Internet Explorer Add-Ons

April 25th, 2006

The IE Blog announces a new Internet Explorer Add-Ons site. It sounds like this new site is Microsoft's attempt to build a rival to Firefox's thriving extension ecosystem.

I don't think Internet Explorer is ever going to be able to compete with Firefox's extensions system. For a start, compare Internet Explorer's Add-On Manager with the Firefox Extensions window. Firefox beats IE hands down for ease of use.

On the quality of extensions front, Firefox wins again. There are tons of great extensions, most of which are free to use and open source.

Anyone who has experience with writing web pages and Javascript should find it pretty easy to write an extension. In contrast, Internet Explorer Add-Ons will require you to have knowledge of programming languages such as Visual Basic or C++, development tools and there isn't a nice way of packaging add-ons.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is out. Testers in the US of A, Germany and Japan can get free telephone support. A final version of IE7 is due to be released in the second half of this year.