Originally written 6/20/07, last updated 9/7/07
Welp, that was a fast two weeks! My initial response is if you’re not going to use Microsoft web based products, FireFox is just as usable as Internet Explorer, but please do read on. If you plan on EVER touching Microsoft web products (explained a little later) then IE is the way to go. You suffer little as far as I can see in features between the two browsers. Below I explain some of the common differences between the two browsers that doesn’t say either one is better, just different. Then I list some good points of FF and some not so good points. If you wish to share your thoughts please do so, I encourage interaction on this subject. Enjoy the read!
Some Differences
Differences are what make the world go around. If everyone was only using IE then my job would be easier, but since we have differences in life, my job is that much more fun! The largest difference between FireFox and Internet Explorer is the way FF and IE handle HTML & CSS. For example, in my editor for this blog, the buttons to edit, save and preview appear in color and with a little style in FF, but in IE, they are the typical gray button colors. Appears the developer didn't test in IE? This is not to say IE couldn’t display the buttons correctly, they just didn’t use the correct style information to render in both browsers. This is an age old battle between the two browsers. From the end user's point of view, it shouldn't matter between either browser, it’s the responsibility of the developer to support both browsers, and then some. Like I said, I can spend more time figuring out compatibility issues between FF and IE than I do developing the base of the site! Ok, maybe not more but a lot of time. Another example is how IE and FF translates a line return between objects in HTML. FF treats a line return as just a line return, no spacing (which I agree with!) IE treats a line return as a character space between two objects, so if you’re trying to keep a few images tight up against each other, then you need to keep them tight up against each other in the HTML as well, no new lines.
Something that was a surprise to me was uploading files is different between the two browsers, specifically a JPG file. When uploading a jpg image to the website using FF it registers a content type of image/jpeg and IE states it’s an image/pjpeg. Now that's weird! I have read up on why IE translates it to the pjpef, but seriously Microsoft, even image uploading?
My highlights of FireFox, but don’t tell my boss!
I will take some time and share what I do like about FireFox over Internet Explorer, but don’t tell my boss, we’re a Microsoft shop and talk like this might get me fired…
First, as a developer, I love the fact that the view source is color coded. It resembles the development environment much nicer than Notepad does. I was hoping IE 7 would have a similar setup, but nope. FireFox also has the JavaScript console. A beautiful tool for troubleshooting JavaScript as it will explain the error a little more than IE and give the line number. IE sometimes will just state, in Microsoft-ese, There was an error. DUH! Another neat feature for those brought up to depend on computers for existence and can’t spell without MS Word, there is a spell checker in the default install. The spell checker will check content as you're typing it in forms on websites. There’s even a little red squiggle under the word and you can right click and select the correct spelling or add it to your dictionary. This is quite useful actually except for some words appear as invalid, like intranet, wanted to change to intra net. Now it would be very cool if it integrated with my MS Word dictionary! FireFox decided to break on me while I was browsing some sites, no big deal, IE breaks too. The browser just shut right down on me. But when I reopened FireFox it asked if I wanted to continue my previous session or start a new one. I click continue and I'm back on my previous sites! Two huge thumbs up! Very cool FF! Only real feature I would ever consider using FF for (outside of development).
I've had a little better surfing experience with FF over IE. Pages and sites appear to load faster in FF. I did some side by side comparisons of sites I frequently hit and sure enough FF is a second or two faster. I wouldn't consider this an actual benchmark test though, manually counting the seconds after clicking isn't exactly a guarantee. If you have a tool that I could run on my PC that would run both browsers side by side that would be lovely.
Why I won’t use FireFox
As a Microsoft developer and working for a MS partner company, Microsoft is key to our day to day tasks. Microsoft products like SharePoint and Outlook Web Access aren't fully supported with FireFox. You can manage through both web based applications using FF but some of the items which make these applications slick are lost in FF but abound in IE. Microsoft apparently didn't put a lot of work into supporting FF. Also Microsoft CRM 3.0 web client is a kicking CRM tool, but FireFox can’t open it, doesn’t even try. Site states to upgrade the browser. A week and two days into using FireFox I found using SharePoint not as bad as I initially thought. Some of the cool menus are gone but I can still do everything I need to in SharePoint that I could do in IE, but with a few more clicks.
This is a huge issue, in five clicks I can see all of the saved passwords the user has saved into the browser. Why on God’s green earth would you want to do that?! Think about it… Why? Sure, IE will store it and allow you to recover it IN the form to use to login and mask the password so no one can take a glance then leave and hit the site from their own computer. I can only imagine how easy it must be for malware to read that from FF and pass it on! (Oh wait, people don’t write malware for Non-Microsoft products because they love everything that is not Microsoft.)
Following saved passwords, this doesn’t happen a lot, but if I go to one site, and login using my account and password it will save it to the browser. If I then log out and log back in with a different user account and password FF wants to change the password it has for my original account, not setup a new account. But then it will randomly decide to setup another account. So for one site I’m working on I have three accounts setup but have logged in with dozens since.
Added 9/7/07 - I just recently was made aware of this oddity. From a developer point of view this is agravating and from a user point of view I would be a little annoyed with this. If an image does not exist, FF hides it! IE shows a broken image icon which makes sense because the image is broken. FF hides the object from rendering all together, that's bad! Why? Because, for example, my coworker just rolled over and said that he wasn't even seeing the missing image and he said that's great of FF. I quickly shot that down and said, then how do you know where it is? You have to do viewsource just to see the HTML script of where the image is, and on some of my pages that can be a task in and of itself! With IE I can right click on the broken image and go to properties and see what the path to the image is easily. Of FF....
Finally, an annoyance I found with FF which really got me aggravated was when I was testing a downloaded file from a web app.I would download the file then open it and notice that my changes were not applied to the file. I download it again then click Clear on that download file window in FF. Again the file didn’t change, so I would update my script a little, redownload it then open it again and it would be the same. I then ripped my code out, and did a basic file with contents and STILL it was the same file. Then I decided to erase my original file and redownload it and when I went to delete it from the folder I was downloading to and I had 10 copies of the same file! ARGH! Now that I know I’ve since worked around it, but seriously, that was really annoying!
In closing, why change?
I’m satisfied with the honest effort I gave in trying FireFox. I never thought, oh here we go again, into the weak FF browser. Like I said, browsing for the most part is slightly faster and just as enjoyable as IE is, but I work with SharePoint almost hourly for my job and even that I got over. But why change? Why would you change? If it’s because you are a do-do-head-anti-microsoft user then there’s nothing to be said about you. You probably prefer Linux over Windows too. Users who have made up their minds solid on anything in the technology realm will always be an outcast, always be laughed at (yes I laugh at FF users a lot).
Today, if you are married to a single technology and can’t open up the chance that something else may be a little better or at least give it the good ole college try, you’re missing out big time. I love Microsoft but I use iTunes for buying and playing music. I have an iPod too. I think Apple’s method of media management and features are excellent. If I was a hard core video editor, I’d probably hop on the band wagon and get a Mac with Final Cut Pro. I use Adobe PhotoShop for image editing and site design. Microsoft doesn’t have a tool this powerful (yet). I prefer Lenovo’s ThinkVantage software for managing my computer over Microsoft’s default tools, especially networking profiles. I use Nero for CD/DVD burning because Microsoft’s feeble attempt at CD burning causes more headaches than it’s worth. I could go on and on, but the one thing Microsoft has and why I will continue to prefer them for operating systems and browsing is this: compatibility. I know 110% that Windows PCs will always talk to each other, always communicate with Windows servers and will always support all of Microsoft software. Why fight that?