Will IE7 be better than Firefox?

Posted in Browsers, Microsoft, Spread IE by Elliott Back on February 20th, 2005.

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.

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Chris 3 years ago 1 point
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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).

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http://www.climbing-frames-etc.co.uk

orangeguru 3 years ago 1 point
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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*

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http://www.orangeguru.net/weblog/

Jenic Rycr 3 years ago 1 point
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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)

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elliottback 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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1 /people/elliottback/ /people/elliottback/following/

Krunchy 3 years ago 1 point
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Untill it supports standards and Microsoft get some decent features.. sadly, no I don't think it will be a better browser :(

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Ravu al Hemio 3 years ago 1 point
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There are a number of things that IE does better than Firefox already

I suppose you are happily referring to the standards that IE set in all its time of existence. I can assure you that <abbr title="Internet Exploder">IE</abbr> 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 r0x0red by a lame script kiddie.

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Mike 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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Nick 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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http://kuragari.rr.nu

D. J. 3 years ago 1 point
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There is no way in hell IE7 will be better than firefox!!! firefox rules!

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Mike 3 years ago 1 point
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"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.

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Nick 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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http://kuragari.rr.nu

Jarvis 3 years ago 1 point
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Here's a feature idea.... PNG support!

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Aphyr 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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http://aphyr.com

David 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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Aphyr 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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http://aphyr.com

David 3 years ago 1 point
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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).

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Mike 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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Salem 3 years ago 1 point
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i would use firefox for adblock alone.

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Larry 3 years ago 1 point
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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.

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Steve Red 2 years ago 1 point
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Anyone who supports IE6 over firefox is a MONG!

Thats like saying Windows 95 is better than Linux!

Linux is crap 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!!!! :)

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Tian Haw 2 years ago 1 point
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But however microsoft build it's internet explorer, it is too embeded into the system, and i doesn't load pages fast enough.

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MiguelUltraDownloader 2 years ago 1 point
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Gays , IE Will Ever and always be the best !! Browser and shut up your stupid mouth full of shit ... 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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...)

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http://softonic.tk3.net

Shagmcmuffin 2 years ago 1 point
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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.

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Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Will IE7 be better than Firefox?

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