Internet Explorer 7 RC1 is Fast!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx

I've been testing IE7 RC1 and it's faster than FireFox.

Some of the sites I visit with IE7 RC1 seem broken, example joomla sites with custom templates, but other than that it works extremely well.

Recently, since the last few updates to Firefox, FireFox been running a little slow with a few crashes on startup every so often. I'm begining to think that they have lost the original plot for what FireFox was supposed to be and do.

Anyone else using IE7 RC1?

Note that you have to have a legit or verified windows installation to download it.

Really? I have not had any problems at all.


Never again. If I would switch browser, I would probably switch to Opera.

I heard that Swiftfox is a lot faster than Firefox. Never tried it.
http://www.getswiftfox.com/

> it's faster than FireFox.
>
> Some of the sites I visit with IE7 RC1 seem broken,
> example joomla sites with custom templates,

Perhaps it's faster because it's not bothering to load half the web code.

You can get IE7 RC1 here for Windows XP SP2:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/0/3/403bc6de-95d9-4996-aa4b-28f47d2d55dd/IE7RC1-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe
if you are interested.

Firefox is starting to stink a bit.

I still have problems where it thinks I want to search when I'm actually typing in reply boxes.

It also seems to forget all its settings once in a while.

Another thing, sometimes it crashes and leaves the firefox process running. Firefox then refuses to restart until I've ended the process manually.

I noticed that...firefox process left running after app is closed down/crashes...very annoying.

I did try IE7 Beta 3 a while back. I was very impressed, but still concerned about security issues/problems that existed in IE6 and ultimately made me switch to Firefox.

Might give RC1 a go...

Yes. I hate when that happends. But I haven't had this problem in a long time.
It was even worse some versions ago when Firefox kept asking for a new profile when a process was still in memory. I don't know how many times I had to help people recover their "lost" bookmarks.

Technically it's just "everyone tries to attack/hack IE", not FireFox/Opera/XXX is much more safe.

Sort of agreed with Yoxola, but there are more reasons than that this time:
-IE has many more known security flaws yet to be fixed compared to Firefox or other web browsers.
-Explorer is an integral part of Windows (how this is is beyond me, since it's a horrible program), and when it screws up a lot of other things can screw up with it.
-IE uses ActiveX controls - a system actually used throughout Windows! - as web plug-ins. They dropped the more sensible NP-API, for no apparent reason (why not support both?), at version 3. To be fair, NPAPI is not inherently safer than ActiveX since they both can currently execute whatever code they want.

I also just plain don't trust Microsoft to maintain a secure web browser. When they first added ActiveX controls with IE version 3, it would blindly download controls without ANY user intervention, creating an incredible security risk.
Sure, they fixed that, but why did they let it happen in the first place?


Amon:
Are you testing the IE 7 Beta against the Firefox 2.0 beta?
FF2 runs very well for me and has slightly better crash handling (if it crashes, which it rarely does unless Quicktime is invlolved).

IE let that brave sentry garbage infiltrate my wife's computer. Hence, we recently switch to Firefox and aren't looking back. Too late MS!

I recommend Firefox with the NoScript extension. Top stuff.

I've been using Opera 9 for some time now.. it's very good :)
and on the plus side, it also implements an email client and an IRC client.. :)

the fastest web browser base on statistic is Avant

it's free and you can get it there

http://www.avantbrowser.com/

I got caught up in the initial "FireFox is the best" excitement. I tried FF for about three months before changing to Opera 9 (and I'm also running IE7 RC1 now too). FF is the slowest of the three browsers to fire up for starters. A lot of FF's touted strengths are questionable. Have you guys seen http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html ?

I'm impressed with IE7 RC1 so far, although it fails the acid 2 test miserably...

Hmm, Firefox and IE 7, how about adding Opera 9.1 to that mix? What do you think of Opera vs. the IE 7?

IE7 is.... Trying to validate my windows installation almost 60 minutes after starting the task.

*closes*

Is this over yet? I need to know, because even though I have never had any problems with IE, I switched to FireFox because it is the best. I want to have the same popular opinion as the people who know about these things, so should I now switch back to IE and start complaining about FireFox, or is it better to wait a few more weeks first? ;) Seriously I have never spotted a single useful difference between IE and FireFox but I guess I am not getting the most of it. I have also never had a problem with either IE or FireFox, they both have an address bar, a back button, a forward button, etc, only the colors are different. ;)

Right, I'll give the new IE a go. I have had the aforementioned problems recently with Firefox and it is beginning to grate.

Well... IE makes a mess of buttons when they don't have the proportions that it likes:
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=61312

Right, I'll give it a miss.

IE is inherently unsafe thanks to ActiveX.

All things being equal, any browser that doesn't support it will be safer than IE.

Myth - "Firefox is More Secure because it does not use ActiveX"

Reality - "ActiveX gets a bad rap as the cause of all of Internet Explorer's security woes. But it's just not so. Old myths die hard! There's no doubt that Internet Explorer has more than it's fair share of security holes, but very few of them have to do with ActiveX. ActiveX controls are packages of code that can run in the context of the browser. They are installable through a link on a Web page. Exactly how different is this from having a link to an executable file that you have to explicitly run? Essentially not at all, except that the ActiveX version is more convenient. Even with Firefox you can download and run an executable file. Does this make Firefox unsafe? In fact, Mozilla and Firefox's support for XPCOM, a plain text and platform-independent software model, is very comparable to ActiveX once you get the user to click "Yes." The complaint against ActiveX has always centered around the ability to install native code from across the Internet, but this is less unusual than it seems, and ActiveX arguably makes things more secure. When you encounter an object tag referencing a control that you do not have installed, you then have the opportunity to install it. Under the default security settings, you will be warned before this happens and given an opportunity to approve or reject the installation."

(taken from http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html)

Incidentally, as a web developer (asp.net, C#), I have IE, FF and Opera installed. I test all of my sites for cross-browsers compatibility. Personally, I dont' rate FF at all (slow, bloated etc) - I believe Opera to be the best of the three (performance and compliance wise). If more sites worked properly, Opera be my browser of choice. It's a good number of sites are still created with the assumption we'll all be viewing with IE. Having said that, IE7 is a definite improvement over IE6 imho.

I assume IE7 still tracks and records all your activities like the previous versions and hides all the information from you ..

http://www.microsuck.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml

Opera rox :)