Earlier this year I waffled on about a Windows Update utility for Firefox, called WindizUpdate. I was pretty impressed at the time and used the utility for a few months, but I was left wanting due to a lag between Microsoft releasing updates and finding that they were available for WindizUpdate. Now I’ve found something I like even more.
IE Tab is an extension for Firefox which embeds Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab. Unlike the IE View extension which simply opens selected pages in a separate Internet Explorer window, IE Tab displays selected pages using the IE engine but contained wholly within a Firefox tab.
So, why might this be useful? I currently use Internet Explorer exclusively for two reasons:
- To run Microsoft Update / Windows Update, which won’t otherwise work in any other browser.
- To check web pages as I develop them, to ensure that my pages look consistent between browsers.
Now with IE Tab I can do both of these things from within Firefox, simply by right-clicking and selecting “View Page in IE Tab”. And to mark the happy occasion of first running Microsoft Update within Firefox I snapped this celebratory picture for you:
Yes, I realise that using IE Tab really means that I’m using IE. But if nothing else I’m enjoying the convenience of doing it all from within a Firefox window.
June 24th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Yeah, Netscape can do the same thing.
There is a pretty big downside though. One of the big reasons for not using IE is security.
If you embed IE in a Firefox tab, any insecurities in your version of IE are now active the same as if you had been using IE standalone.
Still, I spose it has uniformity about it. If you could specify that certain pages open only in the embedded IE then I could delete all links to IE on clients desktops and set it up to only use Firefox.
June 25th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
That’s true.
But since I’m using IE (IE Tab) for the sole purposes of Microsoft Update and checking my own pages as I develop them, I think that the risks are pretty well mitigated.