Reply #26 Top
I still don't buy into this browser war thing. It might have been a big deal back in the Netscape days, when the browsers worked differently and pages that worked on one wouldn't work on the other. Nowadays, everything shows up proper on IE so I don't see any reason to switch. As for all these security holes, the only reason people are so aware of them is because of Microsoft's constant bullitins with patches and updates for the browser. So by the time you read about some obscure flaw, it's already fixed.
Reply #27 Top
I agree Jay, IE surely is not perfect, but at least MS can admit it. I mean, don't take me wrong, I'm a Netscape guy myself. But all these "alternative" browsers do nothing to close the gaps in THEIR programs. Reality is firefox is pretty crappy. It doesn't load pages right, some of the pictures it DOES load are grainy and out of focus. Total garbage! As of now the order I would use to choose a browser would be:

1: Netscape

2: IE6

3: Opera

4:Firefox

And if IE7 comes complete with tabbed browsing (my fav thing about Netscape) then i'm sure 1 and 2 will be switching places. Merely because I don't like using outdated software, and judging by the new beta from Netscape... yuck.


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Reply #28 Top
And if IE7 comes complete with tabbed browsing


Paul Thurott has an article about it, and it is only avaliable for XP SP2.

http://www.winsupersite.com/
Reply #29 Top
Funny, different strokes for different folks... I really like the new Netscape. Can't wait till it's stable. At the moment, it's quite unusable, but the features are really nice.
Reply #30 Top
It is not so much the browsers that are culprit when it comes to pages displaying incorrectly as it is the web coding standards. Granted I will be the first to admit that IE sucks when it comes to CSS compliancy and FireFox is the best one out there so far (I use both being a web developer and need to develop for a wide variety of users). Most of the sites that appear flaky is because the developer(s) have not gone back and updated their code to be cross browser compliant: in some cases it doesn't really matter, in other cases you can lose a lot of business/traffic. WC for instance appears great in both IE and Mozilla/gecko browsers.

Redmond decided to release IE7 early and make it available to users with SP2 installed. If you read the entire article by Thurrott, you will see that originally IE7 wasn't going to be released until Longhorn was released and was only going to be available for Longhorn users. I think they made the decision to release IE7 early and make it avaialble to more users because of FireFox's success so far on the consumer level (IE still dominates the corporate environment); IE7 was being designed for Longhorn already before the current success of FireFox. Same concept as Redmond making Avalon and Indigo technologies available to SP2 users: they get a wider user and developer base. However, keep in mind that to get the new Aero look you have to have Longhorn.

I am looking forward to the changes in IE