Casual users might not notice much difference between Firefox 2.0 and
IE 7.0. But with continued use, the advantages of Firefox
become increasingly evident. This is especially true for
people who take the initiative to install a lot of extensions.
What is less obvious, is that Firefox still has the advantage in
security, as confirmed by a recent report:
href="http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/7asiAzrqaYcW7j/Firefox-The-Better-Phisher-Fighter.xhtml">Firefox:
The Better Phisher Fighter
By Jay Lyman
LinuxInsider
11/16/06 4:00 AM PT
Mozilla and Microsoft are duking it out over which of their browsers --
Firefox or Internet Explorer -- is better at alerting users to possible
phishing attacks. Mozilla has fired the latest salvo, with a report
from a software testing company showing that Firefox blocked more
phishing sites than IE...
Both browsers use different methods of detecting phishing sites. During
testing, Firefox 2.0 blocked 79 percent of phishing sites using its
regularly updated, built-in list of malicious Web addresses, and 82
percent using Google's list.
IE7 blocked 66 percent of phishing sites using the browser's auto check
feature, which confirms or denies malicious sites based on information
contained in a Microsoft database. With auto check turned off, IE7
blocked only 1.5 percent of phishing sites listed in the database....
So, are people enthusiastic about Firefox?
Yeah, I'd say there is some enthusiasm there. (HT:
href="http://perkypants.org/blog/2006/11/16/pdx-to-syd-or-bust/">eighty-eight
miles per hour)
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I'd say the main reason to switch to Firefox is the fact that they are open source. It ends up being a political statement on intellectual property rights.
I've noticed that the new version of Firefox (v2.0) for the Mac is still a bit unstable with a propensity to crash. If you're a Mac user, particularly an Intel Mac user (the problem seems worse on my Mac Pro at home), personally, I recommend waiting for some bug fixes before upgrading from v1.5.
It must be an Intel thing; it's been pretty darn stable on my Powerbook.
I've been using Firefox on my intel based MacBook and haven't noticed any problems, also been running it in Parallels and in Bootcamp (just trying them both out) and it seems fine there also. Fortunately or unfortunately I won't be upgrading to IE 7.0 for a while as our IT department reports that it is not compatible with our software apps.
regards
Nonetheless, IE7 is a major improvement over its predecessor.
The main hospital I work in requires IE to login remotely.
As far as versions, one thing about Linux is that you can run different versions of most programs simultaneously. So I can run FF1.5 or FF2, or FF1.5 and FF2.
OSX 10.3.9, G3 'Pismo'
FF2 crashes easily if I click more than once in the top menu bar while wondering if it noticed the first click. It's well documented in the bug reports, not yet fixed.