Now that focus lays upon other things like podcasting, rss, blogs, web 2.0 applications, etc., we tend to forget most of these features/apps need a browser to be seen or used. So this reminder from Richard Mcmanus that there is still a browser war is timely.
This coincides with the release of Firefox 1.5 on Mozilla’s
FTP site. The new release of the browser adds security enhancements, bug fixes, and some new features that were previously only available with third-party plugins, such as drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs. The much-maligned Automatic Updating feature has been completely revamped, and new updates no longer require downloading a whole new copy of the browser. Accessibility features have been enhanced with support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. For paranoid or easily-embarrassed users, the new Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
By comparison, a new PCWorld article gives us a glimpse of the next version of Microsoft’s market-leading browser, Internet Explorer 7.0. IE7 won’t be released to the general public until early next year, so PCWorld’s tests are all we have to go on for now. They compared Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1, and Opera 9 Preview 1.
With version 7 of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s developers have seriously overhauled the browser, giving it popular features such as tabbed browsing, as well as improved security, thus closing the gap between it and its rivals.
However they also report that “many of its new features still don’t match functionality already
present in the other browsers.” For example the tab feature that Firefox users have been using for the past year “works in only a basic way” in IE7 beta 1. Plus according to PCWorld the RSS functionality in IE7 isn’t as good as Firefox.