It's their own worst enemy, ringing the bell on the door?

And the person inside says nobody's home, so your own worst enemy peeks inside... :-)

Anyway, yeah, Microsoft just really likes failing at things. Switch, Tony!

You could try GreenBrowser. Its built on IE but better in every way. Its very small and incredibly customisable. I own a bookshop and have set the search box (with my own little icons) to search inside my suppliers. I also use Opera (occasionally), Netscape (rarely) and Firefox in internet cafes as its the next best thing to GB. That's at www.morequick.com.

There's a few things that keep me from using IE7 regularly.

1. When I middle-click a link in Firefox, that means open in a new tab. In IE7, it means "open in a new tab unless there's some script that says to open in a new window." Oddly enough, selecting "Open in a new tab" from the context menu works fine in IE7.

2. Tabs are supposed to allow me to have many documents open and still be able to get at them easily. So why does the tab bar share real estate with a host of other icons?

3. Firefox plugins don't work for it.

Lastly, I'm a web developer, so I'm voting with my user agent string for more sites to support browsers besides MSIE. As a web developer, I'm looking for a few main things from IE:

1. Faster script, especially DOM methods. (A better way to query the DOM would be nice, a la XPath. I've tried behavior-based queries and they turned out to be really slow on my company's pages.)

2. Better debugging. I still haven't figured out what makes it show the debugger and what makes it not show it. And for god's sakes, tell me *which* file has a problem on line 237!

The new UI would not require that big an adjustment. I still use IE7. I like the way they implemented RSS, too.

But Firefox is still my main browser, because there are more useful free extensions I am really dependent on, which I could not get from IE7.

On RSS: I experimented using Firefox support for RSS, IE7 RSS, and online RSS readers.

After several tests, I settled for Online RSS readers. Netvibes is my RSS reader, and it works excellently, on my PC, or even on Internet Cafe's, whatever browser (Firefox/IE).

Internet Explorer (and other Microsoft applications btw) tend to force themselves as the foreground window when they are "done". For me this is the most irritating 'feature' of IE7.

The biggest problem for most people is that they will lose their favorites when they upgrade to IE7 (or are forced to do so). It took me 42 seconds to find it, so normal people will probably never find it ;).

I really like the Internet explorer browser and for sure the new features of the IE7. Most things like tab behaviour can be tweaked with settings.

I have tried firefox serveral times but i can't feel happy with it. so I stick to IE.

After about a month of using FF2.0 (from my normal Safari), I'm now back on Safari.

I've never used IE7. When I ran Windows as my main OS, I switched to Mozilla when it was in the .9x range. The earliest version I remember using was .93, IIRC, but I don't think I used it full time yet.

My first browser has been Internet Explorer. Then I switched to Opera (Opera 5, if I remember well) because it had much more features, it was fast and powerful. I switched to Firefox (1.0) when I had to test a lot of web apps for a project and I liked the extensions, the live bookmarks etc. As much as I like Firefox 2, I really think I'll go back to Opera. Lately Firefox has serious stability problems, uses too much memory, and it has annoying features like the arrows from the search box that disturb me. I know there are some sites that don't work well in Opera and there are some problems with its JS implementation, but between FF 2 and IE 7, I'll choose Opera 9.

I haven't tried IE 7, because I don't use Windows, but I wouldn't even consider using IE. It's still not secure, and still doesn't support most of web standards, blocking evolution of the web. So Firefox, Opera or even Safari are always better choices. I chose Firefox, because of it's extensions, and it's OpenSourceness. But I think everybody should give Opera a chance and decide which one he likes better. Opera is a really great an in many ways unique browser.

Firefox is the ultimate choice. I do believe that both IE and firefox collects data and intelligent mining but the risk with IE is much higher in my opinion.

The coolest thing with the newest firefox is that when it broke (which seems that it is broking more often with newest versions now) it can restore all your sessions back.

Ionut
> Lately Firefox has serious stability problems

True, FF2 *does* crash a lot. And the session restore functionality doesn't fare too well with AJAXified programs, like Gmail (though at least Gmail regularly saves your draft, thanks to AJAX!).

Ludwik
> and still doesn't support most of web
> standards, blocking evolution of the web.

Well, as web developer, for a long time I was hoping everyone switch from Netscape to IE, because IE was really much more supportive of standards in the late 1990s than NS4. Of course, they slowed down a lot ever since the v4 and 5 releases...

Re: Opera

I used Opera 7 a bit when that was released and it used to eat up 90+% of my CPU making it practically impossible to do anything else on my PC while I had the browser open. That bad experience made me never want to try it again.

However, I've just downloaded Opera 9.02 and it's improved a lot since then! It was nice and quick to install too. They claim it's "the safest and fastest Web experience" – well I disagree (at least with the 2nd part of that statement). Every page I've tried seems to "drip" into my browser window bit-by-bit. Whether this is just because Opera's showing me the bits it's downloaded before it's finished, I don't know. But it seems much slower than either IE or Firefox.

For me, it's still a two horse race.

Opera is fantastic, Opera Mail uses exactly the same philosphy as GMail (tagging/labelling messages rather than moving them into folders, starring items, etc.) months before Gmail came out. Their developers are very progressive thinkers.

Unfortunately Opera's gotten zero traction, and because it has such a small market share, few web developers both to make sure their sites work in Opera. Which is a shame, but what can you do? I've been using FireFox ever since GMail first didn't support Opera...

I don't understand why people are so shocked that the new IE 7's interface is terrible. Microsoft has a long history of buying, borrowing, or stealing products made by other companies and then re-branding them. They have little to no experience developing any kind of original or usable user interfaces. Even their Windows operating system is cumbersome. There is far more innovation going on in the Linux/BSD/Apple worlds. However, at least people who are "stuck" on Windows can run Firefox or Opera instead of Microsoft's latest piece of garbage.

