IMHO: IE7 Beta 3 is Terrific.
You can knock it you like but the tabbed browsing implementation is much better than the Firefox original and the integrated RSS is great. I give Firefox a look occasionally and just don't see anything there that is all that special except the tabbed browsing and since IE7 handles that so nicely I think I'm just going to stick with Microsoft.
I give Firefox a look occasionally and just don't see anything there that is all that special Firefox has its problems, but the biggest special thing is the community of extension developers out there. Remember, FireFox was designed to be the basic browser, fairly small and fast, with the ability to add functionality easily.
With a few free extensions you can make Firefox far better than any other browser. Here are mine:
- BugMeNot: Integrates with the BugMeNot site, gives instant entry to NYT and other sites with free registration. Indispensable to a FReeper.
- Tabbrowser Preferences: Customize the actions of the tabs any way you like.
- DictionarySearch: Hilight a word and get an instant dictionary entry for it.
- Plain Text Links: Don't you hate it when posters don't make links clickable? Hilight and open it in a new tab with a right-click.
- IE Tab: Runs IE within a tab for those misbehaving sites.
- Adblock Plus: Rid yourself of ads.
- Adblock Filterset.G Updater: Always get the latest filters to make sure you never see any ads.
- JSView: View the JavaScript behind any page, even if it's not embedded on the page
- Crash Recovery: If Firefox or the system crashes, come back up exactly where you were, all the tabs open to the right places.
- ForecastFox: Customizable weather forcasts and conditions on the status bar.
- GMail Notifier: See if you have any GMail and read it with a click of the button.
- NoScript: Block all JavaScripting, except that which you allow.
- VideoDownloader: Hate going to Google Video or YouTube to have to watch the video? Click a button to download that video (or any embedded media) to your computer.
- FasterFox: Tweak network settings and prefetch pages. Speeds things up pretty well.
- Several very helpful, time-saving extensions for web developing.
There are a bunch of others I don't use, including ones that integrate with various blogging software, some eBay ones, and one that will let you edit your FR post in a visual editor, and put the HTML into the reply box when you're done.
I'd suggest loading Firefox and then getting any extension that sounds remotely interesting. Start deleting the ones you don't use after a while.