Confession

I’ve been using IE7 quite a bit lately. It’s a darn-good browser and seems very fast, especially when I have a lot of tabs open, compared to Firefox.

141 thoughts on “Confession

  1. Yes, perhaps so Matt, but have you noticed how much “crap” gets left behind in the “system” even after the most briefest of use? If novices (the majority of Net users) don’t do a “clean” after each use, its fortunate there are such large hard-drives on the market, otherwise they’d be wondering where the disk space is going! 😉

  2. I find the opposite. I find that IE7 feels sluggish after using Firefox.

    It’s hard to put my finger on … it’s a number of thing. It seems to take longer to open new tabs. I also find the behaviour when loading new pages a bit ugly. Often the page goes completely blank/white before the new page is rendering. I never see that on Firefox.

  3. It’s pretty good, but I really dislike the milliseconds more it takes for it to open a new tab. Faster with lots of tabs, yes, perhaps, but overall I find it a bit sluggish.

    But maybe I should give it a shot… No wait! I’m on Mac! 😉

  4. Try Maxthon! The classic 1.6 version or the new 2. It is even more customizable then Firefox without the need for plugins or addons and it uses the IE engine.

    One of the reasons I don’t use IE7 is that even with IE7 I cant customize the tab behavior the way I can it in Firefox with Tab Mix Plus. Of course in Maxthon this is a built in feature.

  5. IE7 is my defualt browser, I mainly using it since beta 1. But still some negative points. Some certain web sites will lead IE7 to the death, or non-respond, or close itself.

    To specify with WP, if blog owner with WP 2.1&2.2 placed a number of javascript (especially within BODY)IE7 will frsutrating you. You know what I mean.

  6. for shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame! (tsk tsk tsk) 😛 I’m just kidding – to each their own. Firefox seems a little weird at times, but I’ve had a lot less worries from it than with IE.

  7. As a Mac user, I haven’t really try IE7 yet. The safari 3 beta and Opera 9.5 beta are fast browsers too. Firefox 3 (currently in Alpha stage) is faster than Firefox 2. The browsers war still continue.

  8. It’s a shame the interface is so bad. I ran it with Maxthon on top for a good number of my FireFox features (Super Drag and Go) with a lot of positive feedback.

  9. Tsk tsk. *sigh*

    While a huge improvement over IE6, it still can render horribly and has countless rendering bugs. Not to mention it’s still insecure as hell.

    Plus, the biggest reason to use Firefox is extensions. I couldn’t live without all the Firefox addons I have installed. 🙂

  10. Say 23 Hail Mozillas my son. 🙂

    I wish there was an alternative sometimes for the mac … and also that IE wasn’t such a darn cowboy when it when it comes to standards.

  11. People are different I suppose, but my experience is that IE7 is way slower than IE6 which again is way slower than Firefox which again is way slower than Opera. Just opening a tab takes well over a second on all setups of IE7 I’ve seen, including an AMD AM2-64 5000+ with 2GB RAM and Windows Vista. What setup are you using where IE7 manages to outperform Firefox? It sounds quite impossible to me, at least based on my experience.

  12. there is a remarkable difference between firefox and IE7. Sure of late I’ve noticed that Firefox is getting quite a bit bloated especially with all those plugins “plugged in”.

    Even then, I believe firefox is much faster in comparison to IE7. The way a page is rendered in Firefox it is much faster than IE7.
    I still love Firefox. It rocks. But then we all have our choices. I think you should consider changing the purpose of the BrowseHappy.com to encourage people to shift back to IE7 😉

  13. Most of the time when I’m on a PC, I use IE7 too, Firefox is not my favorite browser on any platform. I’m not on the PC too often, so I don’t have to use Windows’ browsers much 😀

  14. IE7 is leaps and bounds better than any previous Microsoft browsers. It’s pretty good, I use it too quite often but Firefox has taken over my life (and computer too).

  15. I’m glad to know that I’m not the only techie (half-assed in my case) that thinks IE7 might serve my needs better than Firefox. One problem I have with Firefox is the way it displays fonts. They are all too thin for my tired old eyes. (That might be fixable but, like I said, I’m just a half-assed techie.

  16. Hi Matt

    Are you serious? I can’t say I have used IE7 extensively, but I still hate it because it’s IE and it still has problems handling CSS properly (what I have seen so far).

