Firefox vs Internet Explorer IE7

Mozilla firefox vs Internet explorer 7
Which web browser is best suited for a person’s needs is a largely opinion-based decision.  People have preferences which are arrived at it for a myriad of reasons.  Diehard Microsoft fans are going to choose IE7, because it is a Microsoft product, and they believe that an MS product is best suited for Microsoft Windows, be it Win9x, ME, XP, NT, or Vista.  Others will choose Firefox for exactly the antithesis of this logic.  I will attempt to compare some common advantages of each.

IE7 has taken huge steps forward by introducing tabbed browsing, and this is a welcome addition.  Microsoft also offers far more control in regards to security.  Some have even said that the attention to security is a disadvantage because the controls are too complicated and time consuming to bother with.  Techie sorts will even point out that the security features are largely due to Microsoft being the target of so many malicious hackers.  But IE7 is free, it’s designed to be seamlessly integrated into Windows, and it offers a much higher degree of security once the controls have been mastered and configured for individual tastes.

Firefox sports the Mozilla name.  That puts it into the lineage of the original 2nd generation web browsers, a list which started with the ground-breaking Netscape.  The name itself was coined by the development crew of Netscape, and is a combination of the phrase “Mosaic Killa”, because Netscape was a direct competitor to the Mosaic 1st generation browsers.  Few people today recall that the Netscape extensions are responsible for the world wide web we know and love today, and that before Mozilla came on the scene web pages were drab screens of pure text with links.  Plug-ins, imbedded graphics and sound, and even the initial usage of Java can all be traced back to Mozilla.

Today, the differences in capability between Microsoft and Mozilla are sometimes difficult to spot, although it still holds true that Microsoft’s implementation of various extensions is passable at best, and sometimes downright faulty.  One example of this is the way that IE handles frames and tables.  Many pages designed and tested for Mozilla based  browsers simply do not display properly on IE systems, and Java support ( a cross-platform, open source programming language) is a realtively late addition to IE.  On the other hand, Javascript, a subset of Java, was developed by Microsoft, and is the basis for many online applications and games. 

Which is the better browser?  That is up to the tastes of the individual user.  IE7 offers greater security controls, and has gone through a major overhaul, bringing it up to date with Mozilla applications.  It is included in Microsoft operating systems, meaning it’s already on most computers, so it is easy to get and use.  On the downside, Mircosoft had to come up-to-date.  IE has never been a driver in the evolution of the world wide web, but instead has always had to play catch-up with with Mozilla; indeed, IE has often been called an “afterthought” addition to the Windows system.  For my own personal use, I choose Firefox, even though IE is my choice for “testing” a web site for overall compatibility.

Article written by MyComputerAid.com