IE7 Will Have Tabbed Browsing 748
loconet writes that early yesterday morning, "Dean Hachamovitch, IE product unit manager, confirmed that IE7, like Opera and Firefox first did years ago, will have tabbed browsing as one of its new features. Asa Dotzler,from Mozilla, points out that Dean reminds IE users who have not upgraded to XP that tabbed browsing can be added to IE through 3rd-party add-ons." cryptoz adds a link to this InformationWeek story which says that the tabs will be very "'basic' due to fears from Microsoft that tabbed browsing might scare off too many users. The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market."
Scared? (Score:5, Funny)
"My God! TABS! Eeeek!"
(runs away from computer)
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Funny)
Mozilla -- Symbolized by a big red carnivorous lizard. Large carnivores are scary, and red things scream "DANGER!".
Firefox -- Symbolized by...a burning fox. Burning things are scary.
Opera -- Opera scares a lot of people, and many of those who aren't scared outright just plain don't understand it.
And then there's IE. Either a big blue E or a harmless little butterfly. Non-threatening. But they're doing some eeeeevil genetic manipulation and taking something out of those scaaaaaary browsers to put into our harmless little IE!
Of course it'll scare people.
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Funny)
though i must say most nights with blue e's were finshed in style in the company of a fox and firing up a doobie
(warning... some poetic license/geek fantasy may have slipped into the latter stages of this)
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
o/~ Who can turn the internet into disease ridden pustule?.. just add eye-eee!
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Funny)
sorta sounds like...
this old joke [attrition.org]
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
Ctrl+PgDwn
rather, mor usefull
Re:Scared? (Score:4, Informative)
So what are you bitching about? If you want to pull it directly from your task bar use a window, if you would rather nest it with one window with some other pages, use a tab. Once you start using tabs, you will find that they are very handy.
Congratulations, Microsoft! With this new feature, IE users will at last be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the cutting edge of three years ago.
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft itself in the design specs they wrote years ago stated that MDI (multiple document interface) was the way all apps should be designed. Tabbed browsing is just a form of MDI. It's no different than if you had multiple documents open in a word processor; if you want to get to a specific one, you alt-tab to the word processor, and then ctrl-tab to the right document (or use the view or window menu item).
Microsoft has been backpedalling from MDI for a couple of years; the new versions of office open multiple windows when you open multiple documents. I find this quite irritating. I'm sure they did it because of the taskbar's collapse similar items thing, but I'd rather have MDI.
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Insightful)
Excel
Visual Studio
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
Open a few Word windows, and take a look how many winword.exe processes are running - just the one. Kill that process and all instances close. I've not tested, but I'm sure a crash would kill all instances.
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scared? (Score:4, Funny)
Would you like cheese with that whine?
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called a hierarchy, and it can be quite important. Let's change your situation around a bit, shall we? Let's say you wanted to switch from Word to Outlook. How would you do it without this hierarchy?
alt+tab Excel - no.
alt+tab Firefox - no.
alt+tab Firefox (tab 2) - no.
alt+tab Firefox (tab 3) - no!
alt+tab Firefox (tab 4) - NO!
alt+tab Firefox (tab 5) - NO!!!
alt+tab Outlook - yes, finally!
Re:Scared? (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps they've fixed this since Win98 which is what I'm using, but I find windows in the Alt+Tab list are ordered by how recently they were used, so you'd get something more like:
Alt+Tab Excel - no.
...
Alt+Tab Firefox - no.
Alt+Tab Excel again - no.
Alt+Tab Firefox again - no.
Alt+Tab Excel again - no.
Alt+Tab Firefox again - no.
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
Firfox gives users a choice to open in tabs or *gasp* new windows. So, if like me you like tabs, then use tabs. If not, use windows and have a ball.
Here are some Firefox hints.
The feature set goes on and on. Now t
Re:How is that different from MDI? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I realized that after I posted... Thing is, I still run Office 97 on my Win2K machine, but I switched my main desktop to Linux a LONG time ago.
The switch to SDI seems to have been driven by a combination of two factors -- dumb users and/or a poor user interface to MDI. Part of the problem with MDI is that Microsoft's implementation of it didn't have a visual metaphor. It was famously confusing for ordinary end users. People seem to ada
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Informative)
If I have 20 Internet Explorer windows open, I can navigate between them using the Taskbar's "(20) Internet Explorer" collapsed button or with the ALT-TAB window switcher.
Ever heard of CTRL-TAB? for switching windows inside a browser? Or any other standard-compliant application for that matter.
