[pavs]

"If you’re an Internet Explorer fan..."

Wait what? I was under the impression that most people use IE either because its installed by default or they are forced by their corporate overloads. Do people actually use IE because they really liked it after comparing it with other options?

[Niten]

For one thing, IE 8 is arguably a more secure browser than Firefox due to its use of low-integrity process isolation on Windows Vista and 7. It's also more stable than Firefox in my experience, probably because of the way it isolates browser windows into separate processes.

And now IE 9 has a rendering engine that's at least equal to Firefox's. It lags behind Firefox's user interface in some respects (customization, built-in spell check), but it feels much faster, and it doesn't bog down over a long browsing session like Firefox does (again thanks to isolated browser processes – now one for each tab, just like Chrome).

For my part, I still think Chrome is superior to both IE and Firefox for general web browsing, but these days I certainly wouldn't look at someone funny for choosing IE. It may just take a little while for the folk knowledge that "IE suxors!" to catch up to the new reality.

[yesimahuman]

My biggest issue with IE as a browser is that Microsoft's enterprise support priorities are not inline with my innovation priorities. I would rather support faster moving browsers such as Chrome or Firefox.

Supporting IE seems to me to be supporting a project that will be obsolete in many ways soon after launch, and will stay that way for quite some time.

[Legion]

Are you comparing IE 9 to Firefox 4.0, or Firefox 3.6?

[Niten]

I'm comparing to Firefox 3.6; Firefox 4.0 isn't released yet. But everything I've read indicates that Firefox 4.0 will still have a single-process, non-low-integrity process model, with all the security and reliability implications that go with it.

Hopefully Firefox 4 will catch up to the likes of Chrome and Safari (and IE 9) in terms of JavaScript performance, judging by benchmarks on the release candidate, but I haven't seen any indication that it addresses Firefox 3's fundamental design weaknesses. Of course, feel free to correct me if I've missed something in the release notes somewhere...

[Legion]

Understandable, but still, when it comes to comparing how IE 9 stacks up to "Firefox" on rendering engines and memory usage, it doesn't seem particularly meaningful to compare the brand new IE 9 to the old Firefox just because IE 9 released a single week before the next major revision of Firefox is slated to. Not that you were writing a New York Times article here or anything. :)

I certainly understand your other point about the single-process design.

[xist]

Yes :( Perhaps it's more the comfort factor, but there are people who are tech savvy, but prefer IE over anything else. I have ran across countless endusers who have multiple browsers but use IE8 as their "goto" browser for normal web surfing.

[mirkules]

As someone once told me, "Internet Explorer is the application I use to download Firefox"

[Legion]

For me, the rare times when I'm on Windows, this has become, "Internet Explorer is the application I use to download Ninite".

[michaelcampbell]

chuckle I suspect there are several people that do the same thing. I'm one. Then I use FF to download chrome... =)

[rsoto]

I know some people that does. One time I installed Chrome in some friend's PC. He has used Firefox and despite he's not a technical person, he understands there is 'more' Internet than the blue E icon.

Next time I know, he uninstalled it "to save up space". It was one of the saddest days in my life.

[lambda]

I remember someone once arguing with me, telling me that IE 7 was going to be the best browser ever and kick Firefox's ass.

I eventually decided that this person was a meatspace troll, though I could never quite be sure if he was honestly such a big fan of IE or just trying to get a rise out of people.

[Derbasti]

I hate to admit it, but I played around with IE9 in the last couple of days and I like it. Obviously, it can't sync with Chrome, but if it did, I might just ditch Chrome when working on Windows. It is very minimal and fast--just the way I like my browser.

[the_file]

Seriously firefox should use multi threading per tab!

I mean common most if not all the browsers are already doing it arent they?.

[yahelc]

I heard it as wry dead-pan sarcasm.