    Maybe you should try deinstalling some unused firefox plug-ins which would speed up things a little in firefox?

  17. Not to worry. I doubt you’ll be ostracized…much.

    The fact is that IE is a good browser and since it’s part of the OS itself it tends to use up a heck of a lot less resources hence the overall speed is greater. It definitely does not work well on certain sites like when using the Admin side of a WordPress install though, especially the editor. IE is good for general browsing. Firefox is good for turning into any sort of specific “tool” box that you might need. Like the ultimate blogging tool for instance. The biggest problem with most folks is that it’s either one or the other when you can get a much better experience by using both.

  18. Matt, I was thinking this the other day. I’ve been using Firefox since 0.7 but its memory and CPU usage, with many tabs open, is starting to grind me down.

    I know a few of my friends have switched back to IE recently. Maybe it’s time I gave IE another chance!

  19. I, in fact, have the exact opposite experience as far as responsiveness goes. For me, it takes IE7 at least a couple of seconds to open a new tab. Firefox does it almost instantaneously. Then, when I want to close the browser, it takes at least 4 seconds to close multiple tabs in IE and shut down whereas Firefox usually exits after less than 1 second.

    I also find with IE that I miss a lot of the functionality provided by the myriad plugins that I have installed in Firefox.

    That being said, I definitely think IE7 is a huge upgrade from IE6 and I use it from time to time. I don’t avoid it like the plague like I did with IE6.

  20. In terms of website design, obviously I have to test on as many different browsers as possible, so I tend to start with FF as a base browser, but as a user I want a browser that is easy to use and quick. Which is why IE7 is my browser of choice.

    I’m not a great lover of the mouse, so being able to use consistent keyboard shortcuts across applications, i.e. browser, Office etc is a usability plus for me.

    Opera just doesn’t operate in a “Windows” way, and as for Safari, well I don’t know why Apple didn’t just put a banner advertisement on it saying “designed to p*** Windows users off!!”.

    Give me IE7 everyday.

  21. Do you know how much beating you’ve let yourself in for? 😉

    *kidding*

    I haven’t found IE7 to be fast at all on my computer (rather the opposite) so am still sticking to my Firefox guns!

    True, Firefox tends to get a little shaky with more than, say, 6 tabs open, but I find just one takes forever to load in IE7.

    Although, to be fair, that could just be my arrogant computer.

  22. I’m on a Mac and had to switch over to Safari. I really love Firefox and am sad to leave it, but it’s ridiculous how slow it is. I do have a lot of extensions, but as a developer I need most of them. Now, I only open it up for debugging. Sad, really sad.

  23. Have you tried Safari? It’s even faster.

    Very interesting to hear your confession.
    I have had a hard time switching to Safari from Firefox though. I guess I just like it the way I’m used to it.

  24. That’s okay, Matt. I admit that I’m still using IE 6 as my primary browser!

    Something about Firefox isn’t quite comfortable for me. I tried IE 7 when it was first released, and it had a ton of bugs — plus the interface threw me off. I’m still gunshy about updating to it.

    But, it’s looking clear that IE 7 will be a necessity to test performance and validity on every site moving forward, so eventually I’ll have to install it.

  25. Page rendering and scrolling is quite slow, but tabbing is very snappy.

    I also like the behaviour of opening new tabs. If you’re, say, on the left-most tab when you have several tabs open, and you middle-click on a link, the new tab will appear to the right of the tab you’re currently in. Then, if immediately after, you middle-click another link, the new tab will appear to the right of the tab that was just opened in the background.

    Recently, I discovered I don’t have to use IE7 to get that, as Epiphany has that exact tab behaviour as well. (Plus, Epiphany is damn fast compared to Firefox or IE7, even with a load of extensions installed.)

  26. The shame of it! lol.

    Actually, I’m finding the latest release of Firfox gets bogged down so very easily with multi tabbed browsing that IE has begun to creep into my mind.

    I’m going to stand in the corner now…(can I join you).