Personally I prefer to be able to switch to another application when using ALT-TAB without having to go trough my 20 tabs before I get the app I want. But that may just be me. And my window-management is not thrown off in any way. On the contrary tabbed browsing has enhanched it.
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats nice, but a tabbed browser that does not tell you in the status bar if the link you are following will open up a new window or not is useless in my opinion. Now why oh why do web designers feel the compulsion to put every damn link in a new window is another question. What's even worse is when they open up all the new links with the same name so if you are daring enough to want to open up
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
Its got so many options that some people consider it too much and counter productive. However, when used properly I find this extension to be in
Re:Scared? (Score:4, Interesting)
From a UI Designer/Nazi standpoint, Tabs are a really bad thing -- they are a totally inconsistant form of window management that is only used in one type of application. They defeat the normal applicaiton switchers (taskbar, dock, expose, alt-tab). They aren't quite SDI and aren't quite MDI, and MDI is supposed to be dead anyway. Firefox tabs in particular are bad because you are locked the Z Order based on how you opened them and have no control over how or where they appear.
That having been said, Tabs are damn useful, and I love them!
I noticed that Apple Safari has tabs but disables them by default. That lends credence to the idea that Tabs really are scary to non-power users.
Microsoft has a Tabbed Browser called ".NET SDK Documentation". Rather than being "basic", you can drag-n-drop the tabs and Z-Order works. In other words, they're more advanced than Firefox tabs and hopefully that's what they'll use for IE7.
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
This is easily fixed with extensions. Try LastTab, MiniT, Single Window, and undoclosetab. Those extenstions give you a lot more control over your tabs in Firefox.
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Funny)
He doesn't need no ctrl-tab.
Yes, mods, that's a flame... But at the same time it's true.
Re:Scared? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I switch between those tasks. If I want to reference a page while I write a document the ALT-TAB still works, so I can jump back and forth. Then if I want to reference another web page, I switch my task over to "browsing the web" find the tab (sub-task) in the browser window and the ALT-TAB back to the document to continue.
Clear separation of user's view of tasks (things I have to do) rather than the os view of tasks (processes I am running).
Now contrast that to having 20 browser windows, 4 documents and a media player. All of a sudden I can't see the wood for the trees.
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Informative)
Who said that tab browsing and windows can be used at the same time? That's why they're so great.
In firefox this becomes even easier for stuff like reading my web-mail or whatever because when you bookmark you can bookmark all tabs in a folder, and then in that folder click "open all in tabs".
One of the
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is, you have a *lot* of choice. Asking your average slashdotter will
Re:Scared? (Score:3, Funny)
I also click on a few pop-up ads a day, just to keep my favorite web sites going. I wouldn't want to be stealing web content, now would I?
You want to know what's weird? I usually get up to 25 browser windows just by going to msn.com -- even when I'm not connected to the Internet!
Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as needed (Score:4, Insightful)
My brother had his PC infected by a smart viral strain of CoolWebsearch, a nasty Browser Hijacker. I ended up spending a few hours trying to clean it and every time I thought I did, it would pop back up. I gave up, installed Firefox and asked him never to touch IE again. If I had the ability to go to the Control Panel, and nuke IE altogether, thereby getting rid of any unsavory plugins that might have been installed along with it, and doing a fresh install back again, I wouldnt have forced him to move to Firefox. I understand that Browser Hijacker has aspects outside the realm of the browser, but providing the ability to uninstall and reinstall gives power back to the user.
And this is totally understandable for a bad product. Obviously you want to strap it down with hooks in to the OS as deep as you could, preventing anyone from removing it, since if the user realizes that they could remove it, the first thing they would want to do is nuke it.
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:5, Informative)
Yep... technical necessity.....
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason its 'part of the OS' is that the back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel) to connect to the internet. 'Remove' IE (and I guess you don't mean remove 'just the GUI') would cripple a great many programs out there.
Have you tried spyware removal tools? Or even a anti-virus program? Alternatively, just vape all the browser helpe
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:5, Funny)
Why, back where I come from, we used to call that a "library" and it wasn't something we'd keep all warm and idling and share-y. Back in the day, every app could load up its own copy - they ain't so darned big that it matters a whole lot - and everyone goes away happy. This whole IE approach of tryin' to lash application code to this newfangled live executing library-like-but-not code reminds me of the time Poppa Burke was down at the mill and thought we oughta try to power the grinders from the engine on that old junk Chevy he kept settin' out around back. Sure it looked like a good idea, but when he got outta the hospital later that year, he admitted it didn't make no more sense than what yer talkin' about with this IE and "helper objects" and "registry" and stuff. Me? I'm a simple kind a feller and I'll settle for muh libraries the old fashioned way, thank you very much.
