In Defence of Internet Explorer
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Opera have kicked up a storm by launching an attack on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The case focuses on the anti-competitiveness of Microsoft bundling IE with Windows and their poor standards support.
It’s very easy for a web developer to take up arms against Microsoft (Goodness knows we do that often enough!), but in this case Opera is wrong.
I’m Free To Choose Whatever Browser I want
From Ars Technica’s Opera/IE write-up, we have this quote from the Opera CEO:
"We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them."
I’m a FireFox user using Windows Vista. I bought Vista, fired up IE7 and downloaded FireFox right away. And just from this site’s stats, I can tell you that 60% of the readers here did the same.
Microsoft aren’t making choices for me. FireFox and Opera are fully compatible with Windows. If you want them, go get them. Nobody’s stopping you.
Unbundling IE from Windows Is Not an Option
Half the point of having a home computer these days is to access the internet. To access the internet, you need a web browser. If Windows didn’t come with a browser, we’d all be outraged! It’s a compulsory feature… (Even if all you use it for is to get a better browser!)
An OS without a browser simply isn’t an option. Opera’s idea is to "pre-install alternative browsers on new PCs," to which I say:
Windows Does Not Come With 3rd Party Software
Let me add to that; please Microsoft, for the love of all that is holy, do not add 3rd party software to Windows!
There are more than enough security holes in Windows as it is. The last thing I (Or any other Windows user!) want is for new ones to appear. If Microsoft is to have any chance of fixing its security problems, it needs to be in complete control of its own product.
Standards-Compliance is Not a Legal Requirement
The W3C are not the law, just a respected group of people. They don’t publish rules, they publish recommendations.
Standards between browsers is a great thing. You’d be hard put to find anyone that disagreed with that.
The W3C aren’t the be all and end all though. They have their own set of problems. Anyone can publish their own ideas about how best to move the internet forward (For example, MS’s old version of the CSS box model was much better than the W3C’s!). That’s the idea behind an open internet.
Microsoft don’t need a lawsuit to get them to develop to standards; they just need some common sense. IE6 and it’s lack of standards and features were costing MS a lot of business! How many of us swapped to FireFox during those tab-less times?
If MS want a browser without standards, let them. It’s just going to increase the FireFox user base…
Improvements are Being Made
Eric Meyer made a great point earlier; the time for this lawsuit was years ago. When IE6 was holding us back, and IE7 had taken 5 years to develop. But IE7 isn’t holding us back anymore. And IE8 is already in the works.
IE’s standards support isn’t perfect, but it’s getting there. The tagline for IE7; "We heard you. You wanted it easier and more secure." They’re getting there.
If this results in another half billion dollar fine, you can bet that the IE development budget will be taking part of the hit, slowing things even further…
FireFox – If They Can Do It…
One browser that had no advantages over Opera is FireFox. And yet, FireFox has about a 30% share of the browser market, whilst Opera has 1 or 2%. How did that happen?
Well, FireFox built a fantastic product. They were innovative. They encouraged open-source development. And they were well marketed.
IE paired with Windows and FireFox paired with Google. "Download FireFox with Google Toolbar." You’ve all seen that ad, and many of us have clicked it.
They didn’t get to where they are with fines and law-suits.
So What’s An Opera To Do?
Go back to the old-fashioned way of competing; build the better browser. Opera may already be better than Internet Explorer, but any marketer will tell you that the best product isn’t always the one that gets picked.
Opera has to be so much better that it’s actually worth swapping and getting used to a new browser. They need to be worth talking about.
Perhaps an Opera user could do Opera’s job for them, and tell me something great about Opera? I’ve no problem swapping over if you can convince me it’s worth my while.
So, that’s my opinion. Do you think Opera are in the right or wrong here?
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About the Author
Michael Martin
Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies.
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I think Opera is wrong.
What’s wrong with the bundling?
How could someone download Opera if they didn’t have a Browser to begin with?
It’d be slightly difficult to the average Joe if you ask me.
(Although, personally I don’t get why y’all are talking about those other browsers… Safari is the best. :-P )
If Opera wants a larger piece of the pie, it needs to stop whining and show us something we haven’t seen before.
Brian – Safari? It blew its chance when it put a bug image into the toolbar! :p
But yeah, we’re definitely agreed on Opera here.
