Will IE7 be better than Firefox?
Ensight asks the seminal question, “Will it be better than FireFox?” Then he lists the top four features he thinks that the new browser will include:
- Standards compliance
- Security (especially with regards to plugins)
- Tabbed browsing
- Modularity
In that regard, we’re really just talking about catching up to Firefox. In a market where Firefox currently dominates for features, people are hard pressed to think up anything original that Microsoft might do with IE7 to actually innovate on top of what Firefox and other browsers have introduced. So, here’s my list of thing I think Microsoft might, and ought, to do to beat Firefox:
- Visual bookmarks and history: you should be able to navigate your history like looking at a tree of webpages you accessed. The idea of history should also be extended to the future–to get a view of what pages yours links to.
- Context sensitive panels and toolbars, that would for example display map information for pages with addresses, or lookup names and addresses in telephone directories, or that could even define tricky words and learn the vocabulary of end users.
- Better support for achiving and storing favorite pages.
- Different kinds of printing: four pages to one, for example.
These are just some ideas, but I’m Microsoft has more in mind than the Firefox featureset.
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2005 at 1:56 pm and is tagged with lookup names, visual bookmarks, tricky words, telephone directories, modularity, names and addresses, toolbars, different kinds, firefox, end users, ensight, vocabulary, ie7, new browser, regard, compliance, microsoft, map. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on February 20th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
Never mind the features you’ve listed. What about the ability to print out a page of A4 without chopping off the right hand side of the page ! They’ve managed to get to version 6 of their browser and still can’t get something as basic as printing sorted out. If it wasn’t for Firefox we wouldn’t be seeing a V7 of IE. M$ had already declared IE6 was going to be the last version (until Firefox arrived).
on February 24th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
Hmmm. I am curious how standard the standard compliance will be. So far I haven’t been impressed by ANY browser maker in that respect. AND I think some of these standards SUCK anyway. The whole idea of CSS is misguided in several aspects.
The thing I am really afraid of are so called ‘new standards’ imposed by MS on the web.
*sigh*
on March 9th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
Dear Lord! Here im reading a blog on spreadfirefox about a “What If..” for spreadie.com and low and behold such a thing exists! Im absolutely disgusted. IE7 is still IE. Still the program they stole, still the old program with new things built on top of it. Still being used to dominate the market where they arent even wanted. Still the browser that cant read xhtml correctly, or css for that matter. The one that makes frontpage websites ONLY work with ie, instead of portability they force such things on us so people think IE is the “better” browser. Its disgusting. Firefox will always be better, every new version of IE firefox will make one better and sooner. Opensource will rule! (I say that with some shame considering im typing from a windows computer at school..lol)
on March 10th, 2005 at 4:35 am
There are a number of things that IE does better than Firefox already–and I hope that it gets better in the future. I took out the spreadIE domain on that hope, and forwarded it to this blog category precisely because I believe that IE is an acceptable browser.
Everything you say is true, but it is not enough to make me want to switch to Firefox.
on April 14th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Untill it supports standards and Microsoft get some decent features.. sadly, no I don’t think it will be a better browser
on May 24th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
I suppose you are happily referring to the standards that IE set in all its time of existence. I can assure you that IE does do these things better, since everybody is forced to comply with them. I also hope that IE will become better in the future, so that even the poor no-single-bit-of-experience users can also browse the Net without getting bombed by dialers, pop-ups, questionable ActiveX controls, etc. Even though I do respect your opinion about IE, don’t come running to me if you get r0×0red by a lame script kiddie.
on May 24th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
IE is and always will be BETTER than Firefox. Cant stand that stupid left-right page shift when browsing sites. Trust me, the MAJORITY of people just want to browser and dont give a damn about standards, accessibility. 508 whatever, and all that other stuff that earns people icons to plaster at the bottom of their home pages.
on May 24th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
IE 7 still will lack support for CSS2. Web standards shouldn’t be what IE can support. Just because somebody fails a test doesn’t automatically mean we should lower the the standards for them. They need to do better to reach those standards. It’s the same with software. I don’t see why IE should be any difference. In the long run, Firefox will still be better. As IE7 is released, so will future versions of Firefox such as 1.1 and 1.5. The only way Microsoft can win is to rebuilt IE from scratch and dump support for ActiveX.
on May 25th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
There is no way in hell IE7 will be better than firefox!!! firefox rules!
on May 26th, 2005 at 9:28 am
“There is no way in hell IE7 will be better than firefox!!! firefox rules! ”
So long as that content shift is there, I (and a heck of a lot of other folks), will NOT use it. There’s enough crazy stuff in the world to look at than to have my browser move left and right for every single page I go to.
