Browser wars: Firefox gains on Internet Explorer, an article by Eric Gwinn and published by the Chicago Tribune, contains some rather iffy claims I'd like to address.

But that's not all. Now, whenever Firefox is stumped by a Web page's coding, the browser automatically downloads the software extension it needs to get the job done. It's all handled in the background, so you don't have to do a thing. Nice.

If this is referring to the automatic update system, this article is really misstating its purpose. The article makes it sound like Firefox somehow knows that it can't handle a website's poor code and that it immediately downloads something to make it able to, which of course it doesn't. It updates Firefox seamlessly (after a simple user confirmation) whenever a new version of Firefox is available. New versions are expected to come out every month or so as needed for security and stability improvements, and whenever a new major version is released once or twice a year.

If it's referring to plugins such as for Flash or Java, this functionality was there in Firefox 1.0, and it isn't seamless like the article implies. And it's a good thing it isn't seamless, too, since the plugins aren't necessarily distributed by Mozilla.

While Firefox concentrates on ease of use, IE is aimed at security. One of IE's best features is the gold padlock it displays at the bottom of the browser when you're on a secure page (or one that Internet Explorer thinks is secure). For visibility's sake, IE 7 is expected to move that lock from the bottom of the browser and put it near the place where you type in Web addresses.

What? Of course Firefox concentrates on security. Its security response averages at ten times the speed of Internet Explorer's. And not only does Firefox have the padlock feature the article mentioned, but it displays it in the location bar where users are more likely to look and even highlights the location bar in yellow to really get the user's awareness. IE7 is changing it to mimic Firefox.