Well, i need a browser that is ready to go as it is, with the features i want, is stable, fast, and most of all due to work useage, secure. So i use IE7.

I was an Opera fan until IE7 came along, but even after a long trial of 9.5, its failing to win me back over.

Firefox to me is like the cheapo lego you find in 99p shops that doesnt quite fit together. It can almost do what IE can if its tweaked and has bits added on, but that only makes it even more insecure and unstable than it already is.

So does Mozilla. Mozilla's got a thousand and several add-ons and plugins.

I actually have firefox and I.E !

Well I've got Avant, Opera, Mozilla and Internet Explorer; but Mozilla is the only one I use.

mozilla is the best

Yep

You consider IE (!) secure!? Wow.

Pretty much any other browser you could possibly dig up will have a better track record in that regard than IE. Fair enough, 7 is a lot lot better than anything they made before, but still the single most attacked broswer on the net, and the only one to have embedded support for something as retarded as Active X.

This isn't a MS or IE rant, just simple facts. If you care about security, IE is seriously the last option you should consider.

Well, i'm all for each to their own, but at work IE7 is the only permitted browser based purely on security and stability.

FF was obviously out the window right away when v2 came along, and Opera just slipped away.

IE may be the most attacked, but then its also the most updated, and as with anything, its not the number of leaks you find, but the number you patch that matters.

IE wont let any activeX (or other) plugin run without user confirmation, unlike firefox, which is a huge advantage.

As always, my decisions are based on how things are "out of the box". I am aware you can tweak things, but thats just not practical and frankly silly when they can be set up properly from the get-go.

I have both IE and Mozilla Firefox, and I like Firefox better. Used IE all the way up till I got this laptop, which I've had since the beginning of June, which has both IE and Firefox. Firefox is the one I prefer.

http://www.webware.com/8301-13546_109-9913352-29.html

I use Maxthon personally. It's built off of IE, but has a huge amount of add-ons straight off - keeping Spinner happy - as well as tonnes of plug-ins for everything else.

I tried Firefox briefly but never really liked it, and IE itself is limited compared to Maxthon. I like Safari when I use the Macs at uni, and have only seen Opera on a mobile phone so I can't say much about it. When a friend recommended Maxthon, we just clicked! It was a match made in heaven

Ah but i dont want the add-ons, they're what make things unstable and adversely affect performance and security.

All i want are a basic phishing filter and a good popup blocker, and IE has those covered perfectly out of the box.

Its interesting to note the negative effect version 3 has had on Firefox's market share, and the slow but steady impact google is having.

Copied from Janco's June 2008 Browser and OS Market Share White Paper summary:

Firefox's market share now is 15.05% versus 19.06% in January 2008

IE's market share is 65.50% versus 66.72% in May 2007 and 61.06% in January 2008

Google Desktop is gaining in popularity and now commands 3.27% of the market


I note a funny story running on the BBC technology site saying Firefox is tops for updates given its "one click" update system.

Clearly they overlooked the rather more obvious simplicity of IE's no-click updates.

Edited at 17:14 Tue 8/07/08 (BST)

The same goes for my work, were we handle stuff up to NATO Sectret classification, but that doesn't mean that this is sensible lol. It's on the contrary great irony.




FF has had issues too, but none anywhere near as bad as that of IE.

Main problem as I see it, is that there has been done a lot more work on classifying IE than has been the case for FF or Opera. If similar studies were done for those browsers (and some minor issues fixed), you would never seen IE cleared ever again ;)



Where do you take that info from?

Completely agree on the rate considerations, but I have no reason to believe IE is any better at getting fixed than any of the other browsers are.

Nor do you always have the liberty of updating automatically either (like at my work, we have a verified and approved version of IE with is the only version we are allowed to use. Which is needless to say a completely retarded mentallity since we theoretically miss out on critical updates)




FF doesn't run active X AT ALL, so no problem there.

The plugins and security related to it is obviously a matter of user discretion. You can potentially install any malware you want on your computer if you dont step carefully - that isn't a problem with the browser.



That's a point of view for sure. Then again, IE lacks far too much out of the box as well for this to be a valid argument. Not to mention how nice it would be if that $#@% company would eventually learn the meaning of having standards.

Gooo FireFox!!

I have both ! IE and firefox !

lmao

Apart from that being a security problem in its own right lol

And apart from all the highly subjective "this is best", "that is crap" etc points of view, there is one fundamental problem with IE that affects none of the alternatives: Portability.

As far as I know, IE does not to date run native on any other OS than MS Windows.

Edited at 20:16 Wed 9/07/08 (BST)

yea i'm with janmb with this IE sucks

Well its fine for me and I don't have a problem with it so

Ie7

That sounds good !