Internet Explorer 7 v Firefox 2.0

Author: Wil Harris
Published: 22nd August 2006

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Search

How and where you get your daily dose of search is now of paramount importance. How do the browsers implement this key feature?

Internet Explorer 7: This is the first version of IE that has had search in the toolbar, which is a pretty big step.

By default, the search is (obviously) MSN. However, you can easily head in and click on 'Find More Providers' to switch to your search engine of choice.

There's a fairly comprehensive list of providers to add. They're mostly big commercial outlets though, although Microsoft claims you can promote your own site search engine with a script call.

Firefox 2: Search is pretty much the same as it has been.

Google is the default, and there are some interesting default drop downs.

There's a new feature on Mozilla.org that has a Search Engine add-on page. There are some very cool sites featured there, including BBC news, del.icio.us, Flickr, IMDB and Technorati - much more eccentric and modern than Microsoft's Walmart search, neatly highlighting what we suspect is a different demographic.