  27. Redmond knows how to make good looking software. It is the security I am concerned with. IE is just to deep in the system. I think it is called inappropriate Intimacy (software bad smell, refactoring book)

  28. I definitely agree with you. The only thing that keeps me from making it my default browser is all the extensions… if there was some way to have those extensions on IE7, firefox would be history on my pc

  29. Comparing IE7 with Firefox is like comparing a single application with an operating system.
    IE7 could be also faster than Firefox but there is no match regarding the flexibility and the add-ons in the open source browser.

  30. If you aren’t wedded to Firefox’s extensions, why not simply use Opera? If speed’s your thing, it’s hella faster even than IE7, and it hasn’t got the b0rked rendering.

  31. if you aren’t the use-a-thousand-extentions person (like me), IE7 is just as good, performance-wise (it seems like FF takes 90-100megs o’ ram whenever I look)

    arentcha worried about security, though?

  32. Glad to know that you’re not stubborn and a person who telling truth.

    In fact, Firefox vs IE7 vs Opera vs Safari vs ETC…there will no absolute answer which is the best!

    To me, Linux or Vista is up to what tasks I’m doing with.

    It’s really antipathetic to hear someone insist saying only Windows or Linux is the best. So as WordPress and Blogger.

  33. I’ve actually been in a lot of situations recently where I’ve been without my thumb drive, see forgotten, and IE7 has actually come in handy. Not the most secure, but I find it good for the few minutes I need to use it every day.

  34. What?! NO!…no no no….j/k.
    I also been using IE7, but only to verify designs and articles aren’t showing up all funky. Have you noticed any issues with CSS display?

  35. I’ll admit to only using it on my Vista laptop…. and that’s because of the firefox issues under Vista*. It does have better memory management and is snappy. I kept running into weirdness rendering bugs and mainly the “oh… that’s flash” issue.

    They have done a pretty decent job, but I still find that popups are an issue (without google toolbar) and I’ve come across more then one exploit. Mainly the exploits I’ve found where aimed at auto-installing a “browser helper.”

    * Which may of been fixed by now, but I’ve been afraid to try. Took a bit to fix last time I did try.

  36. Firefox is just slightly bloated.

    You should try Opera and compare the two browsers’ speeds. I’ve been using it for a couple months now and I’ve had a great time using it since Fx has been eating my memory lately. I still use Fx for development and testing.

    I can’t get IE7, the stupid WGA is barring me from accessing it.

    But it’s alright, 7 is my lucky number after all 😀

  37. A pox upon you Mr High-Profile Traitor 😉

    Seriously, I have lots of reasons to prefer Firefox over IE, but I don’t see why my preference (or anyone elses) must be The One Right View (TM)

  38. Matt,

    It makes me so happy to hear you say this. Look over your comments. Many of them are from people upset that IE renders poorly/doesnt handle their CSS properly. Most end users dont even know what that means.

    As a developer, I love FF. The extensions alone make it worthwhile. As an entrepreneur serving end users, you have to go to where they are- and they’re on IE.

    With that said, the latest WP admin area still doesn’t work properly in IE. I always have to make my writers download and install FF to update our blogs- very frustrating. I hope you’ll consider adding a little cross-browser love 🙂

  39. Wow! That’s a lot of comments.

    I don’t really it to use it for the same things I use Firefox for, it’s more for things that don’t require a login or browsing.

    For example I was checking out apartments on Craigslist yesterday and used IE7, but when I had narrowed down the 3-4 I want to follow up on I bookmarked them in Firefox.

  40. The only feature that keeps me from using IE 7 is the bookmarks toolbar. It’s just about useless since I can’t create folders on the fly and nothing seems to stay sorted in the order I want it to … otherwise, it’s a great browser.

  41. I find it comedy to read how many people who have probably never used IE7 shouting about how much “better” firefox is! The number of pirated Windows XP installs out there suggest that not everyone on this page has a IE7 installed…

    I respect the fact you’re willing to admit you don’t mind using it. A number of the “open source crowd” rubbished it before it was even released and wouldnt even give it the time of day – then have the balls to bad mouth it. Bias? lol.

    Personally, I’ll use either. I tend towards IE when I’m watching embedded videos, and FF when I’m working on webdesign. Both have good points, both have bad, but I’d struggle to come up with a convincing argument to either being “better” than the other.

  42. Matt, I use IE7 everyday alongside Firefox 2.0.0.6.

    The only reason I use it, though, is to read gmail in my second account.

