It seems that almost every day at the moment I'm having to justify to someone why it is that I'm still using IE6. Whenever I admit to it I get this pitiful look from my work-mates as if to say 'don't worry Gilly, you'll catch up one day'. Well maybe I don't want to catch up. Maybe I quite enjoy having lots of browser windows open at the same time. Who needs tabs anyway? If it aint broke, why fix it?
PJB thinks I should be using Firefox 2 produced by Mozilla. Mozilla user experience lead Mike Beltzner says Firefox's "less is more" philosophy is what makes the browser so popular. It looks pretty slick and funky, has its very own spellchecker and all sorts. It also gives you control over web feeds (RSS) and claims to deliver good accessibility. I like the tabs and the funky little icons but I must admit, not everything I use works on it. But you can't blame the browser for that as it just means that the web-page has not been cross-browser tested yet.
Microsoft's IE7 has pretty similar features to Firefox 2.0 although with a much beefier download package of 14.8MB (more than 2.5 times the size of Firefox). Searching a webpage is more elegant in Firefox 2.0 than IE7, as is subscribing to RSS feeds. Microsoft hasn't launched a new web browser since 2001 whereas Firefox has constantly been releasing new versions which means that IE7 has a lot to live up to and is being heavily scrutinised.
In my opinion a browser's a browser, use what you like. You might get judged by your work colleagues but as long as you have one good argument you can usually get away with it. The fact of the matter is, Google's bound to release some amazing browser sooner or later anyway.
Here's one of my favourite arguments from the well-known IT genius, PC_Tool: 'IE6 is still ruler of the roost, my friend. Being gung-ho about Firefox is great and all, but don't let that get in the way of reality, mmmkay?'
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