Firefox 1.5 versus IE

Asa Dotzler of the Mozilla Group is on a slow burn, headed toward a rolling boil.

He writes today:

I’ve seen a number of articles comparing the currently available Firefox 1.5 with the still not available and probably not released for some time Internet Explorer 7. What’s wrong with this picture? Firefox 1.5 should be compared against the competition, not against something that may or may not be released sometime in the future.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t include any links, so I have no idea where these comparisons are. A search at Technorati using the terms IE7 and Firefox turns up only a few developer-focused articles and much praise for the recent Firefox 1.5 release. (Changing the term IE7 to Internet Explorer 7 results in only three hits in the last 10 weeks.)

A similar Google search turns up mostly stuff from last February, when IE7 was announced. So what set off this rant?

Where are all the Firefox 1.5 versus IE 6 articles? It does no service to users to tell them how Firefox stacks up against some future offering from Microsoft. How about telling users how Firefox 1.5 stacks up against the outdated, insecure, and difficult browser they’re using today? (or if they just have to report about IE 7, then how about comparing it to the equally unreleased Firefox 2 or Firefox 3?)

I use Firefox as my main browser. Does the world really need a Firefox 1.5 versus IE6 review? No, that would take about three paragraphs. I suspect most people want to know what’s new in Firefox 1.5, whether it works with the Web pages they visit most often, and whether their favorite extension is compatible. (I’ve found some serious problems with at least one major Web site – americanexpress.com – and have had to ditch a few extensions that I really didn’t care all that much about.)

I guess the browser reviewing press really don’t care about actual users who are suffering an increasingly painful and dangerous web. Microsoft announced IE 7 in February of 2005, very nearly a year ago. They claimed at the time that it would be available in the Summer of 2005 and here we are about to enter 2006 with nothing close to a finished browser from Microsoft.

The February announcement said a beta would be available in Summer 2005:

… Gates announced Internet Explorer 7.0, designed to add new levels of security to Windows XP SP2 while maintaining the level of extensibility and compatibility that customers have come to expect. Internet Explorer 7.0 will also provide even stronger defenses against phishing, malicious software and spyware. The beta release is scheduled to be available this summer.

Beta 1 was indeed released in July. It was nothing to write home about, but it was indeed shipped.

The Beta 1 announcement said nothing about final ship dates.

It has been clear in everything written about IE7 to date from Microsoft that it is a core component of Windows Vista and that the XP version is dependent on that release.

I just don’t understand where Asa is coming from. Firefox is getting great press. It’s been downloaded more than 100 million times. Market share is growing. So where’s the conspiracy?