<p>Coopjust: What do you mean by IE7 being more secure? (not being mean spirited I'm just wondering why you said that and what evidence do you have)</p>
<p>IE is annoying <.<</p>
<p>Lets see, I deleted it from my computer, then realized you have to have IE to download the new IE or anything from the microsoft site... I need the program to get the program makes great sense. then I types in iexplorer into the run diologue and it comes up, seems as If you cant really uninstall it...</p>
<p>So FF, Opera all the way.</p>
<p>nickbuddy:</p>
<p>IE6 was a disaster, security wise. There were a lot of remote execution holes (just visiting a site could get you infected without actually downloading or running anything yourself). IE7 worked on this, big time. While it still isn't secure as Firefox, Opera, or other "Gecko" rendering engine browsers, IE7 did work to improve on IE6.</p>
<p>The major security bonus that they improved was ActiveX, the add in application type used on IE. It has a lot of legitimate uses (installing flash player if you don't have it, downloading a computer RAM finder, etc.) but a lot of spyware used it to put "Do you want to install "FREE MUSIC AND GAMES" (some actually copied the names of legit software)". IE6 ran ActiveX in explorer.exe, a major, major system process in Windows. IE7 runs all ActiveX in a seperate process. So while bad ActiveX controls can still really screw up your PC, it's not like IE6, which was basically a free pass to your system.</p>
<p>Now, IE6/7 can't be fully uninstalled for reasons I'll get into in a moment, but IE7 is more separated from the system than IE6 was. Microsoft got sued for antitrust due to Internet Explorer; Netscape argued that, under law, you can't use one monopoly (Operating System) to gain another (by preloading IE on every Windows PC you could easily get mass market adoption). So MS integrated it with numerous important system parts (file browsing, program help file rendering, etc.) and argued that removing IE would cripple Windows. MS won. This was a security nightmare for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>IE7 is separated from the file browser and is more separated in other reas as well. On Windows Vista IE7 runs in "Protected Mode", where IE7 is restricted to accessing files from the temporary internet files only unless you specifically allow it. This makes security much, much better since IE doesn't have ready access to everything on your system. It doesn't prevent exploits but it raises the bar.</p>
<p>MS still has work to do (they're working on IE8 now), but it's a major step in the right direction.</p>
<p>Microsoft also took a step in the right direction by putting in a phishing filter, which is about as accurate as the Firefox one in the tests I've seen of 100+ new fraud sites.</p>
<p>IE7 is less cluttered, has tabs (it's a nice feature once you try it), ClearType (it rounds the ends of text to make it pretty- just a nice touch), search box in the upper right (you can change it to quite a few different ones, even Google and Yahoo, easily), transparency in PNG images (web coders will like this more than regular users), RSS reader for news feeds, and a bunch of other new features that are actually useful.</p>
<p>As I said before, IE6 came out in 2001, and it's web standards support sucks. It's a total pain to code for, and over the years people will code for IE7+. </p>
<p>So:
-IE7 is more secure than IE6.
-IE7 has a bunch of convenient stuff for everyday use over IE6.
-IE7 supports web standards a lot better, which makes it easier for web coders to make content (and new features means niftier pages)</p>
<p>Why not use IE full time then? Firefox is why MS started working on IE again. After netscape died, MS didn't have any incentive to improve the very broken IE6. They developed IE7 quickly and pretty well, and they're working full steam on IE8. By using alternative browsers, you make MS make IE better.</p>
<p>Why should you care about making IE better? Certain mail applications and others use its engine (like Outlook), so security and features for other apps are on the line. And, you don't get to install software on every PC...you'll probably be forced to use IE on some computers.</p>
<p>Thanks, very informative. I also realized that I read your first statement wrong (I thought you meant IE7 was more secure than Firefox which I thought was off but I see you meant more secure than IE6.) Anyway, that is good information;I just feel like a jerk for having misinterpreted you the first time.</p>
<p>IE7 is huge improvement over IE6. Most time I use IE7 and sometimes I use firefox. It is not completely true that firefox is faster than IE7. Firefox loads things bit by bit while IE7 loads them altogether, but it doesn't mean that it is slow. And I also have issues visiting some sites with firefox. My opinion use both!</p>
<p>I'm using Firefox 3 Beta 3, and the javascript speed beats the snot out of Firefox 2 and IE7. FF3 is a lot faster, and you can get speed optimizing extensions that make it really fast.</p>
