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OK, it's time we have a thread dedicated to this (with apologies to those who use Safari or Opera or whatever). Who prefers Firefox, who prefers IE, and why? Sorry if this is a bit cliched by now, but it keeps popping up and I'd like to get a definitive read on the matter. (yes Monique, I'm looking at you. 
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I know there was recently a thread about who uses what browsers, but here I'm more interested the two heavyweights, and particularly why people prefer one over the other. From what I've seen, it seems that most people who use IE just use it because they haven't had incentive to try anything else. I was in that boat up until a few months ago, when annoying Java problems forced me to switch (O, serendipity!). IE doesn't seem to offer anything Firefox doesn't, whereas Firefox offers a lot more than IE. So why in the world would anyone use IE, except habit?
Put me down for Firefox for two main reasons (yep, you probably know what they are already).
First, I love that I can customize the browser's functionality with extensions. I can know what the weather's like, control my mp3 player from the browser, zoom in on images without having to download them and use a separate graphics program, save notes on what I'm reading without having to use notepad and keep temporary text files hanging around all the time, highlight a street address and click "Map It!" in the context menu to instantly find its location on a map, highlight a word and use the context menu to instantly look it up in a dictionary search, and much much more! Extensions widen the scope of what the browser can do and make various kinds of searches much easier and faster.
Second, tabbed browsing. I can open a whole bunch of web pages while only having to use one browser window. This makes it so much easier to navigate multiple pages at once, especially for numbers exceeding 3 or 4. No longer do I have to worry about the menu bar at the bottom of the screen filling up with tiny buttons for 10 different pages (or worse, have them all compress into one pull-down type menu), and it's also a lot easier to switch between pages and keep track of what page is where. It's much more efficient, and I'm not compelled to stop looking at a certain page because the clunky interface of having to use a separate window gets in the way of what I want to do.
)I know there was recently a thread about who uses what browsers, but here I'm more interested the two heavyweights, and particularly why people prefer one over the other. From what I've seen, it seems that most people who use IE just use it because they haven't had incentive to try anything else. I was in that boat up until a few months ago, when annoying Java problems forced me to switch (O, serendipity!). IE doesn't seem to offer anything Firefox doesn't, whereas Firefox offers a lot more than IE. So why in the world would anyone use IE, except habit?
Put me down for Firefox for two main reasons (yep, you probably know what they are already).
First, I love that I can customize the browser's functionality with extensions. I can know what the weather's like, control my mp3 player from the browser, zoom in on images without having to download them and use a separate graphics program, save notes on what I'm reading without having to use notepad and keep temporary text files hanging around all the time, highlight a street address and click "Map It!" in the context menu to instantly find its location on a map, highlight a word and use the context menu to instantly look it up in a dictionary search, and much much more! Extensions widen the scope of what the browser can do and make various kinds of searches much easier and faster.
Second, tabbed browsing. I can open a whole bunch of web pages while only having to use one browser window. This makes it so much easier to navigate multiple pages at once, especially for numbers exceeding 3 or 4. No longer do I have to worry about the menu bar at the bottom of the screen filling up with tiny buttons for 10 different pages (or worse, have them all compress into one pull-down type menu), and it's also a lot easier to switch between pages and keep track of what page is where. It's much more efficient, and I'm not compelled to stop looking at a certain page because the clunky interface of having to use a separate window gets in the way of what I want to do.
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Hmm...guess that's not for me! I'm the sort of person who sits around playing with the mouse when I'm reading stuff. That could get dangerous. 