Some of the main differences in IE and FF come from the fact that FF is open source. That leads it to be open to, and encouraging of, third party plug-ins, unlike IE, which tries to be a complete turnkey package.
That both gives FF its strength and its potential complications and confusions, since it can be more of a do-it-yourself browser. Of course, we chicken folk tend to be roll up the sleeves do-it-yourself types, so...
Internet explorer is outdated and the most widely hacked browser. You will find more and more sites will not be optimized for IE as Safari and Firefox are far superior
I've drug you each to this post 'cause I thought you'd benefit from it. But, I do tend to type/talk entirely too much -- to skip the veggies and find the meat? skim down to the numbered list.
From way back when they released '98, Microsoft has proven to be one of the dirtiest, crooked-est companies around. They gave us pre-releases, so as to work our own software into seamlessly, only to then block what others programmed and copy the concepts of each into applications of their own -- that way, their own software appeared to work fine, but everyone else's required the downloading of patches from them.
And, back to the release of DOS 6.22, they flat-out absolutely stole Stacker 4.0's compression engine, and made it an integral part of their own release.
XP was broken, and had huge security holes, even *before* it was released, and (as usual) Microsoft simply released to that way -- by the time folks could download the patches to recently restores machines, crackers would find and exploit their fresh installations.
Internet Explorer, again, has yet to release a fully compatible browser that doesn't fail in one manner of another.
"Why's he's goin' on and on about all this?"
Glad you asked ... my suggestion, to all:
1. Download and Install the Firefox browser, which *DOES* work just as is, without additional plug-ins, but there's a lot of good ones that really do make it better.
Visit
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ and click the green button (that's easy enough ~'-)
2. Keep Internet Explorer (and the Windows environment) installed, and constantly updated, but use the Firefox browser -- Most especially when browsing unknown areas of the 'net, or handling sensitive informations: It's far more secure, and nearly impossible to exploit IE if it is not open/running (but, painfully simple, when it is ~'-)
You've found that love/hate divide, in regard to open-source vs. commercial release. I suggest the more realistic and productive use of both, as the most responsible developers will always make their websites accessible to all, but there will still be times you may wanna do things that require the licensed softwares (i.e. certain formats of video, or specific codecs, or iTunes, etc.).
3. Download/Install UBUNTU, my favorite release of the Linux Operating System, to run inside of Windows, or on that system you replace because it was "too slow" and .. betcha it's faster w/ Linux than your new system is w/ MS. And, it's even sharper than Mac's OS X.
Visit
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu for more.
4. Download/Install Open Office, which is fully compatible w/ Microsoft Office, and learn to use it as well -- no license fees, and the files produced by one will open/edit/etc. in the other w/o any problems.
Visit
http://www.openoffice.org/download/ to get it, and again to add onto it.
Takin' this a bit further, for those that embraced all steps above: There is a *huge* potential for those that master the use of Linux and/or Open Office ... consulting and/or training is the most obvious direction, because business and government often pays much higher fees for licensing, and would not need to upgrade systems if somebody (like you) came in, installed the software, trained their employees, etc.
