A Tale of Two Web Browsers: Firefox 2.0 vs IE 7

Wired News takes a look at the two newly updated web browsers, Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7, and comes to the same conclusion millions of users have known for some time: Firefox kicks ass big time! From Wired News:

The better browser is Firefox 2 for two reasons: innovation and ease of use.

Both browsers are loaded with modern productivity features, but while Microsoft is just introducing these features to its browser, Firefox has already had them long enough to refine them, enhance them and make them even easier to use. While Microsoft has added an integrated search box to IE7, Firefox has added auto-suggest query completion and advanced search engine management to its own familiar search box. IE7 can now handle RSS feeds, but Firefox has several options for adding feeds within the browser, a client or your web service of choice.

Put simply, Microsoft's new browser introduces several features that Firefox (and browsers like Opera and Safari) has had for a long time. Maybe this is because Mozilla's open-source development framework allows it to adopt browser trends more quickly, but whether they were thought up in-house or not, you can't beat the forward-thinking features in Firefox 2.

Tabbed browsing is one area where Firefox's ease of use excels. Simply making the "close" buttons on each tab accessible even when the tab isn't currently at the front of the stack is an example of the attention to detail that's gone into Firefox 2. Also, the in-line search feature in Firefox 2 makes finding that one elusive phrase dead easy -- with fewer keystrokes and without using a pop-up window.