IE vs Firefox.

[directhex]

IE6 renders web pages more or less the same as IE4 did - and given it ain't 1997 anymore, that involves an awful lot of dodgy crufty HTML. the only way to design a modern web page these days is to make a proper version, then spend days breaking it in subtle ways such that IE6 can handle it

all well & good, and there are those who swear by IE6's ability to display "all" pages (i.e. all those written using 20th century HTML, or stacks of IE6-specific hacks)

however, then we get IE7. all those millions of IE-specific hacks? they don't work anymore. IE7 almost handles 21st century HTML properly - which means that when it's fed IE6-specific broken junk, it displays said junk as what it is - junk.

this is, of course, a shame - IE7 is vastly improved over IE6 in every way, but because it chokes so badly on the millions of IE6-specific pages out there, is currently a bad choice for primary browser. IE6 is all well & good if you're a firm believer in "let's party like it's 1999", but pretty obsolete for those of us in 2006.

feel free to substitute "opera" or "safari" wherever you see "firefox" in the above

[chuckskull]

For me, IE is buggy and slow, i haven't used it in years. Used opera before FF(only swapped because deviantarts chat network didn't like opera ), but I'm a big fan of greasemonkey and themes. Couldn't go back to opera or IE.

My bank and everywhere I shop online support FF no problem, so I have no need for IE.

[rolph]

Use Firefox for pretty much everything.

The only thing I still use IE for (actually use Avant) is using the BBC's Listen Again facility for its radio programmes. Although the programmes will play in Firefox, none of the control buttons work so cant pause or fast forward.

Rolph

[Anders]

For sheer out-of-the-box running I like Opera over Firefox. Does everything I want without having to install extensions. Also I got fed up with buggy extensions and extensions not working after upgrading to a new Firefox version. Has this been addressed this in more recent Firefox versions?

Interesting to read what Hex says about IE7. Not tried it myself, but if IE7 doesn’t display poorly coded pages then hopefully website masters will be forced to clean up their sites. More likely, the average user will bitch and blame IE and MS. Perhaps one day every page will use XHTML strict...

[rae]

Firefox all the way. Although it has been a tad unstable recently. But i love the stumbleupon plugin for it. Great procastination tool. Check it out:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

[Clunk]

What is it? I've never come across it

randomly, the copy and paste either disappears or is there but wont work...does it on 2 different pc's. weird.

[pr0p4g4nd4]

randomly, the copy and paste either disappears or is there but wont work...does it on 2 different pc's. weird.

Yeah, weird. I guess I've been fortunate so far!

[wazi]

i hate the way i cannont cut and paste urls and more in firefox, does my head

[badass]

silly me for thinking Microsoft would have actually got tabs working properly by the third beta and all this time after Mozilla...

Whose worse? The company that makes a beta that is not perfectly stable or the person that uses a beta and moans when the beta software isn't perfectly stable

[IAmATeaf]

I'm currently testing beta3 of FireFox 2.0 and love it, has some bit knikced from IE7 like phishing and each tab now has a close icon, also comes with a spell checker so can't complain.

I've also tested and played around with IE7 but IE7 doesn't work that well with Hotmail so for example you can't use the arrow keys within hotmail just does my head in, can't believe that MS haven't yet fixed this, this problems been there since the early beta.

[dancingtornado]

I think every one i know uses Firefox now lol.

well anything microsoft makes to beat its competitors is rubbish