IE7? Why?

Amidst all the wedding planning that has become my life, I decided to download and install IE7 at work today. I only did it because an online application at work suddenly seemed to develop a bug in Firefox that was seriously interfering with my ability to get on with my work. I prefer Firefox for this app anyway as it actually opens Word documents in Word as opposed to some weird Word-browser hybrid.

After waiting what seemed like an age for the damn thing to install it finally asked me if I wanted to reboot now (recommended apparently) or later. As I had lots of applications and documents open I decided to shut everything down manually so I selected to reboot later. The installer didn't seem convinced. It double-checked and reminded me that it was recommended that I reboot now but I stuck to my guns. IE then got it's own back by giving me the blue screen of death when I restarted and rebooting again anyway. Then, as if to prove its point, it refused to open. I rebooted yet again but IE still wouldn't play nice. I had no choice but to reinstall it again and after being unable to find the original download file I also had to download it again. Given that IE wouldn't even run it was lucky I had Firefox installed, wasn't it?

Eventually I got everything working quite nicely but you know what? I really can't be bothered with IE. I have been using Firefox for so long now and have lots of extensions installed that help me do the things I need to do. I particularly like my GMail Notifier that sits in my toolbar and lets me logon at the push of a button and then lets me know whenever I get a new email. I also like the Google Notebook extension that allows me to add to Notebooks using the right-click and to view and edit mini notebooks using an icon in the bottom of my browser.

I haven't tried very hard to find the equivalent add-ons for IE but I have had a quick look and I don't really see why I should try hard. With Firefox it's just easy. Now I'm sure this is because I'm used to the Firefox environment and I just need to take some time to reacquaint myself with IE and it's add-ons but when I have a browser that for the most part will do what I want with no effort, I just can't be bothered to spend the time looking into it.

There are some useful features of IE, such as the Web Developer and Web Accessibility toolbars that I use for work and obviously I'll continue to test websites in both IE and Firefox. IE7 certainly looks great and has lots of great features. For those peeps who have put up with IE6 for so long it's a great replacement and everyone should be encouraged to move to IE7 right away - it's so much better. But for those of us that gave up on IE years ago and moved to Firefox, I'm sorry Microsoft but it's just too little too late.