Stan Beer
Friday, 27 October 2006 10:31
Opinion and Analysis
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Having being an avid Firefox user for quite some time, I used to resent being forced to use clunky old IE6 on the odd occasion that some unimaginative web developer lacked the foresight to realize that a lot of web surfers had moved on to a current generation browser. Having downloaded and used Internet Explorer 7, my resentment has dissipated. It's about time, but Microsoft has finally kicked a goal with IE7.
I must confess that when I downloaded an early beta version of IE7 a few months ago, I was less than impressed. However, it's hard to deny that the finished product is pretty damned good. For Mozilla, which had been biting huge chunks out of the market share of IE6 with Firefox 1.5, this does not spell good news.
As fate would have it, both Microsoft and Mozilla released updates to their browsers just days apart. Whereas Microsoft's IE7 hit the market with a giant whack, however, Firefox 2.0 has been a relatively gentle thud. The reason is that IE7 is a massive new generation upgrade, while Firefox 2.0 has some additional features, extra functionality and a slight cosmetic make-over.
Many Firefox users would argue that IE7 was just a catchup development and Firefox 2.0 still has the edge. After playing with IE7 for a couple hours, I would have to say that this is true in some important respects but definitely not in all. In fact, IE7 looks better than Firefox 2.0 in some areas.
The inline spell checker of Firefox 2.0, for instance, is a good run scorer that will be handy in this day and age of blogs and web services. Another handy feature is the system restore, which allows you to reboot your system and get back to the exact same spot with all the tabs and pages you had open. Also it is very handy to be able to reopen a tab that you've just closed. Microsoft would do well to incorporate all of these features into future revisions of IE7.