Opera’s lawsuit does have a point … by only bundling IE with Windoze, they are locking out other browsers.
I’d also disagree that FF has a 30% market share. Maybe 10-12%, but not 30.
BUT …. The reason Opera is filing the suit is ulterior. They want to make M$ pay for not being standards compliant. That’s not cool. Hey, we’d all love for IE to stop being a PITA, but it’s not our decision. Luckily, the IE team is really wanting to try to move that direction.
So for those of us who code for the web, it just means we’ll have to spend an hour or two post development to make the site IE compatible.
Nathan, I knew I was sticking my foot in it when I gave a statistic. Every stat on the web varies, but 30% seemed fair enough to me (It’s the stat from analytics across all of the WordPress.com blogs), which is as unbiased an audience as I could think of. We’ll never know who’s right though.
Michael,
I think Opera won’t get anywhere with this lawsuit. Windows is free to put what they want with their software, hence all of the other crap they add.
As for the Firefox share, my site gets over 50% of its hits from Firefox. This is a lot. However, most bloggers and blogging sites have users that know about the flexibility and usability with Firefox.
A couple of my other non-blogging sites tend to get a lot more IE traffic, even some IE 6 and 5.5 (that crap is still around!). This plays hell on trying to ensure that a site is working for them and not only the Firefox/Opera/Safari/Standards compliant browsers.
My site gets just under 80% Firefox visitors.
Firefox is a good browser. Opera is a good browser. What makes Firefox a special browser is the fact that its open source – the ‘addons’ supported are immensely beneficial. If it were not for these I would probably use Opera.
A web browser isn’t an essential piece of kit. There’s other, very simple, methods of downloading from the net than through a browser right of the back. [I’m not saying I don’t want one, rather just making that clear.]
Let face it. Microsoft like to have a little taste of every cake available. They try to push software, and hardware, were anyone else does – to have there part of the market. MS is very internal with there products. Having a choice of another browser is a ridiculous concept here. It would be nice to have an option to install some other browser by default when installing windows, but the fact is that it’s never going to happen.
Nathan: I don’t see what your on about; “standards compliant” ? No browser is ‘standards compliant’, they either choose to follow similar trends (as a lot do follow mozillas open source trends) or don’t. Microsoft has DirectX support which is brilliant. You should be coding to support all browsers, not just support them at the end.
I don’t see anyone complaining that KDE comes with Konqueror or that Safari comes with OS X. An modern OS should include a web browser- plain and simple. This whole deal with Opera is just crazy, even if I don’t like IE myself.
Most people just use IE because it “came with the computer.” Finally, people are becoming aware of alternative browsers’ existence, but they still won’t make the switch because they’re “used to the other”. We also still have the problem of people not knowing what a browser is (i.e. “the Internet button”). I think we can safely say that 95% of people who use Internet Explorer are technologically clueless.
I won’t care whether or not people use Internet Explorer when I don’t have to make 4352 stupid workarounds so people who use it can see my pages correctly. Unless that happens, I’ll just keep hoping that IE will become nonexistent. :D
Well, in my “perfect world of computing,” Windows (and by extension, IE) will only have a 10% marketshare. Apple will have 86%, and the rest will be Linux/Unix/etc. Firefox/Safari/Opera will be the mainstream browsers.
I think you’ve addressed this really well, Michael. I have to say, I have no real big issues with IE7. I don’t use it, but it’s a pretty capable browser. I’ll not got down the IE6 road though; that’s another story.
As for the 30% market share of FF. I think it might be quite accurate in Europe.
I actually think IE7 is the best internet browser
Great points in this post! I know nothing about Opera but I’m going to D.L. Firefox right now! Thanks for the discussion!
I agree with you buddy. What is Opera gaining by it. People who use Opera can still use Opera by downloading it. Even Mac OSX comes with Safari.
Actually Opera sometimes doesn’t interpret CSS the right way. (Just like Internet Explorer.)
So why can’t we just all get along and develop something to lessen developers nightmares?
@Dominik Lenk: All browsers treat the code you send to it differently. I think we should be glad that a lot of thing are similar – imagine having to have a completely different copy of your sites for each browser. Not nice. In a idealistic world it would be great to have one platform to code against (W3C defined or something) but that’s not going to happen, because each browser supports actions their company needs – MS have ActiveX which is brilliant to interact with their OS. In an idealistic world anarchy would be great, its just not possible in this world.
