Firefox vs. Internet Explorer - Which One I Like Better And Why

Here's classic joke that relates directly to many Internet explorer users:

A man goes in to see a doctor. "Doc, whenever I lift my left arm, I get a shooting pain in my shoulder. What should I do?" The doctor replied, "Stop lifting your left arm."

I think many of us are in the position of that man, and today I'd like to act as your physician. Except that I'm not going to talk about left arms and pains in the shoulder; I'm going to talk about a piece of software that causes us pain in a different part of the body - Internet Explorer.

When Firefox 1.0 first surfaced and gained popularity, I wasn’t sold on it. This was namely because I was turned off by its lack of integrated embedded audio support, and whispers of the need for all these plug-ins and add-ons and widgets and this and that. It really didn’t seem so inviting.

I find some people also hate Firefox. Most people are afraid of the whole “change” thing, which is understandable. Others fear downloading another program on their already super slow and bugged up computers.

For me, the reason I liked it better was because it ended up making my computer faster and safer. How so from just a browser?

When I used Internet Explorer 6, my computer used to always get really buggy and slow. Sometimes it was trojan viruses that found their way on my computer through IE6, other times it was just, well I really don’t know. I found myself reformatted my hard drive ever 4 to 6 months with the amount of spam raging all over the internet. I could go on and on. Look, let's be honest with each other. We all know this is true: IE is a buggy, insecure, dangerous piece of software, and the source of many of the headaches that security pros have to endure (I'm not even going to go into its poor support for Web standards; let that be a rant for another day). Yes, I know Microsoft patches holes as they are found. Great. But far too many are found. And yes, I know that Microsoft has promised that it has changed its ways, and that it will now focus on "Trustworthy Computing." But I've heard too many of Microsoft's promises and seen the results too many times. You know, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Who's shamed when it's "fool me the 432nd time"? Who's the fool?

Ever since I started using Firefox in early 2007, I have NEVER needed to reformat. It’s awesome, alhumdulillah. I had always heard Firefox was safer, but this was just proof in the digital pudding. My computer is running just as fine as it was out of the box, and I haven’t reformatted in almost two years. Since January 2007, I was sold on Firefox 2.0 and currently Firefox 3.0.

All software has bugs, and none is totally "secure". As has been said so many times, security is a process, not a product. So I'm quite aware that Firefox has had security issues, and will have more in the future as sure as the sun rises. But the record so far with Firefox has been positive. Security issues are not common, but when they are found, they are openly discussed and fixed quickly. This is very good, and security pros should appreciate such responsiveness.

I know IE7 was released over a year ago and is supposed to be a massive overhaul of the now defunct IE6. But ask any Firefox user, it’s just Microsoft’s reaction to the wildly popular Firefox. I’m not saying it’s not good, it’s a LOT better than IE6. But it’s just not as solid as Firefox 2.0 - leave alone Firefox 3.

Check out the ratings from the CNET.com Prizefight between the two.

Test	IE7	Firefox 2.0
Ease of Installation	5	13
Look and community	12	15
Tabbed browsing	11	13
Cool new features	9	11
Security and performance	10	12
TOTAL	47	64

Firefox still rules the browser roost for now, despite a much improved version of Internet Explorer. The most obvious new feature for IE 7 (tabs) has been in Firefox forever, and the security additions from Microsoft aren’t enough for us to allay concerns over new possible exploits. Lastly, the extensibility of Firefox is its knockout punch, and IE’s add-ons cannot compare. The flexibility and customizability of Firefox might be best suited to more advanced Web users, but it has earned its spot at the top of the browsers. - CNET.com

In any case, to each his own. Some people just like IE better for just preference’s sake, which is totally cool. Others love Firefox and the awesomeness that it brings.

What about you guys? Which do you like and why? Got another browser you like better than Firefox or IE? Or are you just a blind hater and think all other browsers stink? Let’s hear what you guys have to say.