So what’s the deal? What’s different from previous versions, is it worth the upgrade, what separates these two browsers and which one is better…?

These are all valid questions, although some not as easy to answer as others. Hopefully this breakdown won’t be me trying to influence you one way or another because quite frankly I would choose Opera anyway.

So what are the differences? First, Firefox 2 as this would appear to be the easiest since not a lot has changed.

Bit of a sweeping statement there, but out of the two, Firefox has changed the least and some would argue that actually this is more like Firefox 1.6 than version 2.

The new stuff

  • Visual Refresh
  • Built-in phishing protection
  • Enhanced search capabilities
  • Improved tabbed browsing
  • Resuming your browsing session
  • Previewing and subscribing to Web feeds
  • Inline spell checking
  • Live Titles
  • Improved Add-ons manager
  • JavaScript 1.7
  • Extended search plugin format
  • Updates to the extension system
  • Client-side session and persistent storage
  • SVG text
  • New Windows installer

This list was taken from the actual release notes, not very impressive before you even look any closer at them.

The Visual refresh isn’t an improvement by any strech of the imagination; to my mind they have made it look dirty and unappealing. Microsoft however have made a much bigger change to the look and feel of IE. We now have much more room to view pages with the normal ‘File, Edit, View…’ being available at just a press of the alt key.

Phishing filter – well they both have them and that can only be a good thing. As I have said previously, security is important and anything that helps to improve it can only be a benefit however there is a ‘but’. Now I haven’t been able to actually test either of them properly but looking through the details and from the limited experience I do have with them both I can say that the Firefox filter as it stands at the moment is severely weaker than its IE counterpart and this isn’t good if you start to depend on it to protect you; something no one should do anyway, but you can just see some users falling victim to that.

RSS feed is something that’s new to both browsers. Both IE and Firefox have changed the way they handle RSS on websites meaning you can detect, read and subscribe to sites that have feeds available. Both of the browsers handle this in a slightly different way. Firefox will display an icon in the address bar when you browse to a page that has feeds on it. After clicking on that icon, you get taken to the feed view which also allows you to subscribe to the feed. Microsoft and IE 7 have an icon on the ‘Command Bar’ which is usually greyed out unless you navigate to a page with a feed and then it will be highlighted. Clicking on this button again takes you to a feed view which then allows you to subscribe to the feed. The feed will then become available when you click the drop down. The only real difference between the two is in the way IE7 allows you to sort the contents and search it – handy if you subscribe to a news site like BBC news which has a lot of content.

One great feature that Firefox has over IE7 is its spell checker, particularly handy for someone like me who is often making typos; it works in a similarl way to a word application in that it checks what you are typing into the browser as you type it and underlines it as you go allowing you to right click and select an alternative. It only seems to work if you have some kind of dictionary installed but is very handy.

That is where the Firefox 2 improvements end but the IE7 continue…

Tabbed browsing, ok so this isn’t fair as Firefox had this one already but now at least tabbed browsing is going to make it to the masses. After using tabbed browsing for a long time I know what a helpful feature this is.

I think the search is also worth mentioning; firstly it is integrated into the top bar, but more importantly you can select who you search with. This is quite suprising anyway but at the time of writing there are 6 web search option including Microsoft’s Live search and 11 topic searches including Ebay, Amazon and Wikipedia which is a very nice addition.

Clear type is a moot point- some like it, some don’t but either way it is on by default in IE7. I personally like it and won’t ever be switching it off.

Other improvements to IE7 include improvements to printing, AD support for businesses which I know our place will be happy about.

So are either of them worth the upgrade? Well for IE7, that’s easy – of course anyone who uses IE should upgrade but if you are a Firefox user it is a little less clear. Sure, it has been improved and upgrading won’t break anything existing but it isn’t something that is high on the priority lists of people. As I said at the top, Firefox 2 = Firefox 1.6 – as for which one is better, well if you had asked me before it would always have been Firefox but this time IE seems to have come of age and about time too!. It is a very good browser – I just hope Microsoft don’t forget about it again as they did before.