Since IE7 and Fire fox 2 have been released there have been number of reviews available online comparing the two. What many of the reviewers fail to mention is the number of Firefox extensions that allow you to customize your browser.

I have recommended some Firefox extensions that will enhance your web browsing experience greatly. Being able to customize your browser to this degree is something totally unique to Firefox.

The biggest complaint that I have with Internet Explorer 7 is that it is no longer free and the IE team no longer plans on developing it for platforms other than Windows. Slashdot recently interviewed Dean Hachamovitch the General Manager of IE at Msft.

Here are his words regarding developing for other operating systems.

I don’t see a good reason to make IE available on other operating systems at this time.

This means that everyone using Linux and OSX is forced to use a different browser, not that I think it is a problem, but it comes as a shock that Microsoft doesn’t want to compete anymore with Safari, Firefox, Konqueror or Opera on any platform but their own. This will drive many people to the better browsers.

The most ridiculous thing about IE7 is that it requires you to run Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) to install. WGA if you don’t know is Msft’s tool that verifies that your copy of windows is legit and reports back to Microsoft if your copy isn’t. It’s also a total hassle to get rid of. The best thing about windows in the past has been how easy it has been to get free copies off the internet. This allowed for the operating system to spread widely and become an industry standard. You can’t beat free and it works.

Now that it is established as the most widely use operating system they must figure that they can take steps to ensure that no one wants to use free versions anymore. They have enough money they could give the OS away to consumers and charge businesses. There is no reason to drag their entire consumer base through these anti-piracy measures. It is equivalent of the RIAA’s tactic to sue their own customers for being such good customers.

So now that they have effectively tied their browser to their operating system, if you want to use IE7 and are running a free version of windows this means you must spend $80 on a copy of XP or $400 on Vista when it comes out. Did you get that? Internet Explorer is no longer free.

We’re also not about to give away Windows client licenses. Because we want end-users to have a great experience on the web, of course we want web developers to have an easy experience working with IE and testing their sites with IE. That’s why we published tools like the web developer toolbar and the Application Compatibility Toolkit and so much documentation during the course of IE7 development. I also respect that - as hard as everyone at Microsoft works to make Windows the best operating system for developers run - some developers will choose to run others. Mac developers have a fine solution - I’ve talked with hardcore Mac people who bought a copy of Windows that they run on their Mac with Parallels to test their work in IE.

What this also means for developers is that if they want to develop for IE the developer must purchase a copy of Windows just to test their webpages on IE! Since IE is not standards compliant the developer couldn’t use another browser like say Opera as a test for IE. I know they sure aren’t going to want to spend $400 on a browser just to test their webpages with.