Firefox must be significantly better than IE 7 to win the browser wars.

In nearly all aspects/areas Firefox must be better than IE7.

I’ve heard Firefox 1.5 is somewhat better — but they’ll have lost the war if they don’t do better than that. They’ll need more than tabs and “CSS” compliance. (Excluding geeks and web developers, I’d bet at least 95% of Internet users don’t care at ALL whether a page is CSS compliant.) I’m a developer, a geek, and do a lot of web stuff, and I don’t care how Amazon is built, or any other web page that I didn’t write. As long as it works, I’m good to go! Yes, I can appreciate the need for better accessibility in all web applications—section 508–and that’s a good reason to pursue standards, but most others are more of a political/religious debate than a practical issue for the end user. My example: Do you care what software programming language Firefox was written in? Why not? Does it affect your willingness to use it? Is it maybe irrational that it does? (with the exception of programming languages that require large downloads to make applications work).

Here’s my official announcement:

Unless Firefox changes, when IE 7 is released for XP SP2, I’ll stop using Firefox Day 1. Period.

How many others feel the same way? If IE 7 is good enough, there won’t be any reason for average PC user to download Firefox — which is the only reason today people really are downloading it. It has a few things IE 6 doesn’t have.

If you just want to “fight the system” and are against Microsoft, fine. Stick with Firefox.

Recommendation to Firefox developers and designers: Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. Innovate hard. Innovate often.