I just downloaded the latest FF and its still there. So they apparently have no concerns about fixing this major UI problem.
on May 26th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Probably because nobody else is experiencing this problem. There’s such thing as Bugzilla. Get your lazy butt over there and report the problem. Not doing so would be ridiculous. By the way, I get more sites not loading correctly in IE than in Firefox. This is probably because IE doesn’t support the CSS standards.
on May 26th, 2005 at 11:39 pm
Here’s a feature idea…. PNG support!
on July 19th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
I’m guessing your complaint about “content shifting” has to do with Gecko recomputing the positions of elements based on further data as it comes in. I see this mostly in IE, but it’s likely caused by oddly structured HTML or elements (especially tables) with ambiguous widths.
on July 19th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Mike, users reap the benefits of open standards whether or not they know or ‘care’ about them. You seem to be trying to make a logical jump from “people don’t care about standards” to “standards have no advantage”, which is clearly nonsense, unless you really believe single-vendor lock-in and corresponding high prices have no negative effect on users.
Elliot, there is already, now, a plugin for Firefox that uses the Google Maps API to automatically add proper maps to any page with addresses in it.
on July 19th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
1. Interesting idea. Since people (especially with tabbed browsing) navigate in a branching fashion, the idea of trees for history makes a lot of sense.
2. Context sensitive menus? You mean like the bugmenot plugin (sensitive to username/password fields), form-fill extensions, or the built-in search functionality to look up highlighted words in Firefox?
3. Wget.
4. This is a function of the print driver, not browser.
on July 19th, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Here’s the link to abovementioned plugin:
http://www.vinq.com/greasemap/
I never understood the logic of the “why use something that is available now already, when we can just wait a few years for Microsoft to implement the same thing” crowd. Or the “What’s so great about that? Microsoft will probably have the same thing in a few years!” mentality. I guess some people believe that two birds in the bush (an imaginary future product that might be great) are better than one in the hand (an existing product that is good).
on July 19th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
IE is not that bad of a browser, it just needs a hell of a lot more updates. I removed a shitload of spyware and viruses on half my family’s computers and guess what… All because of IE…. After cleaning everyone of them, I hide IE’s shortcuts and put FireFox…. Strangely enough I never heard a single complaint since then.
Promoting IE while Firefox can help a ton of not-so-good-on-a-computer-people is completely insane.
on September 8th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
i would use firefox for adblock alone.
on September 20th, 2005 at 7:32 am
I know one thing that firefox never has and IE does. Firefox does not got color scrollbars. I rather have a buggy Internet Explorer then firefox. I will use for firefox to search cracks only. But I never had no spyware ever since I upgrade to Windows XP SP2.
on January 5th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Anyone who supports IE6 over firefox is a MONG!
Thats like saying Windows 95 is better than Linux!
Linux is **** in my opinion, but its still better than an out of date operating system such as Windows 95.
IE6 does not even support tabbed browsing ffs!!!!
on March 14th, 2006 at 3:26 am
But however microsoft build it’s internet explorer, it is too embeded into the system, and i doesn’t load pages fast enough.
on June 28th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
**** , IE Will Ever and always be the best !! Browser and shut up your stupid mouth full of **** … and to those stupids that said IE6 does not support tabbed browsing, it`s true , but because that here comes the IE7 the best of all and better that all other browsers (without Offending browsers , without them , we couldn`t leave) and let me say that i also use firefox , but the best ever ill be IE 7 and Always my default Browser ( and i am proud of that xD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…)
on July 7th, 2006 at 12:33 am
I wonder how many people who are dissing Firefox have actually used it? Everyone who has used Firefox after I reccomended it to them has thanked me and vowed never to return to IE.
on July 9th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
I have used firefox since 0.8 when it was known as firebird. I just recently switched to IE7…because firefox got all wierd on me. The google toolbar at top right didn’t function anymore (and i have to go into safe mode and fix it or something).
