Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post has an article today about the advantages that Firefox 1.5 has over Internet Explorer. He and other high-profile writers are starting to put into words what I and many others have been thinking.
Namely, that Firefox has moved so far ahead of Internet Explorer that the browser race, at least for those tech savvy enough to understand the feature differential, is over. Firefox has won.
Rob applauds Firefox’s new automatic update system, it’s better security and its tabbed browsing. Those are great advantages for sure, but here are the reasons I believe Firefox has won the war.
1) Tabbed Browsing– this is not the reason I stay with Firefox, it’s the reason I tried it in the first place. A core feature that gives Firefox a commanding lead. Internet Explorer will soon add this feature, but it’s too little, too late.
2) Extensions- there are so many extensions and add-ons for Firefox that you can basically create your own browser. This is the reason I stay with Firefox.
Here are the ones I have installed: BugMeNot (avoids have to register at a lot of free sites); Greasemonkey (see item 3 below); Onfolio integration (allows me to use my beloved Onfolio with Firefox); del.icio.us (allows me to tab my del.icio.us bookmarks with the click of a button); Sage (a currently less than perfect integrated RSS reader with great potential- it will be my default reader when a couple of much needed features are added); Extended Status Bar (just because it’s cool); Word Count (which helps me with my writing of posts, comments and articles); and Always Remember Password (which doesn’t work in Firefox 1.5, but hopefully will soon).
3) Greasemonkey, which allows me to add even more customizations, including the Blogger “keep current time” script.
4) Google Toolbar for Firefox- now the best thing about Internet Explorer works in Firefox.
5) The infinitely customizable toolbars. Here’s mine, but the possibilities are endless.
Internet Explorer will keep a lot of corporate users as well as those who don’t feel comfortable moving beyond what’s pre-installed on their computers. But for the rest of use, the war it over. It’s Firefox.
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