IE 7 Vs. Firefox 2.0

Written By
Jim Rapoza
Jim Rapoza
Published: Apr 3, 2006
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
1 minute read
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Its the browser battle of the future: Microsofts Internet Explorer 7 vs. the Mozilla Foundations Firefox 2.0. Right now, however, its more like a kindergarten scuffle in the sandbox, as IE 7 is still being beta tested and Firefox 2.0 is in its first alpha stage.

The latest version of IE 7 Beta 2 boasts new tool bar elements, including a Page drop-down menu for saving and e-mailing a Web page, and RSS feed handling has been improved. With the refresh, eWEEK Labs could add most major search engines to our integrated search bar, and a new feature in this release let us restore our tabbed windows from a previous session.

As an alpha, Firefox 2.0 has even less to show in the way of changes. One of the most significant new features is a Places window for managing feeds, bookmarks and history.

The alpha also shows that Firefox has caught up to other tabbed browsers, finally adding the Close Tab button to the actual tabs as opposed to having it on the end of the tool bar. Many other such features, such as extension blacklisting, are planned but couldnt be tested in this release.

Jim Rapoza

Jim Rapoza, Chief Technology Analyst, eWEEK.For nearly fifteen years, Jim Rapoza has evaluated products and technologies in almost every technology category for eWEEK. Mr Rapoza's current technology focus is on all categories of emerging information technology though he continues to focus on core technology areas that include: content management systems, portal applications, Web publishing tools and security. Mr. Rapoza has coordinated several evaluations at enterprise organizations, including USA Today and The Prudential, to measure the capability of products and services under real-world conditions and against real-world criteria. Jim Rapoza's award-winning weekly column, Tech Directions, delves into all areas of technologies and the challenges of managing and deploying technology today.

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