Ask Me Help Desk - Firefox Or IE?

Firefox Or IE?

The newest of version of Firefox is due to believe released today and it looks like it has hit a 10% market share (info from here). So I was wondering - what browser does everyone use regularly? Just curious to see the spread on these forums.

I'm a Firefox user myself and I love it. It tops Internet Explorer in every way. I don't understand why people still use IE - I've made sure my family have converted to Firefox :)

Firefox for sure!!

It is far any away the most flexible web browser out there.
Why ?
Because of all the extensions that you can bolt in to it to do what ever you want.

Here are a few musts:
Adblock as the name suggests it blocks adds, an excellent extension never suffer from unwanted adds or pop ups again !
Fasterfox Turbo charges you browser by opening multiple links to sites for faster downloading.
Tabbrowser Preferences adds extra functionality to the tabs in FF.

The whole list is HERE , but there are lots of other extensions around the net.

Absolutely Firefox with the nice extensions mentioned by Curlyben.

It's too bad you still need IE for Windows Updates but just using it for that reduces your exposure to malware for sure.

It's IE for me still.
Here are some interesting stats:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

It's IE for me still.

That's nothing a bit of peer pressure won't take care of ;)

Others on the web design forum I hang out in have tried... but I've yet to hear a good reason.

Let me ask a stupid question:

What benefits are there?

I've heard it's more secure, but I've been on Windows since it first came out. Have always used good firewall and antivirus software and have never been whacked.

Can y'all FF lovers give your top reasons for using it?

Thanks!

OK, I'll give it a shot.

First, the one that you are bound to have heard on a web design forum - it's a standards complient browser. Pages that look good in Firefox are guaranteed to work in other standards complient browsers - Opera etc. Sites that looks good in IE are not guaranteed to work in anything but IE - true IE does take a market share but what about the 15% (and growing) that don't use IE. Do you just forget about them? Not very nice.

It's more secure as mentioned.

Live bookmarks are fantastic. I have the BBC News & Sport headline available to me. I click on a button saying "Latest Headlines" and a menu pops down with all the headlines. Nice for keeping up to date with the latest news. Also adding these bookmarks is very, very easy. It's a case of going to an appropriate page (e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport) and hitting a button.

Extensions are fantastic - can you control Winamp from IE? Nope. Can you see how many new GMails you have from IE? Nope. Can you see the weather without moving? Nope. The possibilities are truly endless.

Tabbed browsing. I hate having 101 things open on my taskbar. Now I can have just window containing 5 web pages and just CTRL+TAB through them.

The built in web search is top notch. It can be changed to use a lot (and I mean LOTS) of different search engines. Saves the need for a load off different IE toolbars. I can search Google, IMDB, GameFaqs, Wikipedia and more all from the same text box.

Built in download manager

I'm yet to see a bit of spyware affect my computer with Firefox's help.

Skins if you want to change the look of your browser.

It's open source. Bugs are found more quick and fixed faster. Also you know that the code isn't doing something sneaky as you could simply check yourself. IE could be doing all kinds of stuff and we would never know.

That'll do for now. Rick, you said that spyware tools and anti-virus tools kept you safe but they do say that prevention is better than a cure.

Sounds like some great features.

So with Firefox do you not use a 3rd party Antivirus app? What about Firewall software?

Does FF have both of these built in?

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

Sounds like some great features.

So with Firefox do you not use a 3rd party Antivirus app? What about Firewall software?

Does FF have both of these built in?

If I may...

Your antivirus and firewall should be independent of the browser. No, Firefox does not have them builtin because it does not need to, your installed AV on your PC should catch a virus infected download. A software firewall will alert you to any program that is trying to access the internet, regardless of what application it is using - an updater program, a trojan, p2p, all should generate an lert form a software firewall program.

In response to your earlier post about the benefits of Firefox over IE: to be honest the benefits were more prevalent before the introduction of SP2 and other recent patches. Firefox does not run ActiveX which is the may path for malware (spyware and adware), incedently that's why you still need IE for Windows Updates if you do them manually. Running FF exclusively will payoff in that your exposure to malware is greatly diminished.

Once you get comfortable with it you can explore the Firefox plugins which can be a lot of fun and very useful (blocking ads for instance).

With SP2 IE is less of a security hole but I am sold on FF.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

So with Firefox do you not use a 3rd party Antivirus app? What about Firewall software?

Does FF have both of these built in?

Yes I do use a 3rd party firewall & anti-virus scanner. It would be stuipd not too. Also Firefox doesn't have ethose built in features. It would be stupid to build in those features to a browser as it would mean your browser would have to be open constantly.

Also, Need - I believe there has been another major security hole in IE since SP2 : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec...ry/911302.mspx

The bug was found over a week ago - still no fix. If this was Firefox, the community would have it fixed in a day or two. Yet another reason to go to Firefox ;)

Well, today I'm taking off a bit early... maybe I'll give it a test drive when I get home.

I see a zillion places to download it from... is there any reason to download it from anywhere other than http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ?

That link is the best.

You could download it from a mirror closer to your location to get a better download speed. But if you are on broadband it's not going to make much difference on a <5 file.

Of coruse, only download from somewhere you trust - e.g. Cnet Download.com, UK Mirror Service etc.

I'll let y'all know what Ever-Newbie-RickJ-AKA-old-dog-trying-to-learn-new-trick thinks of it :p

I'm lazy. I just haven't had the time nor inclination to give FF a fair trial. So I'm sticking with IE. I haven't found that it won't do anything I want. I don't get popups on this machine (not sure what I have blocking them). So IE does the job for me.

:eek: Scott I must say that I am quite surprised at your response, but then again you do freely admit to being lazy so I can see where you're coming from. :eek:

Happy Birthday Ben!!

FireFox! :D

Ha ha. I'm with Ben here - Scott you were the last person I would have thought on here to be sticking with IE :D