Mozilla just released its Firefox 1.0 preview version as a direct competitor to the market leader - Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Its free, the download size is small (some 5 Mb), and according to me it is better than IE in almost all respects.
The one thing noticable about Firefox is that it has menus, shortcuts & controls similar to IE. Thus, it does not scare off novice users by using an unfamiliar alien interface. Using Firefox is similar to using IE, but with all its added functionality.
Firefox has all the features IE has, plus a bit more. Some of the features in Firefox which make it better are:-
Built in pop-up blocker - blocks all those annoying popup windows that keep coming up whenever you surf.
Accessories & themes - You can further install accessories & themes which add to the original functionality of Firefox. The one which really impressed me was Ad-Block, which allows you to just block off image & script ads which appear in webpages. This makes browsing much faster, especially if you are on a slowish dial-up connection.
Tabbed browsing - Allows you to open multiple browser tabs in the same window. This avoids cluttering of the desktop.
I have an adware & spyware detecting software (Ad-Aware) at home which detects all the malicious spyware installed on your machine by certain websites. Just out of curiosity, I ran it after using Firefox, & then after using IE for a while. After using Firefox, the number of malicious spyware on the machine was detected as 0, while after using IE, there were atleast 15-20 of these.
The only thing against Firefox is that it doesn’t support ActiveX & as a result some sites may not run properly. But the number of sites employing it is very small, and you won’t even notice it. I have so far had no problems with any site since I started using Firefox.
Overall I feel, Firefox is a faster, cleaner & a better alternative to IE which should help it woo away a significant proportion of the IE using web-populace. Firefox 1.0 will be formally released sometime this Fall (2004), stomping out any bugs or issues the preview version may have (does it ?). I suggest you to try it, to experience for yourself what you are missing.