Taking a walk with Firefox

Some will know I'm not really a huge fan of alternative web browsers such as Firefox and Opera. As such, you'd be surprised to learn I'm spending the next week in the arms of Firefox, leaving Internet Explorer to fend for itself in the cold. After a week I'll be able to make a more informed opinion, seeing in the past I've used Firefox for a few hours and given up with it. Right now I doubt if this marks the big shift away from Microsoft's browser due to issues with the way Firefox displays some websites - though I am enjoying tabbed browsing.

Of course, before I used Microsoft's Internet Explorer, I used the once far superior Netscape Navigator. Sadly, Navigator grew in useless bulk and IE4 was released. I didn't look back. Today we live in a security conscious era with the various browsers claiming to be more secure than the others. This doesn't really drive my decision to test run Firefox in this way but so many people believe it's better than IE that I may as well give it a proper run and see for myself ((some facts are indisputable - Firefox supports PNGs, CSS2, CSS3 and IE does not)).

Microsoft have announced the seventh version of their browser, which has an 80% market share, to be released as a beta in the Summer - for release in the Autumn ahead of Longhorn, the next version of their Windows operating system. Hopefully they'll do more than they're openly talking about and do things such as supporting PNG alpha transparencies, and newer Internet standards such as CSS2/3. The option to use tabbed browsing would be a bonus. Only time will tell.

I'll post back when I end my week away with Firefox...