[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by astra

Of course I cannot argue about security or internals of the browsers.

Most folks can't. And it's hard to argue about IE's security problems: look at the number of Microsoft Critical Updates that are security patches for holes in IE.

However, I don't care how it looks like. I never use any side bars or tool bars because I hate them. They litter the screen. I like to have the most of my screen available for my web browsing.

I largely concur, and turn off most of the toolbars in FF. Easy enough to turn them on if I need them. The Sidebar in FF is a favorite feature, and where I usually display my bookmarks, but I keep it collapsed too. All-In-One Sidebar makes hide and reveal easy.

Right now I am typing in Firefox and I cannot say the its interface is any better than IE.

That will depend upon what you want from the interface. Many things I do in FF aren't available in IE.

I don't really understand why do I need this huge list of add ons if IE does just what it is supposed to do - surf the net. I have yet to find one single website IE cannot open.

You don't need a long list of add-ons. Most folks probably do fine with what FF does by default. But if you want to customize and extend FF, you can, with literally thousands of add-ons to choose from to do it.

No, there aren't any sites that won't open in IE, and that's actually part of the problem.

The web depends upon standards. There are standards that define HTML, standards that define CSS, standards that define JavaScript...and IE does a poor job of supporting them. IE tolerates web coding it should choke on, and web developers tear their hair trying to create sites that look the same in any browser, because IE doesn't support many standard constructs. The developer must put in code to attempt to detect which browser the user is running, and include kludges and work arounds to get the site to look right if it will be viewed in IE. The whole point to standards is that the developer should be able to write standards-compliant code, and have it look the same in any browser, without the kludges and work-arounds.

I suspect part of the reason for IE's tolerance is that many sites are created in Microsoft FrontPage, a GUI for site design with a "lite" version included with Windows, and FrontPage generates bad code. Microsoft Word generates worse code, but Windows suggests Word as the default HTML editor. Can't very well have IE choking on code put out by another Microsoft program...

Anyway, I am going to give it another try again. I just installed better gmail into my FF 2 and imported bookmarks from IE Favourites. We will see how it goes.

So far, I had to use IE do download the add-on because FF declined to download it even when I clicked on "allow" so ironically, I had to start IE to download add-on.

Something is odd there. Where did you get Better Gmail? From the homepage link in the list I posted?

Firefox attempts to prevent possible problems by downloading add-ons only from known-good sites. When you click "Allow", you are adding the site to the whitelist. You have to click the download link a second time to actually do the download - just adding the site to the whitelist doesn't make it happen.

The canonical add-on source is http://add-ons.mozilla.com, and it's in the whitelist by default. All add-ons there are tested and approved by Mozilla, and it's the first place to look. That doesn't mean add-ons shouldn't be installed from other places. Add-ons can take a while to get through Mozilla's screening and get posted on the add-ons site, and there are often newer versions (like betas that work in FF3) available from the author's site that haven't been posted on Mozilla's site yet.

P.S. I also find IE interface a lot more intuitive than FF.

"Intuitive" translating as "What you are used to". I feel the same about Firefox, but that's familiarity, pure and simple.
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Dennis