FF v IE (Tuesday November 7th, 2006)

category: tech and web drivel

I thought it’s time to split out my tech ramblings in to a separate category so on the right hand menu you’ll now find tech and web drivel where I’ll hopefully post something (occasionally) meaningful and work related. I’ll also copy some older tech rants to it.

Not that this is one of those meaningful ones.. just a few comments on FF v IE (and if that means nothing to you, then best not click through to the rest of this.. drivel)

With the recent releases of IE 7 and Firefox 2.0, I’ve read a few articles in my daily news rounds trying to present the basics about these two browsers to their various audiences. A couple of examples include:

• SMH: IE v Firefox: the battle begins (October 30, 2006)
  
• BBC News: Browsers go head-to-head (October 26, 2006)

I’ll refrain from comparative comments on the browsers for the time being since I haven’t installed IE 7. It scares me a little. At work it’s important for testing purposes for some of us to continue to use IE 6 until it’s numbers dwindle so I’m happy to stick to the old version (not that I actually use it for purposes other than testing web sites).

At home I only use IE 6 if something simply doesn’t work in Firefox. For instance myspace.com’s music player won’t allow me to download free songs from bands using FF 2.0 however the problem could be due to my very outdated version of Flash Player (I think it may be Flash 6.. again, useful for testing purposes).

Apart from the above, I’m having no problems with FF 2.0 except that they may need to evaluate some of their security features – they seem a little extreme. I captured this image (click on it for the full-sized version) on October 21, 2006, shortly after installing FF 2.0 when I launched the browser to the Google Firefox homepage: