# IE vs. Firefox vs. Netscape



## nomav6

I've been using Firefox for a while now and it doesn't seem to have all of the security holes that IE has and seems to run faster then netscape. so I was just wonder which one that everyone else thought was best and why.


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## Christopher

Firefox for me, and I already said why here: http://www.computerforum.com/showthread.php?t=1029#post8600


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## Lorand

Some time ago I had Netscape and Opera too, but didn’t like them, so I use IE.
There’s plenty of differences of how different browsers display tables, css, multilingual characters, etc. (it was quite a pain in the arse configuring our company website to display correctly localized characters in each browser). And since the majority of websites was designed for and tested in IE, why to use another browser?
For some fancy nonsense, like skins? C’mon, you’re not using the browser for admiring its skin... For the tab thingy? You can open several IE windows and the "tabs" are on your taskbar (of course, if you deselect the stupid grouping option from the taskbar properties in XP). For pop-up killing? ZA will do the job, it can even block banners too.
I admit that for security reasons IE is the worst possible option. But I never got a problem from that...


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## Christopher

Some people have a lot of windows open, and you can't reorder windows in the taskbar. So tabbed browsing makes life a lot easier then to switch between a million windows.



> For some fancy nonsense, like skins?


I spend a lot of time surfing the interent, using message boards etc. I'm using a sexy skin right now. If you don't want to use a skin then don't, no harm done.



> For pop-up killing? ZA will do the job, it can even block banners too.


Why use another program when it's all done internally?

Plus there are extra JS blocking features. And extensions are both easy to add and make -- any feature that you want is probably made by someone else.

And for web devs the JS console and DOM inspecter are great additions (both are optional upon instal). And the download manager makes it easy to keep an overview of your downloads instead of even _more_ windows open in the taskbar.


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## tristan

Firefox, hands down


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## Praetor

> Why use another program when it's all done internally?


Because I have a firewall anyways and I'll end up blacklisting the root site from which the popup originates ... for a browser to block it would require a connection to that site, to partially download and _then_ to block. Firewall terminates it at the IP/DNS stage 



> I'm using a sexy skin right now


So am I but mine is integrated into the operating system rather than a program ... cant really say it's a major advantage but yeah ... so there 



> Plus there are extra JS blocking features.


Can be terminated at the firewall stage 



> And the download manager makes it easy to keep an overview of your downloads instead of even more windows open in the taskbar.


I guess that does have some merit but for you and I, cable doesnt really mean you'll be waiting a lot so those windows will close fairly fast (and if you're DLing massive files... you wont be downloading like 20 of them so there shouldnt be a problem there)


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## [tab]

I use Firefox and Opera... IE isn't an option for me (I'm far too lazy to set up Wine just for MSIE).


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## Hellfire

Why would anyone still wanna use I.E I dunno.. ok Mozilla doesn't allways work (sorry I call it mozilla as I use the e-mail options and have the full mozilla package) click here  for more info,

Once I used mozilla I will never go back, the only problem I experienced was downloading, it sometimes didn't download with the download manager but seems to be fine lately, It's alot better with the tab's option for someone using ME, it's alot better looking, And the features are alot better.

Once you try mozilla I doubt anyone will go back... I won't

btw Mozilla aren't paying me to say this. shamely


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## Praetor

> Once you try mozilla I doubt anyone will go back... I won't


I went back.


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## Christopher

> Because I have a firewall anyways and I'll end up blacklisting the root site from which the popup originates ... for a browser to block it would require a connection to that site, to partially download and then to block. Firewall terminates it at the IP/DNS stage


What? What kind of crazy firewall is blocking popups before you've downloaded them 

Bottom line, Firefox does everything IE does (with a firewall), and does it better. Faster rendering, more innate features, better web standards... Development that is actually progressing...


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## Praetor

> What? What kind of crazy firewall is blocking popups before you've downloaded them


Any firewall that support IP blacklisting. If you nail the IP the popup orignates from then the popup can never even begin to come into existance


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## Christopher

I'm confused, that's blocking all popups from any one site then. What if it was a legitimate popup?

You need some sort of software that will analyze the script that generates the popup. For which, any external program will be slower to block it then if it were to be an included function. It's not like each popup has it's own IP address, if you blacklist one IP to block popups then you block all of them -- including the ones you want to see.

Not to mention no one has even stated one feature of IE that would be favorable over Firefox. There might be one or two small things that I've just forgotten (seeing as I've yet to open IE since FF.6), so feel free to freshen my memory so I can just download the easily installable extension for it 

One extension I can't find that I had in IE... There's no extension for "massive security flaws", dang.


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## tristan

IE is a spyware trap.. firefox is by far the best out right now. although, this SP2 Beta i am using takes care of a lot of those problems for IE. Lets see how the release goes


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## Praetor

> I'm confused, that's blocking all popups from any one site then. What if it was a legitimate popup?


Well I said this was for me not necesarily for everyone  I dont think ive ever gone to more than two different sites that have legitimate popups (for which I exclude) and also and even then if you wanted you can always use blacklisting (although I find whitelisting a lot less work) 



> You need some sort of software that will analyze the script that generates the popup. For which, any external program will be slower to block it then if it were to be an included function. It's not like each popup has it's own IP address, if you blacklist one IP to block popups then you block all of them -- including the ones you want to see.


Yes that's one take on it and it probably works for 99% of the people out there... it's just that there are only two sites that I goto that need popups. ComputerForum and Hushmail. That's it. Hence whitelisting is the most effective way to do things (i.e., no JS/JavaApp, no ActiveX, no cookies, no nothing ... well maybe not that extreme but you get the idea).