“MS have ActiveX which is brilliant to interact with their OS”
I’ve never liked it much. It’s a big security problem, and the cause of several compatibility problems (like the <object> element).
Elliot – I don’t think they will either, because it’s a poor case. But Windows aren’t entirely free to add whatever they want, check out the half billion dollars link. They can be sued for unfair/anti-competitive business practices.
Redwall – “I think we can safely say that 95% of people who use Internet Explorer are technologically clueless.” – I agree that a lot of them are definitely using it because of “the internet button,” not not them all. A lot of people do like IE, like Ash (It looks nicer straight out of the box for one thing :) ). A lot of other people are forced to use it by company/school policy (A school using non-MS software? It’s unthinkable! ;) )
Lynda – You might really like it! Have a look at some of these posts. They’re lists of the top FireFox extensions (All free). You’ll probably find a few that you really like :D (e.g. I have one with web design tools, another that ties del.icio.us to my bookmarks, another that tracks my time on different sites etc.)
Dominik – I guess that’s where open source has the edge. MS care more about a common web user’s needs, but when a developer codes a FF extension, they’re usually coding something that they themselves would use. It’s stuff that’s made for other developers, which is why we developers can all find something we like :)
I’m aware that some people have to use IE at companies/schools/etc. I’m stuck using IE if I use one of the computers at the local public library, for example.
IE is not totally horrible, but I still think Firefox and Opera are lightyears better. I often get into arguments about this topic. :D
I used to participate in an online community (web design and Harry Potter) run by someone who preferred IE (he was a total Microsoft-freak, and he was beta-testing Vista). We argued about browsers frequently, until browser discussion threads had so many rules tacked onto them (e.g. no trying to convert users to Firefox, just state your preference and your reasons for liking it) that it got hard to discuss the topic at all.
Well… That’s interesting! IE8 (which is in development) has passed the Acid2 test. According to Ars Technica, Firefox 3 has also.
Good article Michael.
I just wish that MS had made IE7 an update in XP. The problem with the awfulness of IE6 was that people who don’t know better (a good number of people) didn’t bother updating. Those days are almost past though (I hope!).
IE 7 is a good improvement. I like Brian’s point – need a browser to download another one! Packaging more than one just seems silly.
Redwall – I just read the same thing on 456 Berea Street. That’s really promising news! :D
Kristarella – I wish that as well. It would be a much more noticeable update than the usual security updates and patches that people are forced to sit through. :(
– brakmooked by 3 members originally found by RockstarGames on 2008-09-11 Trying out Google Chrome – brakmooked by 5 members originally found
It’s great that that IE8 and FF3 will be a heck of a lot more standards compliant (even the current Opera doesn’t pass it… I checked).
I don’t care if people use IE as long as it stops being a headache for me. Of course, it could be a long time before most IE users have IE8 (there are still a lot of people using IE6).
Look on the brightside though; IE6 is getting no new users anymore. And every day, at least one more person finds the light of a modern browser. ;)
Excellent points, Michael.
I just remembered. There were a couple Buzz Out Loud (a CNet podcast) episodes talking about the IE/Opera thing. I think it was episodes 624 and 625. The latter had a caller who had some good points. bol.cnet.com
Thanks for sharing Matt. I’ll check those out later on. :)
Let’s face it, nobody really likes Microsoft, and IE7 (while much better than it’s predecessor) is still a somewhat average browser. But at the end of the day IE is a Microsoft product and there’s no reason why they should bundle a competing product with their OS. It’s just bad business.
If Opera so badly wants to be included with a new PC, perhaps they should start building their own operating system…
I don’t like IE7/IE6 because they don’t render web pages properly. Properly, as in passing the ACID2 test.
It’s not wrong using them though.
Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me linking my article which I wrote recently. Perhaps it can add to the discussion.
http://www.goldfries.com/computing/web-browsers-vs-web-standards/
I love Opera. They should know by now they won’t get anything with this lawsuit. But from another point of view, they’re doing an easy, shocking and fast way to get their brand into the spot and getting the attention they always wanted. Before this compliant, most users didn’t know what Opera was. There’s not such thing as bad publicity, so they probably will see their users increased by a couple points (a 3 or 4% would be an amazing achievement for them, even if it lasts a few months). Besides, they’re trying hard to get into the mobile and game console browsers battle. Also, is always nice to see anyone fight IE…isn’t it?