    If Google would allow multiple simultaneous logins in one browser, I could say, “Hasta la Vista!” to IE7!

    IE7 does load faster than Firefox though. I think the reason is the plugins I have loaded into FF.

  43. Dear MacUsers don’t forget to use the excellent ‘Camino’ browser, speciallyu design for our needs (and so speedy).

  44. What’s wrong with hating IE7 just because it’s made by Microsoft? There’s no unspoken ethics that say hating Microsoft products is bad or immoral.

    Let’s just hate IE7, and IE8, and IE9… because it’s made by microsoft. And of course because of the stupid aliasing on text, and the ugly new interface, and all the other stupid things about it.

  45. My son, I am surprised that you have not yet received penance and forgiveness. The Lord is merciful and you need not chastise yourself if your repentance is genuine and you are resolved to sin no more. Say three Hail Marys, one Our Father and a Glory Be and go in peace. Amen.

  46. Again, I am big fan of Opera too but still not able to say it faster and fastest.

    Try Safari if you want a simple think and thinking of Firefox 0.9. Hey! after using Safari for awhile don’t uninstall it. It will leave a key on Windows Startup items that make your comp extreamely slow down when boot. Otherwise you need to visit msconfig.

  47. Actually, the IE7 interface is a bit nifty but you can get 90% of its features in the Firefox IE7 theme.
    Because those superficial features are the only thing that’s appealing about IE7, it’s actually terrible on the inside and not at all a high performance competitor to Firefox.

  48. Matt,

    If you want to add some of the benefits of Firefox to IE7, you might consider downloading the IE7Pro plug-in. It adds some tabbed browsing enhancements, spell check, and ad-blocking (among other things)… ie7pro.com

    I do agree that IE7 is faster than FF, generally speaking. That said, I still use Firefox as my primary browser.

  49. I like, and use, IE7. I find that it renders pages much faster than Firefox, and it’s faster.

    So… can we ditch the BrowseHappy logo in the WP Admin, now? 😀

  50. Apple claims Safari to be the fastest browser in the market, whereas CHIP magazine lab tests rate it as the slowest (although they think it’s more favorable than IE 7).

    In my experience on the Mac, yes Safari’s the fastest (but hey, there is no IE7 nor IE6 on the Mac).

    On Windows Safari seems miserable while it is still at beta.

    No, I haven’t tried Opera since I was an early adopter i.e. Opera 1.0 and 2.x user and back then never figured out why they tried to charge me for a web browser which was slower and buggier than its counterparts which came along with the OS for free. Abondoned it since version 2 and never looked back.

  51. I don’t like the alien look of Firefox in Vista(even with Vista theme!), IE on the other hand looks very slick.

    But I keep going back to Firefox in no time as I can’t live without its support for the extensions. Firefox looks bad, is slow but it is so customizable, it wins the day in the end for me.

  52. Oh no – they haven’t converted you have they? I think writing your post at 3:33am tells me that you must have been tired and didn’t know what you where doing using IE7 pile of … You have changed back to Firefox right?

  53. The fact that you’re using IE7 shouldn’t be the biggest confession … and this goes for all of you. Since you’re using IE7, the confession should be … you’re still using a PC. OI!

  54. I’ve been converted to firefox for half a year now and I love it. It took me so long just to figure out how to put page rank for google on it with my settings taking up only one line of space. I was also playing with Safari for Vista and I liked that. It was probably the look of it. However, I couldn’t figure out how to put Google’s Page Rank on Safari for Vista. If anyone figured out how to do that I might just play on Safari for a little and give FireFox a break. Your “Confession” title is a great, Matt. I was thinking what confession does he have. I just have to find out. :o)

  55. *tisk tisk* Shameful 😉

    I really don’t like IE7. When it was in dev we were making all sorts of suggestions to the MS team on the interface design being all out of whack, and they never changed it (big surprise). I still can’t get past the fact that they moved the reload and stop buttons to the right side – irritates the life out of me.

    I use Firefox alot, but to be honest, I adore Opera. If Opera plugins were available like FF ones, I’d be a constant Opera user. On the other hand, I think I’m one of the few people out there who don’t like Safari.

