[IxDA Discuss] IE7 vs Firefox

[Bryan J Busch]

> Can anyone tell me how is the IE7 different from Firefox?
> Is there much difference now, that they've moved into tabbed browsing,
> faster page loads and better image rendering?

The last time I looked at the IE7 beta, the UI had more in common  
with Opera than with Firefox.

Two of my favorite differences are:

* Firefox is updated daily, IE is updated every four years or so
* Firefox has thousands of free extensions available which can  
drastically transform your browsing experience (https:// 
addons.mozilla.org/firefox/extensions/)

> Why do we designers spend so much time customzing web pages for IE...

We shouldn't. In a few years, when IE7's installed user base has  
expanded to outnumber that of IE6 (maybe less than years, if  
companies decide to allow their employees to go ahead with the auto- 
update that is being rolled out, but so far I've heard many say  
otherwise), we should be able to stop applying filter after filter in  
our CSS to fix the many layout bugs that exist in our world's most  
popular and most problematic browser.

Here's a good resource for most of what you need to know regarding  
coding for IE7: http://positioniseverything.net/articles/ie7- 
dehacker.html

- BJB