IE7 *IS* an update for XP SP2 ;)
And luckily it can be unchecked, because last I need is having to (re) install Windows 2k to check.
Dave – Yes, it’s just good business. :)
Goldfries – Not at all. I’ve never tried the ACID test in all my browsers, so your screenshots were great to see.
Santiago – They’re doing really well in those other markets. And yes, they got a lot of publicity from this, but is it the kind that you really want? I can see your point though. :)
Franky – It is? I can’t remember when exactly I got IE7, but I know that I just downloaded it from the MS web site. Thanks for sharing. :)
If I remember well IE7 was rolled out as a critical security update for XP SP2. Can’t find the KB number (not at work, no MS boxes available), but this was the official announcement. IE7 was released on November 1st 2006 via Automatic update and in October this year MS even lifted the validation requirment.
IE7 has almost 40% market share in little more than a year. Opera is miles behind even Safari.
I thought I just added a comment. :S
Must have been too many links in it.
IE7 was released via AU only 2 weeks after release.
In little more than a year, IE7 has almost the same market share as IE6.
Opera is miles behind Safari even.
15% for FF seems rational to me. We must get out of our geek corner and understand/accept that most people a. don’t blog and b. can’t be bothered by internet security (and the geek in me reminds me that FF the app with most security warnings was in 2007)
Well that’s interesting Franky. I’d have thought that more people would have upgraded then.
As for the stats, it’s not worth arguing over figures. Anyone could be right.
I like the idea of using all of the varied WP.com blogs as an unbiased indicator, but other large sites also publish their stats. Who knows who’s most accurate?
(And sorry about the spam filter there. It picks up all comments with links. :( )
I’m surprised by that franky. I would have thought that on my previous assumptions, and some of yours as well (IE users not knowing any better, not caring about internet security etc), IE7 should have overtaken IE6 much quicker if it was an automatic update. I would have thought most Windows users accept those updates because they want their computer to be up to date.
So, thanks for correcting me, but the whole thing still doesn’t track for me. Oh well. :P
Martin and kristarella,
actually this can be considered a success for MS. Many companies will only update when a new service pack is released (and even then after months of testing). Until recently I worked as network administrator for one of the major credit card companies. Our local/national network had 30k clients, world wide the company has 400k PCs. Even after a year, in such a delicate environment, IE7 has not been rolled out.
MS rightfully released an IE7 block tool, I can’t imagine what would happen if over night my whole network would update.
AFAIK only the IT department uses other than IE and believe me, you would not want to know how many sysadmins swear by a ‘MS only’ concept.
According to Market Share (link in earlier comment), Win 2k (IE6 only) still is more wide spread than Opera or Safari even.
A critical view on computer usage: Joe average buys a computer. Luckily SP2 for XP is the standard since several years already. The media/mainly TV and radio commercials tell everyone NOT TO click when something asks you to install (trust me, PC World and co. are read by nobody compared to the number of sold PCs).
Result: when Xp asks Joe if Windows Update has to be activated (it is NOT standardly activated with SP2). Weird coincidence of marketing strategies. Security companies trying to gain some users, actually block standard security [updates] with their infomercials.
The prove: take 25 computers of people not interested in computers other than
surfing pr0n and downloading mediavisiting myspace and trolling forums. Check how many have not been updated for months. 50% is spot on with my own experience. And every time I get a foobar PC, not updated I rage at my friends.Otherwise IE7 (and for that matter Vista and Outlook 2007) are huge leaps forward for MS as far as security is concerned. This comes from a recent switcher who ditched even FF in favour of Safari.
Opera? Opera is a good browser, but they made one error around version s 7.2.x and 7.5. Both Opera and Firebird (0.7 then) were gaining some traction among geeks. Opera 7.2 and 7.5 safely can be called the most insecure versions of the Norwegian browser. 7.5 went slightly different roads in rendering, exactly at the time when many *nuke/CMS admins started to look at using CSS to reduce server load (never will I forget all tricks tried to prevent the Google and MSN bot from killing the server).
Firebird 0.8 was released and suddenly all those nerds and trolls in PC communities jumped on the FB wagon and Opera usage started to crumble. The Norwegians never could recover anymore, even not with the probably better product again since Opera 8. If only Opera didn’t have this horrible UI, because the biggest advantage of FF is that there is absolutely no learning curve for switchers.