  56. IE7 was one of the reasons I switched to the Mac. I like to zoom the text on many sites and IE7 seemed to do a crappy job as opposed to Opera and Firefox. It seemed MS threw a new browser together and added the zoom feature as an after thought. The new clunky toolbar layout didn’t help either. If that was the direction MS was taking; I wanted to go somewhere else. 🙂

  57. Firefox slow? Hmm I did not notice. Why would that be?

    I don’t get it. It’s slow on your box?? My machine, couple of years old, just runs a AMD 64 3000+ with 1 Gb. The proc usually clocks just 1Ghz, controlled by some kernel.. wait a minute, it’s Ubuntu. Do you think the OS has anything to do with this?

  58. I ended up having to stick on FireFox for posting/editing my WordPress blogs as well as my joomla sites. Because my html, otherwise, is messed up after posting on IE 7 and Safari 3 beta to which I switched.

    My surfing experience is very satisfactory with the latest versions of these browsers, whereas CMS / js-based WYSIWYG editor experiences “thumbs down”.

    Is anyone experiencing any similar problems or is it just me and/or my WYSIWYG plugins?

  59. After going through the comments here, I’ll mention why I actually continue to use IE over Firefox (Chris’s comment is actually the complete opposite of my pattern of use).

    Where Chris uses IE for video streaming, and FF for development — I take the opposite approach.

    I use Firefox when I want better rendering performance, and IE for development. I use IE for development, because IE is still plagued with most of the culprit issues regarding mark-up compliance and support. I’d rather be able to see what’s going wrong in the app that’s likely to produce the problem, than having to back-track through the code after all is said and done.

    Which is a sad way to go about things, but that’s life.

  60. ANYTHING is better than Firefox at this moment. Firefox 2 memory leaks is just unforgivable. How on earth does the browser use almost 1+GB of RAM when all I opened is just 4 tabs that display CSS only site…

  61. Well, don’t forget that IE7 is strightly coupled with it’s operating system, while firefox is cross-platform, and it’s paying it’s flexibility.
    You should give a try with Swiftfox (dunno if this is the right name!), the firefox version compiled for your architecture and operating system, optimizided for it. I have never tried it but I think I’ll do.

    Kisses from Italy! 😀

  62. I Konqueror mostly, except for when I’m at work(like now), and don’t have a Linux desktop handy, in which case I use Firefox and IE.

    The development concerns I’ve always encountered with IE tend to deal with margins. The 3 pixel drop that IE adds when you have both a float and margin attribute set is annoying. This has turned me into a div happy designer, instead of using margins, I simply use box width + float + multiple divs to simulate margins. There are some other things that IE messes up (like the :before state) that merely get in the way of an aesthetic design.

    As for speed, performace, memory consumption, etc. IE7 and FF seem to run about the same for me, FF just has the handy restore session capability that is awesome when you are running 20+ tools from one browser.

  63. Opera, Firefox, SeaMonkey, GoMonkey, CatchMonkey…….?!

    Too much for my insecure browsing mind to cope with!

    I’ll just stick to IE7. Crap but I am too scared to move on to any of the others. So if FF is getting sluggish and catrching the IE7 doldrums, what would you guys suggest I try out?

    Which is the best browser at this time in terms speed, rendering and plugins?

  64. @Robert

    don’t be afraid to try them out and find out for yourself what best suits your needs. people would have varying opinions on this. In my case, I use Camino although it’s a slightly watered down version of the Firefox. Just because it has the functionality that I need.

  65. I’ve just lost all sorts of respect for you.

    For me IE7 has been extremely slow, even to open, and screws up the look of so many sites due to the strange quirks it has.

    Please see the light and escape the evil clutches of IE7.

  66. IE7’s memory usage, at least what is claimed on the process list, is an order of magnitude more efficient than Firefox’s. Thus, less swapping, and faster performance.

  67. IE7 is fast, secure and has the best (and easier to use) UI of all the browsers in the market today. I’ve seen people use it without problems in seconds coming from IE6 and FFox.

    The RSS reader is excellent.

    I am sure that a lot of people here saying to use FFox, Opera, Safari, etc… secretly use IE7 at home or when nobody is looking. It’s just that being “alternative” or “anti-microsoft” is sooooo cooool these days!

    C’mon Matt use whatever you want and don’t ask for forgiveness for doing it.

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