There's a lot of talk about IE7 vs. FF2. It's all pretty boring for me.
Browsers are boring. They are glorified terminals. Dave Thomas (of Pragmatic
Programmers fame) puts it in an interesting way: (paraphrasing) -We have the same
client-server terminal we had years ago, but now the terminal can show porn.-
That drew quite a few laughs at the
NoFluffJustStuff conference in Austin this
past summer.
In short, displaying web pages isn't all
that exciting. What all the browsers have turned to for added value is
add-ins. Add-ins for ad-blocking, popup blocking, anti-phishing, etc. While
some browsers develop all add-ins in-house, I believe the main factor behind
Firefox's success is the large number of add-ins available for free that have
been contributed by the developer community. The other browsers don't have
this. If it weren't for all the FF add-ins, FF wouldn't have much of a leg to
stand on.
Back to my main reason for this post: I
have installed Firefox 2, and I love the spell checking. Anywhere I write text
in a web-page, I get in-line spell checking. Write emails with Gmail, Forum
posts, anything - instant spell-checking. Brilliant!