Ranted long enough now. Merry Christmas all. :0
Oh another reason why IE6/IE7 exists – because there are people who develop sites / applications that interface via web browser that uses modules / functions from Microsoft.
ActiveX modules perhaps? I don’t know, ActiveX is one of those stuff available for IE only AFAIK.
I’m sticking to Firefox due to it’s extensions, especially the Web Developer extension which is damn useful for people like me. :D
firefox is slower bat we can change his parameters easyli with this guide http://diridea.com/GUIDE/Velocizzare-Firefox.html
bye,diridea from italy
Franky – What you’ve said makes sense, and I know another sys-admin who’s network of thousands of workstations is also using IE6 mainly. The browser does work (As far as a network admin cares!), and the fact that FF users can install extensions is probably irrelevant because the admin would not want users installing extra software.
Goldfries – Yeah, I’ve seen those before. It’s a shame that that happens, but I can understand it. :(
Diridea – I’ve tried some of those things (Pipelining) before. I imagine they help a little, but I never noticed much improvement. I take it you had more success than me? :(
Well…let´s think! if windows didn´t come with internet explorer where would we get firefox from?! xD
NoOne,
Hehe – It almost sounds like an argument for using Linux ;)
I use Opera for my own, and Ffox for dev purposes, I didn’t read all the comments (too lazy), but I find your article a bit much biased. You get most of the points right, though. I’ll try to balance things a bit:
First, you can’t say that Firefox was innovative, Firefox is much younger than Opera, and every “innovation” you’ll find in Firefox was already a built-in feature in a former release of Opera.
Opera was not intended to be free, that’s the major difference.
Most people didn’t want a software which had a tiny ad on it, may it be better by far than what they were using. They improved, now it’s 100% free and portable.They didn’t encourage open-source development, now they have widgets but I don’t use them, most of them are useless.You gave a link to the “X top extensions for Firefox”.
Well, once again most of them are bundled with Opera natively. Now, we agree on that part: Firefox had a better marketing strategy than Opera. They successfully built a fan-base who wouldn’t try anything else, or only with negative-criticizing purposes.
Tell me what extensions you use: I’ll tell you how to do it with Opera.
Now I’ll stick with Opera, and you’ll stick with Firefox, nobody want’s to leave for another browser, but I hope I successfully defended Opera a bit.
Julien,
It’s fine that you prefer Opera, but you still haven’t answered my question really. What makes Opera good right now? If I was looking to change browser, how would you sell Opera as better than Firefox? :)
I can think of a lot of things that make FireFox awesome, and most of them are extensions. Does Opera have anything better than Greasemonkey, the web developer toolbar, source charts, del.icio.us plugin or Firebug? Or the keyword searches in the URL bar?
Michael Martin, Opera has greasemonkey built-in. Keyword searches also built-in. Opera has pure support for development (firebug still rocks) – that is true.
I like opera much more than other browsers. I’m developer, so I develop in firefox, but living in internet via opera. Why? Speed, quality, memory consumption, Qt…
Of course this “opera attack on msie” is not right. But personally I want IE to dissapear :). Microsoft willnt remove msie from windows distribution (haha, you will not even able to download another browser). And of course will not add 3rd party software. But it will try to control users, by supporting technologies they want (for live.com, msn, etc.)…
Currenly we also have 4th candidate for “most lovin browser” – any with webkit engine (safari, possibly konqueror in kde 4.1, etc.). KDE team now puts a LOT of attention to khtml. Apple effectivly merges changes from khtml to webkit. From KDE 4.1 KDE team want to merge changes back. That mean – khtml will be the same as safari (which is good, even gmail works 100%). This is more or less financied by Trolltech, they want to embed khtml into Qt 4.4. After doing that each team of 2-4 developers will be able to make same functionality as in Opera in 1-2 months… :). And personally I think we will have a bunch of new browsers. Some of them will be fast as opera and pluggable as firefox. But not necessary free. This is bad? The main thing is: they ALL will have SAME html/js/python (who knows? :)) rendering engine :).
This war is not simple enought.
btw, this blog does not work fine in opera (nicedit suxx, comment form, etc.)
