Microsoft Finally Patches Major IE Security Flaw

@Ohmz: ability to alter the default TLD suffix of CTRL, SHIFT, ENTER to any (which IE allows, I can't live without .co.uk and .org is useless for me as 90%+ of my browsing is .com & .co.uk TLDs) and a decent thumbnail preview (CTRL + Q): neither of which Firefox do natively or via extensions in the way I like. If anyone's got any suggestions, I'm more than willing to try them out!

Having said that, vanilla IE7 isn't good enough for 2008 but with the free IE7 Pro extension it provides everything I need (download manager, inline spellchecker, adblocker, ability to minimise to taskbar with CTRL + M & more in one extension).

@Gavin Hamer unfortunately because the market share of Opera is so poor, and most people I know online are always looking for opportunities to knock Microsoft, regardless of whether it's justified (though it certainly is with this patch for IE). the 100% pass rate of the Acid3 test of the Opera 10 alpha may well make me switch permanently once it's hit RC status (the alpha is to unstable for my liking).

The BIGGEST NON STORY OF 2008

To expose this flaw you need to know a little bit XML and a large dash of luck in finding the actual security hole.

I am still surfing unpatched IE7 without any worries because I know the facts and don't listen to teh "internet monkeys".

The Firefox patch released today is more urgent amongst others. IMHO the firefox holes much more of a danger, but let's not talk about that it's not the norm.

The BBC "Tech" team made this a story LOL

I'm not devoted to either IE or FireFox, and use them both together with Chrome. However, could someone point me in the direction of a rational discussion of where IE genuinely deserves a kicking? I don't want to argue, I'd just like to see and understand the problems the article's writer mentions for myself -

performance - I have seriously never noticed a difference personally apart from very large spreadsheets in Google Apps which I only created to see if I could find a performance difference. I don't do anything very exciting with my browser which is maybe why, day to day, I really can't see a difference;

stability - IE and FireFox crash about as much as each other - which is not very often at all. Maybe I'm just lucky but I don't recall either browser crashing recently and it's certainly not so much of an issue that I think about it for any browser;

design - this is purely subjective and I have no problems with either browser. I'm certainly not a pretty bloke but I hope this doesn't mean I deserve a kicking from everyone except my Mum and other half;

Acid3 scores - Microsoft's effective discouraging of standards has created many difficulties and this is probably the only thing I would immediately agree on with the article's writer. Fundamentally though, I don't understand why neither browser was designed to get 100%. Aiming better than Microsoft isn't difficult, but why aim for mediocrity? I'm curious what's so difficult that neither FireFox nor IE can got this right.

RSS implementation - I don't find FireFox's default implementation any better or worse than that in IE;

etc., etc., etc., - some more examples?

I guess I'm going to get shot down in flames, which is sad as I'd really like just to get informed so I can make the decision to ditch IE7 on a reasonable basis. Yesterday I was chatting with a friend, whose retired father was happily using IE7 until the recent security scare. He panicked and moved to FireFox. Without any real understanding of security issues he may well have been better to use FireFox from the start. However, I worry if an unbalanced approach to this sort of reporting will give my friend's father the impression that FireFox is not vulnerable at all, and any sort of complacency regarding updates etc. could work out worse for the old guy in the long run.

Please be gentle!