In one corner we have Internet Explorer 7. After 18 months of development and a shiny new set of tabs, Its in top shape and looking better than its predecessor ever did. That is, before it entered the ring with Firefox 2.0. Now its just a cripple with fancy RSS reading.
Microsoft leaves no doubt what their products are. If they made toilet paper it would be called Butt Wiper. Internet Explorer isn't a bad name, but it's not spectacular.
This battle wasn't pretty. Firefox runs on more versions of Windows than IE 7 does. And it was all downhill from there.
Latest Version of Firefox can be downloaded from here.
Check out the graph.
The overall interface of IE has also been cleaned up and simplified.
Unlike IE 7, which has reorganized its toolbar, Firefox 2 changes only the look and feel of its buttons.
Tabbed Browsing
Perhaps the biggest change within IE 7, aside from the overall interface redesign, is tabbed browsing.
Firefox 2's tab updates are generally a step ahead of IE's. For example, you can configure Firefox to always save your last session for future use; with IE 7 you have to click a box every time.
RSS
However, you have no way to quickly preview the feed's contents without opening the feed's rendered page in IE, which somewhat defeats the purpose
Firefox 2 makes the raw [RSS] feed understandable, and offers a range of new subscription options.
Add-ons
Another area where IE7 has serious shortcomings is with add-ons that give extra features to the browser, most of the add-ons you'll find aren't free.
Thousands of Firefox addons are available.
Performance
IE 7 still uses essentially the IE 4 Web engine. So in terms of page performance.
Mozilla Firefox 2.0, which updated its Web engine with Firefox 1.5, remains the much faster browser.
Conclusion
The new Internet Explorer is a solid upgrade, but it's disappointing that after five years, the best Microsoft could do was to mostly catch up to smaller competitors.
Of the two rivals, Firefox remains the better application.
content provided from gizmodo.com
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