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Firefox vs. SP2's IE?

Posted by Cliff on from the as-microsoft-slowly-improves-their-products dept.

Anonymous Coward asks: "I was at my grandpa's house today, and I came across a somewhat unsettling issue. He is a user of Internet Explorer. I was talking about Firefox with him, and it turns out that he has had no trouble with popups since SP2 came out, he doesn't multitask enough to benefit from tabbed browsing, and he doesn't care about safety/privacy concerns. On top of that, I ran a test and found no difference in load/download speeds between the two browsers on his computer. This brought me to an interesting point. For someone like him, is there any benefit to be gained from using Firefox? On top of that, are there any people who are actually better off sticking with IE?"

3 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. There are 20 reasons/month it's not. by dscho · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Those 20 reasons/month are called exploitable bugs.

  2. um, yeah by theVP · · Score: 0, Redundant

    If he isn't concerned about security or privacy, he's an accident waiting to happen. Give him Firefox so that he won't HAVE to worry about security or privacy.

    --
    "No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
  3. Why Dump IE? by linguae · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The reason why he should dump IE is because IE is soldered into Windows's shell. If there are any holes in SP2's IE, an exploit would do more damage if he is using IE as a browser than if he were using some other browser.

    Besides that, IE is outdated. Aside from some security changes in the SP2 version of IE, it is still the same-old browser that is was back in 2001. The world of webpages has changed dramatically since then. The usage of technologies, such as CSS and XHTML, has grown over the years. IE isn't standards compliant; I've heard horror stories from web developers trying to write modern pages that look the same on Mozilla-based browsers, KHTML-based broswers, and IE.

    Finally, this may be flamebait, but I'll take the karma hit; IE simply sucks from a usability standpoint. Unlike the Mozilla browser and Firefox, IE doesn't have features such as search toolbars (unless you download a third-party one) and tabbed browsing. The Mozilla browsers are also very extendable; extensions such as Adblock have been very helpful to me. I have a much easier time using broswers such as the Mozilla suite, Firefox, and Safari than using Internet Explorer. The browser doesn't get in the way of what I want to do; the browser just sits there and wait for my instructions. Those broswers have been the easiest, most intuitive browsers that I've ever used. These browsers make browsing safe again. I cannot fathom using IE again.