I have always been a fan of FireFox. Not only a fan but a heated supporter of FireFox in comparison to Internet Explorer. Most of the time I felt very justified in this stance. Mozilla: less bugs, more plug-ins, a myriad of themes and customization. Robust programming. A challenge to the juggernaut, Microsoft. This I felt until the latest (and I felt finest) release of FireFox landed on my harddrive; at first it was a magnificent upgrade to an already fine app. That is until the bugs revealed themselves: lost favorites, no homepage loaded on boot, the disabling of some of my fave non-Mozilla apps I use everyday. Enough was enough.

I ventured to try the rumored new release of Internet Explorer, and do you know what-- it is quite nice. It is designed to fully operate with my XP, not try to run just enough then contradict its priority. A browser is only just that-- a browser.

The Open Source community will issue diatribes against Microsoft (and many are justified) but after my experience(s) with Unix\Linux, I find these operating systems almost unbearable to work with and remain productive. Many would argue otherwise. I pray I am never paid to work on such a system professionally. But, maybe I will change my view someday with the correct exposure and qualified teachers\mentors.

I love the idea of Open Source and I try to stay involved to an extent on low-level dev projects in the coding community but I see most of linux releases to be botique, clone versions of one-another all hoping to create a software landslide via pure numbers.

My Windows XP can be better, sure (as ALL code could be) but I use her everday, I use the MS C++ compiler everday, and it allows my system(s) to run at workhorse levels. Routine maintenance keeps the engine humming along.

Who has used the latest FireFox build and the new I.E.? What do you think about them in comparison?

Regards,
sharky_machine

Personally, I've used firefox, since... well, at least the last 3 years. I find myself using the new IE more these days, just for basic compatability reasons. The new IE now offers the features I loved about firefox, so I don't really see a need to use firefox on a windows system anymore.

I also used Firefox for a while until IE7 came out. When I downloaded it, I was really impressed by the UI, the cleaness of it, and the functionality. I've now switched to IE, although I still will occasionaly use Firefox.

I've got both on my PC at work, but after a week of using IE7 for all my browser needs I've gone back to using FF2 for everything. I even use IE tab for WSUS pages and the like which require the IE renderer.
I stayed with FF basically through inertia and ideology (much as I hate to term it as such). I'm used to the theme, have had no bugs to deal with. Also, I can't stand the new IE interface.
My main reason for using FF though, is that I believe it unwise to use a web browser which is completely integrated into the operating system in the way that IE is.

I find IE7 more difficult to use then IE6 despite the new tabs. I still like FF better and use it all the time at home. I'm not allowed to use FF at work -- only IE.

Thank-you for all the interesting responses

sharky_machine

Personaly I like the tabs, so I don't have 6 windows open

I like IE7. IE6 sucks. Only used Firefox whenever possible when it was IE6. Made sure that FF was my default browser too. But right now, I use IE7 as much as FF. Out of habit, sometimes I click the FF button in the quick launch panel, but now the default browser is IE7. If I could only transfer my bookmarks from FF to IE7. :-|

I just did this a few days ago. Before I try to explain, though, I suggest you find some definitive steps on the Net about this. But this is what I did (I think )

• You need to save a copy of your FF bookmarks as a HTML file. I believe you can do this under 'manage bookmarks' (or something similar in FF)
• After FF bookmarks are saved as HTML file: open IE7-> goto "+*" (plus-star icon) on IE7 Favorites toolbar -> select "Import and Export..." from this drop-down list -> select and Import your saved HTML, boomark file

Is this what you were asking about? Hope it helped. Worked great for me.

Ah yeah. Worked fine. Thanks.