox look plain wrong and don’t translate too well. This is mainly down to web designers not optimising the page for both IE and Firefox.
Also, and this is the main reason I still use IE, I have been using IE for so long that I need to read my post and wean myself of IE and start to appreciate the benefits of Firefox myself. Nothing like leading by example is there?
What browser do you use? It would be good to hear what is preferred and why.
Topics: Free Software Usefulness, Other Computer Usefulness |