One of the things that I really like about IE compared to Firefox is the fact that I am able to spawn multiple processes of IE at the same time. With Firefox, even if you have multiple windows open at one time they are all loaded into a single process. There are a couple of advantages to this:
- If a webpage locks up the browser and I need to kill the process, I only lose the pages in that current window.
- Authentication - This is especially useful while doing website development. I can have one window that is logged onto a website and another that is unauthenticated. Or, I can logon to the same website as different users with different priviledge levels.
One thing to keep in mind, if you do a "Open New Window" in IE, that new window will be part of the same process as the window it was started from. So, if you want to launch IE in a separate process you need to relaunch it from your IE shortcut. Depending on what I am doing I may or may not want the new window to be part of an existing IE process. It's nice to have that flexibility.
Now, I still love Firefox and will continue to use it until IE7 is fully released. Unless Microsoft really screws things up with IE7, it is going to be a no-brainer for me to use it exclusively.
Whether at work or at home, I probably have an average of 20-25 webpages open at a given time. I know a lot of people that find this excessive but I spend a lot of time doing research on coding or utilities and I find it handy to get all of the relevant info open at one time so I can make comparisons on what is available.