Browser Security News

…For the first time since the bygone days when IE 4 battled with Firefox granddaddy Netscape Navigator 4, we have a real battle. (For years, IE didn’t face truly serious competition–then Firefox 1.0 came along, and suddenly there was no question that it was the best browser for most people.)

In Internet Explorer 7, we have a Microsoft browser that has no glaring deficiencies–which doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, but it’s more than you could say about IE 6. But here’s a compliment that really is complimentary: It’s inched ahead of Firefox in a few respects. It’s got a better printing engine. Its zoom feature lets you resize Web pages onscreen, while Firefox can only resize text, not graphics. And I like how IE now lets you see thumbnails of all the pages in all your open tabs at once. I wish Firefox 2 had all these items built in.

But the funny thing is, Firefox 1.5 already has some of these features–and dozens more that neither Microsoft nor Mozilla has gotten around to implementing–courtesy of the array of amazing extensions that let you customize the browser to a fare-thee-well. (My current fave: Google Browser Sync, which lets you turn all your copies of Firefox on all your computers into clones of each other with the same bookmarks, cookies, and other settings. It alone is a compelling argument for choosing Firefox over IE 7.) PC World’s Techlog Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7: Random Thoughts