Firefox Versus Internet Explorer

Comparing Firefox to Internet Explorer reveals that Firefox is clearly the technology leader in some areas. Microsoft only recently realized that tabs in browsers were a technology users wanted.

Several areas deserve attention. Many Firefox users feel that Firefox's security is much better than Internet Explorer's. Is this true, is Firefox better at security?

Elliott Back says that there have been 44 security advisories for IE in 20 months (an average of 2.2 per month), while there were 14 security advisories for Firefox in 6 months (an average of 2.3 per month.) See http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/10/04/.

Back clearly implies that both browsers have an identical security track record. But going to Secunia's website (http://secunia.com/) gives us this information:

Firefox has had 21 security advisories in the period between 2003 and 2005. On the other hand, Internet Explorer has had 67 advisories between 2003 and 2005.

If you take an unbiased look at Secunia's data, comparing both products for the same period (2003 2005), you see that the facts are somewhat different: Internet Explorer has had three times as many security advisories as Firefox over an identical period of time. As Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

An excellent discussion of the relative security of Firefox, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer can be found at http://mozilla.gunnars.net/mozfaq_general.html#mozilla_security_bugs.

Many websites compare the speeds of Firefox and Internet Explorer. (Most also compare other browsers, as well.) One site for speed comparisons is http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html. Keep in mind that several factors can affect speed and that these speed tests are not absolutely the last word.

CNET reviewed features between Internet Explorer and Firefox (http://www.cnet.com.au/software/internet/0,39029531,40002501,00.htm). This comparison was done in late 2004, so it does not necessarily reflect the very latest changes in either product. CNET's comparison is summarized in Table 19.1.

Table 19.1. CNET's Summary of Browser Functionality

Feature/Browser	Internet Explorer 6 (Included with Windows XP SP2)	Firefox 1.0
CNET's rating	7.0	8.0 (Firefox earned their Editors' Choice award)
Pop-up blocking	Yes	Yes
Selective pop-up blocking	Yes	Yes
RSS reader (Active Bookmarks)	No	Yes
Tabbed browsing	No*	Yes
Number of third-party plug-ins	Many	Some
Uses ActiveX technology	Yes	No
User interface skins (themes)	No	Yes
Operating system supported	Windows XP SP2 and later only	All versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and several Linux distributions

Microsoft recently (mid-2005) released a version of Internet Explorer that has limited support for tabbed browsing, clearly in response to Firefox's tabbed browsing capabilities. Internet Explorer 6's tabbed browsing is part of the MSN toolbar. Microsoft has stated that Internet Explorer version 7 will fully support tabbed browsing.