I’m using the latest version of Firefox’s 2.0 Alpha 1 release (i.e. pre-beta = unstable and buggy), and in fact I’m writing this post in Firefox 2.0a1 (codenamed Bon Echo) right now. I’ll list down a few of the changes and improvements that I’ve already noticed with this release, and I must say it’s way cool! I’ve downloaded the latest version of IE 7 as well, and I’ll be adding comparisons where appropriate:
- Tabs are lightning fast now - when you press “ctrl + t” to open up a new tab, the speed is almost imperceptable! I personally think that that’s really cool and a vast improvement over the current version (Firefox 1.5). Comparitively, IE7’s tabs are slow to load, and seems to have a put a larger load on the PC when switching around tabs.
- Tab close buttons are a much needed change (and what i felt was wrong with Firefox, which IE7 in all truthfulness fixed first), is that the close button is now on the tab.
- Look & Feel wise, nothing much has changed… and there’s hardly a makeover. Compare this to IE7’s extreme makeover, and you kinda wish that Firefox could also be that pretty. Honestly, the themes that Firefox offers (which by the way isn’t working in this Alpha release of 2.0) are still not as pretty as IE7. However, that said, IE7’s ravishing good looks is inflexible, and just gives me the impression that it’s taking up a larger footprint that is truly needed. Firefox is overall still more responsive - a Miata compared to IE’s SUV if you will. Below are closeups of both browsers for comparison:
- Speed for accessing code is much faster on both browsers, but take note that I haven’t done any empirical tests so I’m concluding this based on how my gut feels today.
. And my gut tells me that Firefox is much speedier when it comes to access content on sites, and especially in terms of loading javascript etc.
And there you have it… a five minute review of Firefox and IE (five minutes in terms of reading it not writing - I’m not THAT lazy!). As you can tell, I’m starting to prefer Firefox, and if they go on this path, they’ll probably give IE a run for its money. My thinking is that Firefox won’t really win the browser wars, but it will (as it has been doing) continue biting chunks of IE’s share, especially since it looks like it’s not repeating Netscape’s mistake of becoming suckier with each release.
