Computer and Technology | Ubuntu Linux | Web Development

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The Netscape versus Internet Explorer days are over and many will say that IE won back then. Now, we have a new browser war. This time it’s between Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox (FF) and it appears that IE is lagging far behind the achievements of FF. Though majority of the people are still using IE, more and more users are switching to the more powerful and easily expandable Firefox.

One of the powers of Firefox is the ability to accept addons / extensions. Because of this, the capabilities of FF were easily extended while IE’s powers lagged behind. Now that Internet Explorer 7 is out, will Firefox finally find it’s match? IE7 boasts the ability to accept addons as much as FF does. At this point however, IE7 still has a lot of catching up to do. With thousands of plugins written for Firefox, I think it will be a tough job for IE7 to stand at par with FF.

There are however plugins that support both Internet Explorer and Firefox. We have the Google toolbar for one. One of my favorites is the Trailfire Firefox Extension; Internet Explorer 7 add-on. It’s pretty cool because it allows me to leave trailmarks in websites allowing me to retrace my steps back to the point of origin. It works a lot like those cookies in fairy tale stories. I find it pretty important since it makes it easier for me to keep track of where I’m going and from where I’ve come from. It also sports a ’send to friend’ feature.
Here are a couple of screenshots showing Trailfire in action under Firefox and IE7.

Trailfire on Firefox (Click image to enlarge)
DOWNLOAD Trailfire Addon for Firefox Here

Trailfire on IE7 (Click image to enlarge)
DOWNLOAD Trailfire Addon for IE7 Here
As you can see, the extension / addon works pretty well on both browsers. Eventually, I hope that there would be some sort of cross browser standards in writing these extensions / addons but I don’t think that will show up anytime soon since the competition between browsers is still hot.

Now, as of IE7 vs Firefox. IE still has to prove its track record especially when it comes to security. Well, I think MS Windows in general has to prove it. On the other hand, though Firefox had it’s own share of problems and bugs, it’s still a ton better compared to IE.

My say on this? Firefox wins - no doubts about that.

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