Last week, Microsoft and Mozilla both released new versions of their web browsers. I must say, Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7 is a major improvement over version 6. Mozilla's Firefox 2 is an improvement, but not nearly as major as IE7. But with 5 years since the last major release of IE and 2 years since the last major release of Firefox, IE had a lot more catching up to do. Some of its best new features (like tabbed browsing and the search bar) were copied from Firefox.
Both new versions seem to run faster and more efficiently than the old ones. I think I prefer IE7's screen layout. It just seems more compact. Even if you remove the bookmark toolbar in Firefox, you still have less room on the screen than with IE (it's about even if you don't have multiple tabs open in Firefox). Firefox just introduced a spell check for web forms, which IE doesn't have. In fact, Firefox is checking my spelling right now.
Both browsers have phishing filters now. Both have the option of sending the address of every page you visit to some website to check if it's on a list of known phishing sites. If this is a privacy concern for you, Firefox provides the option of just checking if the site you're visiting is on a regularly-downloaded list of phishing sites (this isn't quite as secure as the other method). IE doesn't have this option. Both browsers have the option of shutting off this feature.
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Dude, I hate to be one of those people, but IE didn't copy tabbed browsing and a search bar from Firefox. It was in Opera for at least five years before that. Opera may not be as popular and compatible with all pages as Firefox, but it definitely had those things first.
Sorry, Stim. I've never used Opera. I was simply trying to give a not-very-detailed comparison of the two browsers I use, and I kind of assumed they didn't borrow from other browsers.
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