With Mozilla releasing the final beta of its Firefox 3 browser last month and with Microsoft also releasing the first beta of its Internet Explorer 8 browser, the browser war is geting hotter. While Firefox 3 final version is expected to be released in June 2008, Microsoft still has a long time to go before IE8 final is released. Firefox is fast gaining market share and is trying to catchup with Internet Explorer. But can it some day displace IE and replace it as the most popular browser?
Firefox and IE has its own pros & cons. You can read a comparision test on CNET which declares Firefox as the winner. However, as far as I am concerned it all boils down to 2 things.
First, the add-ons factor. The real reason why Firefox is gaining so much of popularity is its vast & ever increasing Add-ons. They extend the functionality of the Firefox browser and enables one to customise it the way one wants. Moreover, you can also move an existing Firefox installation to another computer so that you can have the customised Firefox transported completely without the need to re-configure all the settings and add-ons. IE7 has not been that successful in getting developers to write add-ons for itself and with the exception of IE7 Pro, there is no other add-on which comes to mind.
Its the second point which has pulled back the popularity of Firefox. And that is the compatibility factor. Even today there are hundreds of websites which are designed to work properly only on IE but do not work properly on non-IE browsers such as Firefox, Safari or Opera. An indicative list of such websites can be found here. A pity !! While this list is a bit dated and some of the sites on that list have since ensured Firefox compatibility, many sites still remain Firefox incompatible. Which means that even though you may like to use Firefox as your default browser, there will be many occasions when you will have to shift to IE if you need to visit such sites.
Until and unless web developers around the world stop ignoring testing the compatibility of their websites with non IE browsers, Firefox will continue to remain as an able No.2 behind Internet Explorer.