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:3, Insightful)
Kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it ?
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:5, Interesting)
Why then can Solaris,Linux,BeOS, QNX access the internet without a integrated browser installed? Why could you uninstall IE 3 without serious harm?
You mean, you tried to remove some spyware app, but because you couldn't it's therefore IE's fault.
Well since ActiveX component technology is what allows these programs to become part of IE, I say hell yeah it's IE's fault, to an extent. A burglar is not the homeowners fault per say. But if you place a note on the door saying "no one is at home the key is under the mat", your doing everything short of asking known robbers to steal from you. The back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel)
A shared library is not a program! A DLL that cannot be changed or written over by any program would not allow a virus or malware and still provide your code reuse.
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a lame excuse for a company who didn't even see fit to include a TCP/IP stack until around '94. Now that they have one, it's easy for every malware writer and his brother to hijack it, but nearly impossible for the rightful owner to upgrade it with something better.
This has nothing to do with efficient reuse of
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:3, Insightful)
Well the fact that "everyone else" (OS X, KDE, GNOME) has since gone down that road would suggest is was a reasonably good idea. Code re-use generally *is* considered good programming, after all.
Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of stuff, both MS and third party, uses mshtml.dll for rendering of HTML because it is guaranteed to exist.
What could be useful is the ability to return IE to an "official" condition, eg base OS install, SP 1, etc, in a single step. That would either require a read-only medium, or some particularly impressive voodoo magic to ensure the integrity of the installation files (whether cached or redownloaded).
Never forget that a machine infested with spyware is compromised. If you're sufficiently paranoid, you can't trust *any* data or executable on it any more.
Lucky you! (Score:5, Interesting)
If I ever tried to remove MSN Messenger, delete the files and everything, like dark fucking magic everything would reappear and launch if I ever visited a MSN-site with MSIE.
I had to insert dummy-executables in the MSN Messenger directory to get rid of it. However, editing the registry to tell Windows that MSN Messenger wasn't there would also magically cause a reinstall just out of nowhere.
So I let Windows believe the dummy executables were MSN Messenger which were still techincally "installed". That and only that did it for me.
Seems like you got off easy, you lucky bastard!
The way windows constantly tries to battle the user, if he actually dares to defy the devine intensions of Redmond... *shudder* It's really all you need to know about the OS and the vendor.
That was System Restore (Score:4, Funny)
I think if you turned off system restore you could delete that and the pinball game.
Just be glad you werent auto-reported to the department of homeland security for being subversive.
Re:Lucky you! (Score:4, Interesting)
-FlynnMP3
PS. I got this little tip from some reader on this site.
I am just so floored... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I am just so floored... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I would have been very surprised if they had NOT included tabbed browsing.
Re:I am just so floored... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ironically, IE used to be exactly like Firefox: Up against a monster behemoth (Netscape) which was starting to stagnate, and fall in quality a bit. I find it odd that they didn't learn from that experience, and instead decided to rest on their laurels after stomping Netscape. They really should have seen Firefox (or something similar) coming, espe
Re:I am just so floored... (Score:5, Funny)
Just to nitpick, Netscape didn't stagnate, version 4 just sucked.
Re:I am just so floored... (Score:5, Funny)
MS innovation, at it's best!
Opera fans can chime in here too, if they want.
Re:I am just so floored... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd assumed that chiming in when browsers are mentioned was part of Opera's EULA.
Patents? (Score:2, Funny)
Turn off-able? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Turn off-able? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Turn off-able? (Score:3, Informative)
Love the spin (Score:5, Informative)
but when Microsoft does it, (Score:2)
Personally, I don't se why they wouldn't have tabbed browsing.
Office next? (Score:5, Interesting)
How soon until MS Office gets tabs? I for one often have up to a dozen Word and Excel documents open and having them all in the task bar is a pain in the UI.
Re:Office next? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Word, clicking the outermost "close" button closes the document you're working on, but leaves other documents unaffected. In Excel, doing the same action closes all documents. Some of the apps treat indiviual documements completely independantly, and some of them treat them as cascaded windows inside the same instance of the application.
I would LOVE to see a robust tabbed implementation in Office, especially if (like Firefox) you could run multiple instances of a tabbed application.
-David Barak
Re:Office next? (Score:3, Funny)
Excel has tabs. .
(that's sarcasm. I'm shooting for Funny here)
Re:Office next? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Office next? (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, if someone with a superior knowledge of the Windo
Re:Office next? (Score:3, Insightful)
No patent? (Score:2)
Re:No patent? (Score:2)
It is already patented by Adobe (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No patent? (Score:3, Informative)
Tabs in browsers were created by BookLink Technologies in Internet Works. This was follwed by netcaptor(based on IE).