If you switch to Firefox, you will have a browser that follows standards better than IE and is infinitely expandable with add-ons.

It is worth trying, for sure.

I used firefox and i will continue to use firefox 2.0

IE7's interface is miles better than IE6's. I'm using Firefox less and less because I'm sick of the crashes and hangs. Sounds like 2.0 is even worse than 1.5 in that regard, which was itself nearly unacceptable in that regard.

I remember when I used to download Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix immediately as soon as a significant new build would be released. Now it's like 3 weeks later and I still haven't even bothered to install Firefox 2.0. (nor did I ever subject myself or my computers to installation of any of the pre-release versions of 2.0) From the sound of the posters here, it sounds like it's even worse with regards to crashing than 1.5, so I'll probably continue to limit my use of the 2.x series to the PortableApps.com version.

As far as Windows Media Player goes, the interface for 11 is great, I haven't touched iTunes in months, and have only been using WinAmp to watch .NSV videos. VLC's still my first choice for watching downloaded video, though. :D

> From the sound of the posters here, it sounds like
> it's even worse with regards to crashing than 1.5

Yup. Unfortunately.

By the way, I wonder what you specifically like about IE7?

That I can open up tons of windows and tabs and not have to worry about it crashing. Or almost just as bad, start hanging so that I'm stuck sitting there for a minute or two wondering if it's going to come back, or if this is finally this big one that's gonna wipe out all the pages I have open. Reliability is key for me – not like I think any of the browsers are all that attractive anyway.

If I could steal something from the Firefox interface and have IE7 work that way, it'd be pretty much every aspect of the "Find" feature. I also find it easier working with website passwords with Firefox, I remember feeling kinda limited by IE7's options/granularity with regards to having different settings with different sites.

(And yeah, I know that I could get that "Find" functionality with IE7 by using an add-on, but I try to use add-ons and extensions as infrequently as possible.)

After switching between the two quite a bit tonight, I've just made a decision and changed my default browser to Firefox 2. I've also deleted any shortcuts to Internet Explorer as I know that my mouse would automatically go for the little blue "e" icon without even thinking about it...

If Firefox 2 annoys me too much in the next week, I may even try Opera 9 and see how I cope with that – IE7 was irritating me too much though after just two days!

(And I've already benefited from the spell check feature of Firefox 2 just whilst typing this – and yet I've not seen one single benefit of using IE7 in two days!)

Opera has spell-checking too (via Aspell, which is very good).
http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/spellcheck/

> I've just made a decision and changed my
> default browser to Firefox 2

(applauds)

By the way, I've turned off the auto-spellchecker, but mostly because I want to type German every once in a while for emails and German blog comments. Dunno if it supports multiple dictionaries, but it didn't immediately get it.

I have been using firefox almost since it started out. I have recently upgraded to 2.0 and its been a satisfying experience so far. I love the live bookmarks feature from the earlier versions.

I haven't seen IE7 yet, but i am curious to see what features, that have become almost essential for all other browsers, have been picked up by MS.

I feel safe browsing with Firefox. One major annoyance was that earlier you had to download the whole exe file to upgrade but now its a breeze with autoupdate. The extensions are really cool and i don't know if MSIE7 can build a collection around it to rival that. I espeially love the adblock feature.

Its Forefox hands down for me, although every once in a while there's some page which doesn't work with it and i have to click on the IE shortcut. But its a small price to pay.

I am happy to read here that after a crash Firefox can't restore some tabs like gmail. I guess its better that way, especially in cybercafes and shared PCs. i haven't had the chance to check out the restore after crash feature as yet.

I've never used Internet Explorer as my primary browser. I used Netscape from 0.9 Beta through 4.5, then switched to the Mozilla suite; I currently use Mozilla SeaMonkey, but also have Firefox 2.0 around and use it sometimes.

> Dunno if it supports multiple dictionaries,
> but it didn't immediately get it.

Yes, it is. I use English and Polish dictionaries all the time. Just right click on the text field and choose Languages/Add dictionaries... It's my single favorite future.

PS: My Firefox 2.0 hasn't crashed... ever! Maybe it's because I use it under Linux.

I was having horrible problems with Firefox 2.0, but it all was traced down to a corrupted TCP/IP stack caused by Google Desktop. I ran a registry fix program, and it fixed the problem. Now everything is back to normal.

I've hardly had any problems with Firefox 2.0 crashing. It's certainly never hanged on me, at least when CPU and RAM weren't at 100% (because of other applications). It runs pretty smoothly for me, too, at least on my "minimalist" Firefox profile, with few extensions. My usual profile starts up a little slower, probably because I have a lot more extensions on it, but it still browses fast, and doesn't use up much RAM either (unless I have 20 tabs open for quite a while).

IE7, on the other hand, browses rather slowly for me, and seriously lacks many features I love in Firefox and its extensions. I also agree that Microsoft made a terrible decision with the tab bar. For me, IE is stilllast choice.

All these problems with FF2.0 have me scratching my head...well, they did until James B. mentioned Google Desktop. It's one thing to blame a browser for being unstable, it's another thing to know and understand the other crap you may have installed on your PC, and how all that crap interferes with everything else. Google Desktop is a prime example of unnecessary crap (as is anything by Roxio).

I have NEVER had FF 2.0 crash and I use it on 6 different PCs. Not one has ever had a problem. Those of you who have had issues may want to take a look at the other crap you have running. I would truly hate to see your HiJackThis logs. Must be nasty.