Mozilla Firefox vs. Internet Explorer

I personally use Mozilla for about 90% of the time when im on the internet. The other 10% of the time im forced to use IE because some websites don´t work at all with Firefox. At the moment Firefox can be considered "safer" then what IE appears to be, but thats not entirely true. Although Firefox was the first to offer an effective pop up blocker and viewing websites in tabs it really is not that much more secure then what IE is. Hackers have just always worked with IE and know it inside and out. With the recent rise of FIrefox and a new version due out in November (correct me if im wrong) hackers will start paying more and more attention to it...

Opera

I say use FireFox. The Launch music servace doesn´t work with FireFox, and that´s the only thing I use IE for. FireFox won´t download anything without asking you first (as far as I know, correct me if I´m wrong) but IE just doesn´t care. And I like the ability to have multiple tabs open in FF. I can be looking at four different sites and only have one application of FF running. __________________________ And for those of you who just can´t wait, I´ve finally started The Holocaust! __________________________ 4 8 15 16 23 42 Twenty bucks to whoever can tell me what the deal is with those numbers. I´ll give you a hint: They have somthing to do with a guy named Hurley. Edited by - Killa on 10/5/2005 1:45:42 PM

SP2 corrects that issue and now nothing is downloaded to your computer with you knowing about it. Along with many other security updates that truly do show MS is fighting. And some of those security features work, surprisingly enough. But of course, this is about IE. I personally use IE, and where i don´t think firefox is bad, the main reason i do not like it is that, like it has been mentioned above, some sites do not work and there is advanced HTML that is not compatible with it. Until thats corrected, i will continue to use IE6, which is simply the target of more hackers, and a lot of people just hate MS. I sure as hell don´t hate MS, but i don´t like them either. I just don´t like how many people use anything OTHER than MS products purely because they hate MS. Its stupid. MS is very, very good at what it does. Its providing programs for the entire bleeping <b>WORLD </b> thats difficult. Why can´t you all get that? MS is hacked more because its USED more. I <i>PROMISE </i> you, that if firefox becomes used by over 60% of the population, it will show its that it too has gaping security holes. Don´t agree with me? Think again. Nothing can stop a determined hacker except unplugging your computer. If a hacker truly wants into your comp, they WILL get in. Firewalls are good only for pests. If a hacker wants into Firefox, for gods sake people, ITS OPEN SOURCE! Have you even thought about that? Firefox is open source, which means hackers can see exactly how it runs and figure out exactly how to get past its security measures. *sigh*

There is a switch you can turn on to permit FF to download and install directly from a website but the default is to keep the switch off. Why anyone would turn it on is beyond me but it is available as a &quot;convenience.&quot; <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> There are some business sites that only work properly with IE. And, of course, MS Update seems only to work correctly with IE (I wonder why? <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>). IE still dominates corporate IT software deployments. At home, I use FF in all instances unless nothing other than IE works. I´m thinking of comparing Opera to FF to see if those business sites that don´t work with FF wold work with Opera. I doubt it but you never know.

i find many sites that are fully functional and display properly in IE6 that don´t do the same in FF, do indeed show up correctly in Opera and Classic Mozilla. Although I like FF´s easy functionality and advanced settings, I find for sites with a lot of features, Opera works best for me and it´s quite a bit faster too, and has all the front end features that i like (tabbed browsing and grouped home pages/grouped bookmarks) and the download manager is more robust than FFs. but it lacks a pop-up blocker..

Firefox is far superior. It has much better standards support. The fact of the matter is that IE is holding back progress in web development. It still doesn´t support XHTML correctly. Its CSS support is equally laughable and forces people to find workarounds to make things display correctly. The security isn´t as tight as FF. Spyware is a major problem when using IE. Security holes have been a constant problem with IE6. Sure, firefox has had a few small security holes but they´ve been fixed within hours. Firefox beats IE in every aspect. 99% of sites work with FF. The only ones that dont are ones which require ActiveX components be installed.

<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>I sure as hell don´t hate MS, but i don´t like them either. I just don´t like how many people use anything OTHER than MS products purely because they hate MS <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Aye, I agree with that there. The problem is that MS only update IE to plug vulnerabilities (which they did fine with SP2...), they don´t update it that regularly otherwise - preferring to opt for &quot;grand releases&quot; as they make IE7.0 SP2 stops auto downloads, stops active X components - heck, it stops everything. When IE 7.0 comes about, they should (note should, I do <b>not </b> know if its true) have tightened up their HTML parsing so that its more inline with the WCC - so its more WCC compliant. Also it should adopt many other strategies that other browsers use like tabbed browsing etc. FF have always released many updates, not only to address security issues (which as BP has pointed out, have had a significant amount <i>more </i> critical security patches than MS´s IE), but also things like WCC compliance as they go along. Maybe MS needs to also undertake this, implementing even small fixes on the fly - rather than waiting for important updates to implement things. Which is better? I don´t use pure IE, and don´t use pure FF either. I have a mozilla based browser - works fine for me. I use IE due to its simple windows &quot;my computer&quot; type ftp ability - which is a god send. Most FTP programs seem to crash or cockup whislt uploading, whereas IE has never had any issue for me. I use FF because I can select what cookie from what website I will accept easily...

*Hides Thread out of sight for the Rabbit God* I use *gasp* IE6.0, and for one simple reason, im too lazy to trade it in for another browser and it suits me just fineI have no need for another Browser as long as this one keeps serving me, and please, don´t give me all the exploit stuff, Ive heard of it, and frankly, I don´t care, I have a decent Firewall (Zonealarm Pro) a Hardware Firewall (on the router) and the windows Firewall on top, although that doesn´t do anything. I think im one of the last few remaining actually using IE6.0

IE mostly, though I have and run Firefox 1.0.4 Mozilla 1.7.12 Opera 8.01 Netscape Beta 8 (Based on Firefox 1.0) Maxthon 1.3.3 {Build 50} (Runs on IE)

blackhole - I agree with the security gapes that are in FF, people just haven´t looked hard enough yet... Im using Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 (Deer Park) and I can´t tell all that much of a difference between it and the current version of the 1.0. I checke

Loc - The Rabbit-God sees all! So... you *still* use IE? *Hangs head* Ah, you and Dafty are a matched set. Shame! <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

I use opera and the IE for whatever doesnt work with it. I used to use FireFox, but I didnt like it as much as I like Opera. Opera is clean, Fast and Efficient =D Lancers Reactor does cange a tiny big aestetically, but i think everything loads faster

My computer has IE (of course), Firefox, and Opera. IE is easiest for the parents to use, though I only use it when forced, for internet radio, updates, etc. I had origionally used Opera primarily. I´m not sure as to its security level (hopefully someone can enlighten me here), but it seems to be built like a tank. It got me hooked on the whole tabbed browsing deal, which led me to transition to firefox. I enjoy FF mostly for its ability to protect privacy not by erasing tracks, but by never making them in the first place (i.e. being able to fully disable cookies, cache, and history.) With the advent of broadband internet, the cache is not nearly as important as it used to be. FF also has the ability to be customized through extensions to do various things like have mouse gesture controls, in browser weather reports, and of course, the ability to translate the web into Swedish Chef speak.

I have to run a lot of browsers on a lot of platforms, but I choose Firefox to do my every day surfing due to the simple fact that its the *only* browser available that renders CSS accurately and exactly as it should be. Others get close (IE being the furthest away) but Firefox is the only exact renderer.

it is certainly great to see that so many of you are this interested and almost compassionate about what browser you use. i still believe mozilla firefox is best, and i think (i have a very small harddrive currently) that using multiple kinds of browser, eg. opera, netscape navigator, simply confuse my computer. I don´t particularly use IE either and it certainly would never be my default browser. maybe thats the true point i am getting at. Which one actually is your default browser, do you go for things like user friendly advanced controls, or do you prefere a basic interface. Either way Firefox offers both i reckon. Even microsoft nowadays are making large parts of there website more compatible with Firefox. Does anyone have any information on the new version of Firefox?

