Firefox is better than IE

>>My site won't work in IE, since I'm using standards.<< Then you alienate a large audience. Partially because IE doesn't work correctly with XHTML, it is not yet a viable standard to use. Other developers have learned this, and have catered to the large IE-using community. It may be more difficult to cater to the IE users, but as a developer it's something you kinda just have to do. Normally only sites some random guy made as a hobby end up not working in IE, and only because some random guy who develops web pages as a hobby usually doesn't care if his site works for IE. >>Is there free inline adblocking in IE? There's an add-on for FF that's free.<< No. As an add-on, it's not part of the browser anyway, so it probably shouldn't be here. Anyway, I'll still talk about it. Inline blocking of ads is not a good feature - not only does it potentially destroy the layout/look of a site, but it also destroys the fabric by which you get to view most sites for free. Inline adblocking undermines the very means by which many sites are paid for. That's not a good feature, and something I hope very few people want to be part of. >>People don't want quick tabs. If they did, add-ons can emulate it.<< It is wanted by many people, perhaps it's just not a lot of people in the Firefox community. >>Features like this are not included because for many users they only waste bandwidth and disk space.<< It took me a moment to take that seriously, especially coming from someone who seems as knowledgeable as you do... Features like this do not take up ANY additional bandwidth. They are implemented on the user's machine. Disk space is definitely less than 1 MB as well, I hope that doesn't seem like too much. We haven't traveled back to the time of the 286, have we? Oh, whew, nope, just checked, my hard drives both are 250GB. Looks like we're safe from the 1MB file of doom. >>Security stuff (see original post)<< When each browser only has a few open holes, it's not wise to factor the severity in too much. Likely these holes were found somewhat recently, so they will be of varying severity. While perhaps much of what you said is true, it is also true that people who want to exploit your browser assume you have IE. Also, the highest IE advisory was 3/5, not 4/5 like you said before. I maintain that neither is significantly more secure than the other. Not enough for it to matter. >>Signed Java applets can access system data.<< Didn't know that, duly noted. >>Does ActiveX do that? (signed and unsigned)<< Yes, they do. >>The reason Windows Update has to use ActiveX is because Microsoft needs to have proof of a major company using their technology. Windows Update could just as easily be implemented through HTTP or FTP downloads.<< HTTP and FTP protocols cannot validate your system. This is the reason for using ActiveX. Though perhaps the signed Java app would be able to accomplish the same goals, though I'm not sure how easily such things can be faked. The fact is, ActiveX _is_ used and IE is the only one with good capability to use them. >>My point in mentioning that someone has built a test version of ActiveX for Firefox is to show that if someone wanted to, it could be done.<< However, it's not part of Firefox. We're not arguing about the potential of each browser, we're arguing about the ACTUAL browsers, as they are now, in the industry as it is now. If you want to use ActiveX, you NEED to use IE. >>I don't use IE that much. Partly because Firefox is better, so I have no reason to. But also because I cannot run IE7 on my system. Firefox does.<< Then for your system, IE is not the best choice. However, for the overwhelming majority, IE is the best choice, since the overwhelming majority of people both use windows and are not computer-savvy programmers. >>Web pages will not look the same on every browser.<< As a web developer myself, I can tell you that it is quite possible to make a web page display properly on at least Firefox, IE, and Opera. Usually there are not differences in the display output of Opera and Firefox on different platforms. I usually code for either Opera or FF, then use browser-specific css to make it look right on IE. Almost any major site will look the same, or not noticeably different, on all the major browsers. I'm not arguing that IE makes it easy for the developer, I'm arguing that Firefox isn't better from the user's standpoint. >>Firefox may not work on DOS, but neither does IE. The only graphical browsers I know of that work in DOS are Arachne and elinks2. I realize your point is that Firefox doesn't work on all OS, but it works on more than IE does or ever has.<< No, my point was that the people who use anything but windows (Linux in particular) are not your average user. They are fringe groups who have different needs in a browser and would not want to use IE anyway. >>Firefox isn't an FTP client? ftp://ftp.mozilla.org...... seems to open perfectly well in Firefox (version 2.0.0.11) for me.<< By FTP client, I meant that you could use it for more than just downloading files VIA FTP. AFAIK, you can't upload, CHMOD, or any other file manipulation that a developer as yourself might need to do. >>IE does not have the ability to be used as an FTP server. It can be used as an FTP client, but Firefox does the same.<< Of course it can't, it can't act as any sort of server, it's strictly a client. It can actually be used as a real FTP client, as an alternative to, let's say, SmartFTP. Which is probably what I'd use if I didn't have a fully featured FTP client in IE. >>IE can use ActiveX. Firefox can use ActiveX. People don't use ActiveX on Firefox, but it CAN be done.<< No, it can't. Not right now it can't. Sure, it's possible that someday that will be possible. Maybe then FF will be more viable than IE for the average user. But not now. >>If there are no reasons to use Firefox over IE on Windows, why do I have Firefox Portable on a thumbdrive for when I'm on a Windows system?<< Because you're used to the FF interface. Also, because it makes you feel good using open-source browsers. And I'm not going to say that IE is older, therefore better. It's better because it's more compatible with more pages. Developers make sure that their sites work in it just as much as they do for FF. You can actually use ActiveX-requiring sites in IE. It's correct that there's not a huge difference between IE and FF, but if one was better than the other for the average user, it's clearly IE. Also, colorable scrollbars. Been nice debating you. And for the record, I use Opera. Except for things that only work in IE.