IE7 browser loads faster then Firefox, but i still think firefox loads the pages faster. I also liked plugin part of Firefox, which is in IE7 too but i havn’t downloaded any. Mabey IE7 will get longer to load after I download some plugins. Another IE7 annoyance is that u cant have the favourites as buttons on the top.
I’ll probably go back to Firefox after i reformat the hard drive. But, for the 90% who use IE right now, they should be satisfied with IE7 and probably wouldn’t switch to firefox. I think IE will take over as the major browser again.
on July 11th, 2006 at 10:28 am
I just switched to Firefox from IE, because I wanted to know why everyone liked it. Although IE 7 sounds promising, I dont think it will ever offer the functionality firefox does. Microsoft probably would not think to build a customizable browser that is as good as firefox, and i dont think they will offer add-ons either.
The only thing I’m saying, is that IE 7 may have tabbed browsing, but I highly doubt that it will form a user-developed community that firefox has already etablished.
Firefox users says IE seems “otdated” because it took so long to offer the functions (tabs) that Firefox has. If Firefox ever updates itself again to keep up with IE competitors, it will just take IE a century to fight back.
Rule on, Firefox!
on July 24th, 2006 at 7:07 am
started reading but got tired with the way ie’s support for css is being compared to firefox. i’m a web applications developer and also into a bit of web design. i developed an application with a friend usin strictly css for the design and guess what, of the three browsers we tested it on, the pages displayed perfectly on internet explorer 7 beta, no transparency on opera 9 and on firefox, the user might even uninstal the browser immediately. dont think i’m an enemy of firefox or something but i made this discovery this weekend and that has changed my view of firefox, altho i’m currently usin firefox to view this page:)
i’ll post a link to the application very soon cos its still under development. that’ll make you folks see for yourselves. IE7 rules!!!
on July 27th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I have run speed tests on both of these browsers (ff & ie7, FF with faster fox) and ie7 is definately faster. Quite a bit as a matter of a fact. Listen i like fire fox great browser many features that ie6 just didn’t offer. However, what was once good doesn’t always remain that way. If you want to settle for what’s good now and terrible in the future you’re more than welcome. But, I believe I’ll stick with what’s better today and tomorrow.
on July 28th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Where’s all the extensions and themes? Surely IE7 should have those by now if they wanted to compete with Firefox. And what about the W3C standards? You follow them step by step yet sometimes your page still looks crappy in IE no matter what version you use. Firefox 2 is coming out soon and it’s still packed with way more than IE has to offer. Will there ever be an extension for IE that you don’t have to pay for? Will users always sit there seeing the same old boring interface each day? Who knows? Maybe those Internet Explorer fans should contact Microsoft about that.
on September 19th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
IE7 has CSS 2.1 compliance. MS stated that they are complying with WC3 standards. And yes .png support has been added as well. ActiveX will be disabled until you allow them to run. The pop-up blocker works better then ever. RSS feed is the best. The buttons for favorites are great. And the speed blows FF out of the water. I used FF back when it was thunderbird. I toyed with it but always used IE because it was faster. I had to stop using FF at 0.9 because it would crash or lock up my computers. I can finally use 1.5 again but see no reason to. And I have never had spyware on my computer. Why? It’s called Spyware Blaster & McAfee.
on September 28th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Mike said:
on May 24th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
“Trust me, the MAJORITY of people just want to browser and dont give a damn about standards, accessibility.”
It’s true they don’t give a damn because the web designers have to FIGHT with their pages to make IE display them correctly. If we all quit rewriting our code to work with the piece of **** IE you can bet everyone would be concerned about standards and accessability. I spend 1/4 of my time in design and programming and 3/4 of my time to make it work in IE.