Tabbed browsing is not a creation by Mozilla or Netscape. But Firefox would be the first widely deployed Tabbed browser.
Cancel button after download (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really a stupid "feature" of IE. I doubt they'll fix it cause well quite frankly I won't be surprised if IE developers use FireFox.
Re:Cancel button after download (Score:3, Insightful)
If a popup can grab the focus like that, a malicious program that needs user interaction to do its badness could keep on popping up dialogs until it gets lucky and the user just happens to be hitting the "Y" key at the same time.
Re:Cancel button after download (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cancel button after download (Score:3, Interesting)
We should be hitting the developers of every platform for this problem.
Still no cure for... (Score:2)
yea, they're increasing in popularity.
What style of tabbed browsing will IE7 use? (Score:2, Insightful)
He said he didnt prefer firefox! He's a TROLL! (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox's tabbed browsing is a set of buttons with a tabbed look which swap the active URL (*I know it's not as simple as just that, no use pointing that out). Opera on the other hand is a full MDI- something which OSS programs seem to all be against for some reason (usually saying "the window manager should handle that"
Share slipping... (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm...and? I think there is some implied meaning in the above statement, but I'm not sure what it is. Isn't that what companies do? If they see trends in the market shift towards certain features/needs/wants of consumers, they respond with providing consumers with what they want.
Re:Share slipping... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Share slipping... (Score:4, Insightful)
What IE7 needs is a better security model (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think the lack of Tabbed browsing is reducing IE's popularity, then I want whatever you are smoking. IE is getting unpopular due to spyware and drive-by-installs of malware. Why people are switching to firefox is to avoid those porn popups and phishing sites.
Security and geeks tired of fixing their in-law's PC's is the reason for IE's market share dipping. Oh, and faster PC's capable of rendering XUL fast.Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft just doesn't seem to get it. From an "ease of use" standpoint, the best software is designed so that it's easy for a novice to use -- by hiding the "scary" options and so on. But it's also designed so that a user whose comfortable with the software can learn tricks, customizations, and so on to make his work faster. In short, the software has to grow as the user's skills grow.
Very few companies actually get this. Apple has made progress in this direction, as has the open source movement. But they're both well off.
Somewhere in the future (Score:5, Funny)
Fabulous New Innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
Never gonna happen man (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree wholeheartadly, but the main reason Internet Explorer dominates 85 - 95% of the market (depending on who you ask) is that it is bundled with Windows, and not really removable. I've noticed that even when I recommend Firefox to Windows users, they eventu
whoopdy doo (Score:5, Insightful)
And they're working on tabs?
The real question (Score:5, Funny)
My non-technical Father LOVES Tabs! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that THAT'S out of the way... (Score:5, Funny)
Tabbed brainwash (Score:3, Informative)
The funny thing in the tabbed browsing argument from the M$ guy is that it really is just so not credible, and those people really seem to think users and others are just idiots.
"Some people have asked why we didn't put tabs in IE sooner," Hachamovitch wrote. "Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistencywill it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have?"
Big lie. The simple fact that they didn't even consider making it optional is because with the current IE codebase, it's just plain impossible. Everyone knows how M$ can't create modular softwares. It s not the Windows OS, it's the M$ culture and the poor programming and software engineering that is part of their habits.Re:Tabbed brainwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Twaddle. The IE rendering engine is modular, which is why everything uses it, which is why everyone complains "it's a part of the OS". Visual Studio.NET, for example, has tabs that can contain IE controls - you can use it in effect as a tabbed browser. Ditto recent versions of HTML help.
Ease of use and hiding of complexity (Score:3, Interesting)
Years ago, MS told us that the multiple-document interface was bad because users supposedly weren't able to deal with it. Then they stepped back and reintroduced it in their next office update. Now IE is going to get MDI in the only way that really is usable: with tabs.
But that's not the point that I'm not getting. Pondering the best, most usable solution is a good thing. Even if it takes a couple of years. Even if it's done by Microsoft. No. What I don't get is the apparent hypocrisy.
Whether a browser is safe and usable isn't only determined by such in-your-face features as boring ol' tabs. Have you ever tried to tweak IE's options? Whether you are a complete noob or somebody that has been admining Windows machines for the last ten years, the options dialog is one part of IE that makes you run away screaming for you mommy.
