I won’t be using many plug-ins or extensions in case that matters. I’m mainly interested in increased security, but the tabbed browsing and spellchecking seem like cool features too. I’ve asked friends but that yeilded nothing. The geek sites all like Firefox, but I won’t be using a lot of the features they like or the expandability, at least I don’t think so since I’ve never used it. My Dad’s laptop has IE7 on it, and he hasn’t complained, but that doesn’t say much.
So, what do you Dopers say? Keep IE6, upgrade to IE7, switch to Firefox, or do you guys like Opera or one of the others?
I think the transition from IE6 to Firefox is easier and more comfortable than going from IE6 to IE7. IE7 sucks, IMO, for reasons including:
-The radical interface redesign (if ‘design’ is even an appropriate word) - it just looks like they threw all the controls up in the air and left them where they landed.
-It’s just slow to render pages Dramatically slower than IE6 or Firefox on every machine I’ve tried it on.
-It’s annoying. No, I don’t want you to tell me if you think I might be visiting a phishing site. No, really, I don’t. No, really. Stop. Asking.
And of course amongst all those extensions, there’s bound to be something you will actually find useful. Adblock plus is something I should rave about, except I don’t notice it’s there, quietly removing ad banners and popups. There doesn’t seem to be any way to do inline spellcheking in IE - it’s built into Firefox.
Switch to firefox. It is just better. Keep the copy of IE6 on your computer for those occasional instances where a web site won’t work right for firefox.
I agreee with boytyperanma (boy, I had to type that name letter by letter…) that Firefox is just better. Its like a car that you never have problems with for 200,000 miles. IE is like a Ford Pinto*.
I use Firefox at home 1) for tabbed browsing, 2) because another MB I’m on touted it as much more stable than IE 6. It is more stable than IE 6.
I got moved to IE 7 at the office and am running into problems with various government agency websites I need to use at work. They are not all compatible with IE 7 yet. Some keep me out of the websites’ functionality. Additionally I’m having to go through multiple steps to download security certificates, which is apparently a good thing. IT hasn’t stopped by to undo the IE 7 yet.
The phishing filter is the reason why IE7 is slow. You can turn it off under Advanced Internet Options. If you do, it behaves more like a regular internet browser.
I would recommend Firefox 2.0 but I would update to IE7 as well. IE6 is riddled with security vulnerabilities and is basically an open door to a variety of exploits that can really ruin your day. IE7 eliminates most of these security holes and if you’re running it on Vista, it runs in a “sandbox” which means it has very low system privileges, minimizing the huge attack vector that MS is famous for.
It doesn’t need to be an either or proposition does it?
I use Opera as my main browser because I prefer the way it handles tabs.
I use Firefox for all those niggly pages that will only work on IE6/7 as Firefox seems to to do a good job at dealing with these pages.
I use IE7 on the rare occassion that neither Opera or Firefox can render a page properly.
If I’d known what IE7 was like I wouldn’t have upgraded from IE6. It’s not complete crap, but it does nothing innovative and what it does, it doesn’t do as well as FF or O. I also find the constant reminders about visiting unverified sites very annoying.
My point is, get’m all, use them as you need to, but don’t upgrade from IE6.
Edit: I also don’t like the arrangement of menus and buttons on IE7 but I do quite like the way they have a little tab stub that will open a new tab when you click on it.
Firefox is so much more fun. There are a lot of neat little features, like tabbed browsing, and there are so many plugins that a few of them are bound to be useful for you. Currently I have pdf2html so I can read PDFs without having to download them separately, IETab so I can open stuff in IE easily if something on the page requires it (like Text Twist), and there’s a handy little thing in Bookmarks wherein you can open every site in a folder at once, and you can also hotkey your bookmarks so that by typing just a letter or two, you could open the boards.
That phishing filter is good stuff. It saved my ass when someone spoofed my credit card provider. I say upgrade to IE7, and try Firefox. There’s no reason you can’t do both, and IE6 has no advantages over 7.
I’m curious to know how this could happen and not already be obvious to anyone who knows the meaning of the term ‘phishing’ - could you describe what happened?
A unanimous verdict from the office, aside from extensions etc, the new layout has nothing to recommend it, apart from a button to click on for a new tab. After that, nothing.
Firefox seems to run a bit faster for me than Internet Explorer at work. At home, I use Internet Explorer and I’ve got no complaints.
Edit: That’s Internet Explorer 6 at work and 7 at home. I got yelled at for having Internet Explorer 7 at work, even though virtually everyone in the office is using it.
Actually, it’s worse than I originally stated. It looks as though they took the controls from two or three completely different applications and threw them in the air to see where they would land. They’re not consistent in style, placement, size, alignment or symbology. Terrible. And someone got paid for doing that.
For the last few years or so everyone around me has been ranting and raving about Firefox. “Neat-o.” I thought. But I never switched to it because IE6 worked perfectly well for me, I was used to it, and I liked it.
Then one day IE7 came along and told me I better install it over IE6. I didn’t really stop and think about it–I just did it because I figured it would be an improvement over IE6 which I already liked just fine.
It wasn’t. It was very confusing with a poor layout and generally just messed up. And it had the “Tabs” thing which contrary to everyone else in the world, I hate.
So ironically, the “Tabs” feature on IE7 was the reason I switched to Firefox (I didn’t know at the time that Firefox had “Tabs”).
I am very happy I switched. I really like Firefox better than even IE6. But I did turn of the tabs on Firefox.
------SIDE NOTE------
The reason I don’t like tabs is because when everything opens in a different tab on the same window and I close the window all the tabs close too. Now I’m sure I could just close each tab separately, but what is the difference between a tab and a separate window (or separate browser, I should say)? What is the advantage or use of tabs? I feel dumb here!! I don’t get it! Make me like them! Make the Tabs be my friends!!!
Go to one of the SDMB forums. Find a few threads that look interesting. Middle-click (with the mouse wheel) on the thread titles one by one. Behold, as the threads open in separate tabs in the background, allowing you to continue perusing the front page while they load.
Now I grant you, they could also open in separate windows rather than tabs, but it’s easier to keep things organised with tabs-within-windows rather than loads of windows (and once you get used to middle-clicking, you tend to have lots of tabs open). It would be nice if the OS supported heirarchies of taskbars so that tabs weren’t necessary.