Firefox 2.0 is better than Internet Explorer 7 at preventing phishing, according to a study commissioned by Mozilla. A study commissioned by Microsoft found that IE7 is better than a range of 7 third-party security applications. The Microsoft study didn’t include Firefox.
A recent survey suggests that many websites won’t work well with IE7. Normally, it wouldn’t matter much if sites don’t work with a new browser, as take-up is typically pretty slow. However, many people will be upgraded to IE7 automatically.
I have to admit that I haven’t tested my site with IE7. I’m hoping that it will be OK, though, because I know it works with most other browsers. There are a number of sites out there that really only work with IE6, as they take advantage of its non-standard features. They are the ones that are likely not to work with IE7, which apparently has a different rendering engine.
In this case, it’s definitely a case of “do as I say, not as I do”: don’t skimp on the testing.
Hot on the heels of IE7, Firefox 2.0 appears. I’ve just installed it, and so far, so good.
On the other hand, I haven’t installed IE7 yet. You can’t easily install it alongside IE6 (instead of replacing it) and one of my main uses of IE is for testing web pages that I develop. Given that most users are going to be on IE6 for quite some time, I’ll still need to test pages against it.
I’m sure there is a good strategy for this, it’s just that I haven’t yet worked out what it is.
IE7 was released last week (while I was on holiday). It’s the first new version of Internet Explorer for five years. It’s really catching up with Firefox and Opera, with a host of new (to it) features. It’s also meant to have much better security than IE6. A shame that a security vulnerability was discovered within about a day of its release.
I haven’t tried it yet, but, however good it is, will probably stick to Firefox. Most security attacks are targetted at the platforms used by the most users, so even if Firefox isn’t inherently more secure it’s likely to be more secure in practice.