Ah yes browsers! One of those subject that everyone has their own preference as to which one to use. Kind of like comparing cars vs trucks, or do you prefer blonds or redheads, Budweiser or Coors, sneakers or high heals (in some of your cases <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>), that type of thing. While I have to admit FireFox has come a long way in improvements and IE hasn´t had a major update in who knows when, I´ve tried them all. I think I can safely say that I use a browser a lot. In fact Lancers Reactor has an admin browser interface we can and do use to make the news and download page posts (to those that don´t know what a post is, it´s the text you read) and I think I have constructed my share of those, combined probably somewhere close to 2,000, then add the fact that I use a browser to look at the code to see if I made any mistakes and what it will look like in the browser window. Keep in mind this is only a suggestion... Like I said everyone has their own preference but this is how I use browsers... First choice is <A href=´http://www.maxthon.com/´ Target=_Blank>Maxthon</a>. This is the best browser overall for the way it shows web pages and for the ease of use and has tons of features... Second choice is <A href=´http://www.avantbrowser.com/´ Target=_Blank>Advant</a>. This is also a great browser very close to Maxthon in being feature rich and showing web pages the way the were coded to look. <A href=´http://www.opera.com/´ Target=_Blank>Opera</a>, since they offered a free version recently, I like this browser for its speed. It ranks number one as far as speed in loading pages. <A href=´http://www.mozilla.org/´ Target=_Blank>FireFox</a> Much better at displaying pages with the latest version, open source is its best feature. Getting better with each version. There´s a lot more that I´ve tried and use occasionally just to see what the news page looks like with them. Some don´t show everything on the front page such as all the button links on the bottom left side of the page.

Firefox is one of the few truely WEC3-compliant browsers. It also adheres to, and fully-implements, the full Javascript feature-set. IE doesn´t. And that´s a major issue, all by itself. I hate IE, because it allows developers to patch all sorts of nasty ActiveX controls and other things into websites. I find such things terribly frightening. Telling the user that they´re downloading and installing something... is not nearly enough. I think that powerful content (i.e., anything that can look at files, directories, Registry data and other things) should never be integrated with common browsers- it´s not like you cannot build applications that can access the Web without being part of IE. The fact that IE has become a de-facto deployment environment for so many applications is very, very worrisome- this &quot;ease of use&quot; has greatly contributed to our very poor security environment. Nobody is safe unless they spend a non-nominal fraction of their time on their own security... and have the knowledge required. We self-congradulating geeks who are reasonably secure (i.e., They know what We do, but aren´t able to hack our credit cards with impunity, or track all of our Web use) need to remember that 99% of the Web-using public is getting their privacy invaded in horrifying fashion, all the time... and they´re not even aware of how much is being transmitted to parties unknown for reasons unknown. I think that the Consortium needs to get its act together and come up with some sort of certification program so that developers can make and distribute safe applications... and then everybody who doesn´t start playing by the rules should get blacklisted. I think that it´s more than high time one of our highly-paid politicians here in the US finally got up and started explaining to the American public (let alone the public in the rest of the WWW world) how badly their privacy has been eroded by Big Business and Big Government (both bodies <i>buy the information collected </i> by the parties who manufacture spyware, but hypocritically say that they´re above the fray, because they don´t produce it). Flash, etc., have never been totally secured, let alone all of the third-party stuff allowed by IE. .... er... um... I guess that was off-topic.... moving right along...

I agree to a certain extent....but even though I am well versed in the W3C guidelines, I still find them to be often unmanageable. ie. one rule works well with one site but not with another. I feel sorry for those that are only just beginning to learn them. I´m 100% behind web designer/developer certification, but they have to get the rules right in the first place. They currently change too often and are way too vague to apply to every site. In fact, at the moment I would equate certification to the creation of a police force in a country that has no law, only suggestions that are often inappropriate. And of course before you can lay down the law, you have to make sure that your broadcast medium can cope with the law enforcement. ie. all of the browsers need to become compliant immediately. Currently out of the major browsers, only Firefox renders CSS correctly and even then its not actually 100% perfect. Edited by - gromit on 10/11/2005 2:13:29 AM