<p>Really. I installed FF3 last week then uninstalled cause I didnt like the design. Since you are saying its faster, than I will give it a try again. When I do toast.net/performance internet speed test IE7 always performs better than firefox. I just installed XP SP3 lets see how that works.</p>
<p>Nah, I dont like the FF3 design really. There is no home page button either. One thing I dont like about firefox is that it doesnt store screen name and password like IE7 does, to the sites I visit most often. Plus, if you do toast.net/performance graphics speed test firefox does not load things faster than IE7. And if firefox is a lot faster than IE7 than it should load those images must faster, which it doesnt.</p>
<p>there is a home page button in FF3...</p>
<p>I see it right now.</p>
<p>also it'll ask if you want to save the password for every site that you enter a password in.</p>
<p>They made the homepage button part of the bookmarks toolbar, it was some stupid thing that links are links, etc... I never use it but I think it should have stayed where it was.</p>
<p>OK, test results from performance.toast.net:
Internet Explorer 7: 4,390,787</a> bytes in 12.328s via ADDR.com
Firefox 3 Beta 3: 4,390,787</a> bytes in 12.318s via ADDR.com</p>
<p>Firefox asks for password rememberring on almost every website. The only two I've had that it won't remember are Dartmouth's Banner and Villanova's NOVASIS. And they're both based on the same software from Sungard SCT (huge educational web software maker) and Firefox remembers passwords for WPI and Fairfield, so I think that Dartmouth and NOVASIS intentionally add this behavior since IE7 doesn't remember on these pages either.</p>
<p>Images, FF3 and IE7 are on par. Client sized scripting (Javascript) and other rendering, FF3 wins by a lot. A lot of newer websites are script heavy, so that's important.</p>
<p>I use both. Firefox is much much faster loading the same pages as IE7 (in my personal experience...perhaps it isn't that way for all), and...even though IE has changed with the newest version, I still believe that firefox is more user friendly. </p>
<p>And while firefox works great on the sites I regularly visit, if I am doing research, I occasionally run into a website that will not load correctly on it, thus I use IE when necessary.</p>
<p>Yeah, for text and images they are both more or less the same.</p>
<p>Oh, I meant that firefox does not do it <em>like</em> IE7. For example, in IE7 if you put "remember password" then it automatically log you in to the site everytime you visit. On the other hand in firefox you have to put atleast the first character of you screen name for it to remember your password. Another word, you have to go through the log in process again even if the browser remember your password. I dont know if you can make firefox password system behave like IE7.</p>
<p>EngineersRkool, the only time I've seen this behavior is when you have more than one saved account on a website. I just tried one of my stored password sites and it filled in automatically without entering any characters.</p>
<p>The most common source of what you're describing is a wrongly entered but saved passwords. Firefox thinks you have two accounts, so it asks. Try checking your saved passwords to see if you have more than one saved login for a site if you're finding this.</p>
<p>Thnx guys. Yes! I uninstalled Firefox then reinstalled it again and the auto-login seems to work fine now in the 2.12 version. It was so annoying going through the logon process over and over again, but its working fine now. Yep, I use the homepage button quite often because I use the Google search engine a lot, lol.</p>
<p>Damn, FF3 is really fast, but they tried to be too cute and made the design worse. Did some stupid things like when typing for a URL some stupid stuffs comes up and implementing the homepage with bookmarks. I am back to 2.12.</p>
<p>The "awesomebar" (that's the nickname for it...) sucks, get the oldbar</a> extension to restore the addressbar from FF1/FF2.</p>
<p>If I'm reading this correctly, after user protest Mozilla decided to hide the home button only when</a> your Bookmarks are open on the left side for Firefox 3 Beta 4. If you don't have bookmarks open, from FF3b4 on it should display the home button as it was.</p>
<p>Ugh, I'm trying IE8B1 in a Virtual machine. It's unusable. Cool design tweaks, but this isn't a Google style "beta by name only"; it has bugs to work out. But it is a beta and it does pass the Acid2</a> Browser Standards Compliance test, so Microsoft has definitely made progress.</p>
<p>Thank you Coop. Yeah, everything seems to be working fine now in beta 4. They changed the navigation arrow and made it lot better than beta 3. The awesome bar was anything but awesome, lol.</p>
<p>The search in beta 4 is a bit buggy. </p>
<p>And talking about IE.
If i took 4x hours to install IE, i have only used it for x hours.</p>
<p>OPERA is the best!!!!</p>