Also dont forget there are text-only browsers out there 



> Not to mention no one has even stated one feature of IE that would be favorable over Firefox


True and for me specifically it's not so much an "advantage" of IE but rather and inconvenience (without massive benifits) of switching to something else


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## 4W4K3

i used firefox for abotu a week...i had 100's of popups (the installed one just didnt work) it was significantly slower than IE6 (not sure why...my friend uses it and its really fast) and i just plain didnt like it. i've never had a virus or trojan using IE6 so i stick with IE.


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## Christopher

That's odd 4W4K3. Which version of FF were you running? All of them 'cept the last few have been pretty buggy.



> True and for me specifically it's not so much an "advantage" of IE but rather and inconvenience (without massive benifits) of switching to something else


lol what's so inconvenient? Upon install of FF it asks you if you want to import favorites, cookies, saved form info, passwords... But yes, I think I can see what you mean -- just like it's inconvenient for me to go back to IE I suppose.


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## tristan

You obviously didnt have popup blocker enabled 4w4k3. Just go in FF options and enable it. Theres no way a popup would get through with that enabled. Ive been using mozilla since it first came out, then went to ff when that came out and even when it was buggy it still blew IE out of the water.


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## tristan

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=142798&hl=Browser

These are all reliable computer information enhanced people.


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## 4W4K3

tristan said:
			
		

> You obviously didnt have popup blocker enabled 4w4k3. Just go in FF options and enable it. Theres no way a popup would get through with that enabled. Ive been using mozilla since it first came out, then went to ff when that came out and even when it was buggy it still blew IE out of the water.



i think the problem was i had 2 popup blockers enabled at the same time? i remember it was enabled cuz i turned it on after researching it. i couldnt figure out how to turn it on (n3wb) lol. it was probably just a buggy old version...i dont remember where i downloaded it from.


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## tristan

huh.. you should give the new .9 a whirl. I think you will find it worth it.


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## 4W4K3

tristan said:
			
		

> huh.. you should give the new .9 a whirl. I think you will find it worth it.



im sure the newer versions work fine. but for this situation i'll say "if its not broken dont fix it." I have 768K DSL connection and no matter what program i use its never going to get faster, IE6 loads pages fast enough for me, less than 1-2 sec most of the time, i dont think any other program is going to radically boost my connection speed. as for convenience, i've used IE for years now...and i havent DIED cuz i dont have nice little tabs, built in pop-up-blocker, skins, and kewl bars and favorites options. i think i'll be ok. if my IE6 ever craps out i'll be sure to give it a try though :thumbsup:


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## tristan

Good call. I just know security is a huge issue with IE. The amount of spyware and crap it allows behind the scenes is amazing.


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## 4W4K3

tristan said:
			
		

> Good call. I just know security is a huge issue with IE. The amount of spyware and crap it allows behind the scenes is amazing.



that would probably be a problem for a stand alone computer online...but mine is on a network, completely packed with firewalls, antivirus junk, filters, all kinds of security junk. its annoying, but it works lol...never had any viruses or anything liek that in the last 6 yrs or so. hopefully SP2 will fix the many IE probs...its sposed to be out soon i thought. what i might do is try downloading firefox on another PC and see if it works, if so i'll try it out for a while on there. maybe my computer just doesnt like it...


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## 72montecarlo

good things about IE...Its simple


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## Praetor

> lol what's so inconvenient? Upon install of FF it asks you if you want to import favorites, cookies, saved form info, passwords...


New registry entries for a program I will never use ... sides even if I did switch to FF, i'd have to hunt down every trace of IE and remove it (if I dont use an app I'll reformat and make sure its not installed to start with.... now with IE ... it's a bit more difficult to remove the traces of that! )



> but yes, I think I can see what you mean -- just like it's inconvenient for me to go back to IE I suppose.


Yep!



> its annoying, but it works lol


Bingo


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## agent-k

I went back to I.E. as well.
I tried Firefox 'cos I read somewhere that it was supposed to be much faster for internet browsing than Internet Explorer. 
Used it for a couple of weeks but got fed up of waiting for pages to open.
Didn't suit me at all.


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## kb1ghc

I love FireFox, and if you haven't tryed v.9+ you are missing out.

The only 2 websites I have a problem with firefox on are Windows Update, and LAUNCH

Believe me Firefox is THE BEST BROWSER ON EARTH!
1. Secure, No exploits.
2. Best pop-up blocker, doesn't block stuff you want, blocks stuff you don't want.
3. Sites LOOK better
4. More Features
5. Open-source
6. lots of great support, and developers that love to hear your ideas.
7. RSS feed reader build in (on newer nightly builds)
8. Customizable themes.
9. FREE (Really free, unlike exploder)
10. Runs on almost any OS: Win, Mac, Unix.
11. Thunderbird keeps your mailbox 99.99999999% SPAM free
12. Better text copying - keeps formatting, even if pasted into a plain text box. (like notepad)
13. Tabbed browsing - more than one page in 1 window, really useful for comparison shopping
14. copy image locations (great for forums)
15. secure password storage (encrypted and stuff, unlike IE)
Great "extentions":
Adblock - Blocks banner ads, based on URL and wildcards are allowed (so you can block "http://ads. (anything)" (makes loading sites faster)
Autofill - Autofill forms, and have multiple identitiys like "FAKE" and "REAL"
BugMeNot - a database of usernames and passwords for many sites, check out bugmenot.com
Download with - use download accelerator of your choice for downloads
Downthemall! - makes a complete copy of a website, includeing all the hyperlinks
GoggleBar - Searchbar for google
Linkification - Turns text urls, into clickable hyperlinks


Browser war thread, V2.0 http://www.computerforum.com/showthread.php?t=2221


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## Lorand

What's this? A FireFox-spam? Ths list was already posted a couple of times...


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## Praetor

Thread terminated for redundancy.


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