Options with labels that are hard to understand (to put it mildly) that are caved into a too small dialog that cannot be resized. I don't know how much of this is due to a very bad localization. But the German version actually features an option that you could back-translate to "Enable page transitions". Help item: "Determines whether Internet Explorer will blank the current page and display the next page when you leave a page." Huh?
If somebody really thinks that tabs might make IE a substantially better browser, he hasn't used it yet.
Watch MS... (Score:3, Funny)
Even more depressing: watch the MS fanbois eat it up.
[OT] I wouldn't mind switching everyone to Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
Prediction! (Score:5, Insightful)
Proposed tab solution (Score:3, Insightful)
With my web browser, I have never found the need to use tabs. In fact, tabs have often confused me because I wind up having two or three firefox windows each with a variety of tabs, and they aren't organized well. In VS.net, every window is a solution and the tabs are documents in that solution, but in a browser, there is no analogous divider, so I would like the ability to move tabs between windows.
Some poster above wanted tabs in all MS Office apps, this just proves that the concept of tabs could be universally applied to all applications... kind of like the taskbar! Think about it, tabs aren't any different than a taskbar, except they are nested one level deeper.
I propose a hierarchical, organizable taskbar. Rather than a hard and fast rule like "if the taskbar gets full, group like applications" I would like to be able to create groups and move windows into and out of groups. Applications should have API control over their own windows organization (user overridable of course), so VS.net could, for example, group applications by solution.
This solution eliminates the need to add tabs support to every single application and creates a common and more robust tab solution.
What does everyone think?
Is MS unaware of their own products? (Score:4, Informative)
Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have tabs?
Um, What's been at the bottom of Excel for over a decade? Oh, excuse me, those are "worksheets", not "tabs". How could I be so insensitive?
MS stated "tabbed browsing not important" (Score:4, Interesting)
Features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users 11/12/04 [slashdot.org]
Yes, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsofts strategy is not innovation. It never has been.
What it has been doing, is to incorporate things in so that for 70 - 80 % of the people, things work fairly ok.
A friend of mine has been using XP for some time, and when I tried to convert him over to 10.3, he was like - why should I? Luna (the XP theme) is good enough for me.
I think this is the critical statement. Good enough. As soon as IE has few enough security holes that Microsoft Anti-Spyware can catch everything that sneaks through, what need has Joe User for Firefox?
Seriously. Think about it. On my XP box, I use ZoneAlarm. There is now a one-way firewall with SP2. I use Ad-Aware and Spybot, along with HijackThis. There is a beta-version of MS anti-Spyware available.
I also use something called Anti-Vir. Mostly because NAV was such a piece of bloatware. Now with rumours that there will be a MS branded antivirus program, tell me, which Joe User is going to keep a multitude of programs, each of which need to be updated seperately, instead of some Microsoft Security Program, which keeps 80-90% of all the Bad Stuff(tm) off their computer?
In one way, this is probably a good thing. It frees up resources which were previously going to fix security holes to develop cool new features. However, I am, personally a little concerned about the dominance of one company over so many diverse parts of the user-experience.
Ah well. There is always my Mac.
Take care, R.
Re:I don't Comprendo. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't Comprendo. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the "web browser" even considered a "market"? It's not like I pay any extra for IE. For that matter, most of these browsers are free, right?
From a consumer/end-user perspective, you're probably right. From a content-creator/geek perspective, the "market" is dominated by a browser that doesn't play nice with other browsers, leaving the web-content people with a choice: (1) support IE and ignore everything else, (2) ignore IE and code to standards, or (3) code to standards, then hack until it works on IE. I "choose" option 3, but I live for the day standards-compliant browsers like Firefox, Opera, Konqueror and Safari dominate the market.
So... long story short: it's only folk like me who consider there to be a web browser market... probably!
Re:IE, Idiots Explorer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, for one, multiple windows tend to overlap and obscure each other. You then need to sift through their icons on the taskbar (Windows, Linux desktops) or use Exposé to see them all neatly arranged on the screen (OS X), then click on the one you want to use.
In any case, that's a lot more UI work than clicking tabs on a tablist which is always in sight, or using shortcuts to move through it.
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Would someone please try to explain what's the difference, and what's the big deal?
You can use tabs to add a layer of hierarchy to organise a large number of open pages.
For example, I might open a new browser window to view Slashdot, but then that will be my "Slashdot window", and any links withi
Re:why should I use Firefox? (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, the rule is, if it runs in Firefox, it runs everywhere. PLUS, the javascript errors actually tell you what is broken on your page, not the generic, useless JScript errors.
Then there's the javascript popup blocker taht actually WORKS. And the ability to instantly add or remove pages to allow popups.
And the profile manager. And the password manager, which is so