The Head-2-Head column in the November issue of MaximumPC compares Mozilla Firebird 0.6 with Internet Explorer 6.0. The former obtained a 9 rating; the latter was rated 7. The two browsers were compared in six areas, with Firebird winning the competition in features, convenience, and third-party support and IE winning in stability, compatibility, and speed.
According to MaximumPC, IE is more stable, but they experienced no major problems with Firebird, only an occasional crash. The editors preferred Firebird's features, especially the tabs for web pages and the ability to save a set of tabs as a bookmark or even as a home page. They felt that IE is more compatible as some pages did not display properly in the other browser. Among the Firebird convenience items mentioned were a pop-up blocker, an advanced cookie manager, and the availability of numerous skins and extensions, including mouse gestures. Also mentioned, but not explained, is the lack of Gator spyware in the challenger (no mention as to which browser, presumably some other freeware, does contain the spyware). In regards to speed, the column stated that Firebird is reasonably fast but still slower than IE, lagging by 1.2 seconds to display pages.
Regards,
Hornus