SU Communities

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu

I have to vote for IE. I use Firefox at home and when it is loaded, but you don't see it that often on most computers. There is a kind of a brand loyalty at play here. Browsers used to cost money. Netscape wanted - I can't remember exactly now - $49.95(?) for Navigator in the early-to-mid nineties. Microsoft blew them out of the water by offering a browser for free. It was quite a moment in computer software history. It changed everything.

IE is great for many people, but for me it comes down to civics.  With the web being such a democratic medium, do you want a for-profit company like Microsoft, with it's self-interest and monopolistic tendencies, to effectively control access to the web? Firefox is a great alternative, plus it has hundreds of extensions that allow your web browser to do things you never thought it could.  imho, this is why so many techies use it.

That said, to each her own, I say.  In the end, a lawnmower is a lawnmower and a web browser is just that...a web browser.

Choosing technology based on ideology has never really appealed to me.  I think technology is better served by treating it as the tool that it is rather than personifiying it as a moral agent. 

Google and Apple (iTunes/iPod lock in = monopolistic) are for-profit companies who totally control access to search results and mp3s, right? ;)

I use Firefox (which is marketed by the Mozilla Coproration, a for-profit entity) as my primary browser because of the extensions, however IE7 is a perfectly acceptable browser.  IE7's inclusion of support for RSS and improved standards support makes any real difference between the two marginal.