IT Pro is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more

Head to head: Firefox vs Internet Explorer

In our latest head to head, we weigh up the web's most popular browsers: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Winner: Firefox

Features

Both IE8 and Firefox are mature browsers, and over the years they've evolved a good set of standard features to help you browse the web quickly and conveniently. Some are common to both browsers, such as opening multiple web pages in separate tabs. Type a word or phrase into the address bar and both IE8 and Firefox will show you a list of related pages, making it easy to find a site you've visited before.

Both browsers also offer a "private browsing" mode which doesn't keep any record of the pages you visit or the data you transfer useful if you work with confidential information. And if a web page tries to open a new pop-up window, it'll be intercepted regardless of which browser you're using.

But the feature sets aren't identical. One big advantage of Firefox is its simple download manager, which makes it easy to find files you've downloaded in the past, to see how quickly files are arriving and to pause and cancel transfers. IE8 has nothing like this, so it's easy to lose track of the files you've downloaded and indeed downloads which are half-way complete.

IE downloads

IE8 requires your explicit authorisation before it will let a website download a file to your PC.

IE8, meanwhile, offers two major unique features of its own, namely "accelerators" and "web slices". Accelerators are web-based actions that you can apply directly to a page element: for example, right-click on a paragraph of text and you can instantly post it to a blog or translate it into a different language.

There are dozens of accelerators available to download, giving direct access to online dictionaries, SMS gateways, shopping comparison sites and more. It's a very powerful and versatile feature.

Web slices have proved less successful. The idea sounds good: tell IE8 to extract a "slice" of information from a web page, and you can then check it for updates without having to load the whole site. The trouble is, web slices only work if web developers build the technology into their sites and doing so means they risk losing exposure and advertising opportunities. As a result, very few sites support web slices.

Featured Resources

ZTNA vs on-premises VPN

How ZTNA wins the network security game

Free Download

The global use of collaboration solutions in hybrid working environments

How companies manage security risks

Free Download

How to build a cyber-resilient business ready to innovate and thrive

Outperform your peers in your successful business outcomes

Free Download

Accelerating your IT transformation

How Cloudflare is innovating for CIOs to start 2023

Watch now

Recommended

Inside Mozilla’s mission to champion 'trustworthy' AI development
artificial intelligence (AI)

Inside Mozilla’s mission to champion 'trustworthy' AI development

28 Mar 2023
Spanish spyware outfit uncovered, develops exploits for Windows, Chrome, and Firefox
spyware

Spanish spyware outfit uncovered, develops exploits for Windows, Chrome, and Firefox

1 Dec 2022
Mozilla patches high-severity security flaws in new ‘speedy’ Firefox release
vulnerability

Mozilla patches high-severity security flaws in new ‘speedy’ Firefox release

23 Sep 2022
Chrome vs Firefox vs Microsoft Edge
web browser

Chrome vs Firefox vs Microsoft Edge

19 Jul 2022

Most Popular

Tech pioneers call for six-month pause of "out-of-control" AI development
artificial intelligence (AI)

Tech pioneers call for six-month pause of "out-of-control" AI development

29 Mar 2023
Getting the best value from your remote support software
Advertisement Feature

Getting the best value from your remote support software

13 Mar 2023
3CX CEO confirms supply chain malware attack
malware

3CX CEO confirms supply chain malware attack

30 Mar 2023