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Welcome IE7 & Firefox 2

This week not one, but two big browsers made major upgrades. I’ve gotten a change to play with both and I think everyone is on the right track, some just a wee bit behind.

IE7 has been a long time coming. I think they said IE6 was released 5 years ago or so? Anyways, the new IE seems to be better. I’ve been running it on my Mac (via Parallels) and it seems to be on the right track. It’s got transparent PNG support (finally), RSS support, tabs and I think it seems to work with the CSS :hover property too! All steps in the right direction but it seems like it could make things worse before it makes them better.

The reason I say this is because things never look the same in IE and any other browser. IE always needs special code and thankfully !important was created and works well. However, with IE7, things that looked right in IE6 don’t look so great any more. So, when creating websites, we may need to choose between designing for IE6 or IE7 as it seems that both are different enough to render different code. I really wish there were standards. Ohh wait, there are. Now why can’t all browsers just follow them??!!

Firefox 2 on the other hand has no rendering oddities that I’ve seen. So that’s good. I’ll admit though, when I first tried Firefox 2 release client 2 a while back I was less than impressed. I felt like there weren’t many updates. However, them more I use it, the better I realize it is.

It seems to load faster, has better built in tab abilities, more security, session savers, better RSS integration, spell check and it just seems more polished. I’m really enjoying the new theme too and, overall, I am impressed. Plus, the bookmarks must have gotten a back end makeover as some extensions, like del.icio.us, completely takeover your bookmarks and I think that’s a fantastic idea.

Both browsers are making strides to do more and be all around better browsers. But, in my book, Firefox has IE beat hands down. It’s cross platform, standards complaint, up-to-date on all technologies (like CSS & JS) and has the ability to add extensions so that the browser can be whatever you want it to be.

Which do you prefer? Or are you a Safari or Opera fan? 🙂


7 Responses

  1. Kevin says:

    I’m a Camino fan on the Mac myself, but I use Firefox on the PC. I recently upgraded to 2.0 and like most of the stuff I’ve seen (especially built in spell check!!), EXCEPT that the iPox theme doesn’t work!!!

    Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!

  2. Thomas says:

    For iPox, see the previous blog post. As for Camino, it’s cool, especially now that it has spell check. But without extensions and themes, it’s just not as fun. 😉

  3. Niko says:

    Yeah, Firefox 2 is rocking right now, except I miss my MidnightFox theme 🙁

    I have been using that theme as long as I can remember, and FF feels so naked without it.

    Pretty please (with sugar on top), can you work on making a FF 2.0 compatible MidnightFox?

  4. Thomas says:

    With sugar on top? Humm…. maybe.

  5. Low351 says:

    I just wrestled with Firefox vs IE to no resolution. The favicon worked beautifully on FF but no go on IE which looks like it may support it since it changed from the E to the default program icon, but the .css stylesheet background with a repeat-x png file set to bottom didn’t work at all it stays at the top. The IE put the .css stylesheet png in the proper place but like I said blew the favicon. Basic stuff in my book, I hope they fix it, I couldn’t find any mention of the problems with the stylesheets with FF. I guess I’m just grumpy cause I have to live without iPox, 🙂

  6. Niko says:

    Maybe, eh? I like these odds… (I’m begging. I need my MidnightFox, it’s the best theme available for Firefox – good job on that btw)

  7. Niko says:

    Woah, I didn’t expect you to actually make the update for MidnightFox 😀

    Thanks a bunch, I now have a theme for FF 2. I liked the older one a bit more (bigger buttons, etc), but I can deal. This is the only good theme out for FF 2 right now. Thanks!

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