Confgurability Of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4

This remains one of my toughest
criteria to compare between the two browsers, but it is one that can have a huge
impact on the browsers’ relative security. I should emphasize that I’m limiting
my comparisons here to the base browsers, without any plug-ins installed (for
now). Like many Microsoft products, IE really provides a huge set of security
features that can be adjusted to suit a user’s needs. IE uses security “zones”
such as “Internet,” “Local intranet,” “Trusted sites” and “Restricted sites” to
defne what a site may or may not do.

I have two gripes here. The frst
one is that the Internet (default) zone is defned as “medium-high” by default, and
allows many forms of active content (e.g., JavaScript) to run from completely
untrusted sites. (I prefer a setting of “high” for Internet sites, which
disallows all forms of active content. I can then add trustworthy sites to my “trusted
sites” zone on a case-by-case basis, enabling them to run JavaScript and such.)

By comparison, Firefox’s security
choices are overly simplistic. You can tune whether a site can invoke active content,
such as JavaScript, but it’s pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. If it’s
disabled for one site, it’s disabled for them all. (To be fair, a few
JavaScript capabilities can be restricted, but still not on a per-site basis.)

Although neither is perfect here,
IE gets the nod for its capabilities. I do very much wish that they’d make it
easier to designate sites as “trusted” zone sites, but that’s a user interface
issue I suppose. Still, from the provided features, I’d far prefer having IE’s
choices than

Qualitative score: IE gets an
“A-” while Firefox gets a “D+.” IE is unchanged while Firefox loses ground for
its stagnation.