Mocksoul,
So what’s the point in the new browsers? Sounds to me like there’s absolutely no reason to go with one of them over the current ones. There’s point in being the same as everyone else; they’d have to do something different. :)
But thanks for letting me know about the Opera bugs. I hadn’t tried actually hightlighting the text and using the form before. I just saw that it loaded, and made an evidently bad assumption… :(
Why firefox is not good enough: engine suxxx. It renders well, but internally it is far from ideal (including idiotic malloc implementation). khtml/webkit is much better and faster. Right now it is even more standart-compliant (although ff team size is much bigger than khtml/webkit team). Firefox has memleaks (see note about malloc above). Firefox uses GTK under linux which is neither good looking nor fast. Firefox eats mem. Firefox is not fast itself (XUL is good idea, but, again, very bad implementation). Opera has its own drawing engine (which is good looking and also allows awesome interface customization). I’m not sure somebody will be able to make at least the same… but.. =).
Firefox does not feel “Light”. safari and konqueror feel. Opera – if you dont try to keep 50-60 tabs open at startup (many opera users – do) – also feels.
Firefox 3 may or may not fix most of this things. I’m not trying to guess, I’m just waiting release :).
Actually, as you can see – I’m using all browsers together :) ff, opera and konqueror. But… IE must die! :). Right now it really slow down web development and innovations.
Um, defense is spelled wrong in your headline. No C, it’s an S.Robyn
Defence is the British spelling.
MockSoul,
Those flaws in FireFox aren’t that bad really. The memory eating is the only one I’ve noticed before, but even then, my comp can handle it. All of the extensions for Firefox make it worthwhile. :)
Robyn,
Thanks for pointing it out, but like Kristarella said, that’s how it’s spelt in the UK. I never knew that the US spelt it differently. Sounds like de-fenz? xD
1. Microsoft is breaking competition laws by bundling IE with windows. Whether you like it or not that’s been the verdict on both sides of the pond.
2. IE is crap anyway. Try designing a website and then you’ll realise how poorly it sticks to standards. No matter what site I design I have to pull strings to get it to work properly on IE.
3. If you bundled no browser with windows at least people would be downloading the most recent version of a browser (you can give them some links on the desktop to download a browser, several links so they have choice) and we won’t have issues like the large proportion of people still using the security hole that is IE6.
4. As someone else said, IE kills net innovation because standards can’t progress. As soon as some defacto standard comes around (flash, for media distribution) MS decides to rival it with some crap of their own, like Silverlight.
That’s a fair enough argument Steve, but there are 2 sides to every coin! :)
1 – That’s fine, but I’m yet to see Apple stop bundling Safari with Leopard. Why does this only apply to Microsoft?
2 – IE6 is crap by today’s standards, definitely. It wasn’t when it came out though. Their issue was leaving it far too long before bringing out IE7. The software itself works, and getting a site working in IE7 is no real issue now.
3 – True, but you’d also have about a million phone calls from people asking how they get to the internet and what Firefox etc. are. Besides, that’s not the main reason a lot of people are still on IE6. It’s companies/schools etc. with IT departments that are locked into IE6 and can’t get out. They’re well aware that IE7 exists, just not worth the work to them to upgrade (Or so they think!)
4 – That kind of contravenes your first point. Isn’t competition supposed to be a good thing? :)
im not complaining at all. i get additional paid hours for making sure my pages work on ie, opera all the w3c standards. soooo why complain when i get paid for additional work hours?
Hi Michael…I do agree..I use firefox and very happy…..Microsoft need to do there in house homework….good info…Thanks..
I use Fire Fox and I have no problem with it as long as I can get on the net and its quick I can’t complain.
I also use Firefox, of coruse Firefox has faults, but I can’t imagine return to IE.
I heard thet IE8 is last version of Internet Explorer, but maybe it’s gossip.
My heart is with Fire fox, I get the best from them I have not complaints, even though I have heard so many people complaining about the new Fire Fox I (touch wood) have had no problems.
My heart lies with firefox but recently webkit’s support of HTML5 and advanced CSS3 features having me thinking of converting! Opera is a great browser but still not much CSS3 support. IE IS a bad browser, especially older versions. The German government even recently advised the country to stop using it in favour of other browsers!
For why Firefox is more used because it has many feature that most people like. Like the SEO for Fixefox and so much more.