FireFox 3.1 Leaves IE in the Dust

Anonymous writes "Granted, FireFox 3.1 is just a beta and IE 8 is also in beta, but it looks like Microsoft has some ground to make up when it comes to browser performance. Given that Mozilla appears to be on a much faster cycle than Microsoft with this stuff, it's also possible that it could increase the gap even more before IE 8 is GA, no?"

Benchmarks were versus IE7 ...

It's perhaps a bit confusing to mention IE8 in the subject as it was not compared to FF3.1 - IE7 was. I.e. a more apples-to-apples test might have been production FF3.0 versus IE7 or better yet, beta FF3.1 versus IE8.

Having said that, the speed improvements are very impressive, in what ChannelWeb says and other reports. And yea, FF3.1 is setting a darn high bar for IE8 - bring it on FF!

Re:Benchmarks were versus IE7 ...

Don't worry, I'm sure we'll still get a bunch of uninformed posts from people who didn't read the article, talking about how they're not surprised Firefox 3.1 outperforms IE8 when IE8 wasn't benchmarked.

Java != Javascript

When is the press going to realize that Java != Javascript? (Or Java !== Javascript, even!) Comparing "Java" performance between browsers is meaningless. (And isn't what SunSpider does anyway.) Comparing JavaScript performance has a very real impact on the users.

What's "GA"?

Is "GA" a common abbreviation? I assume it's a contraction of "generally available", but I did think of, and discount, a few other possibilities first given it's used in conjunction with IE8;

God Awful (too obvious)
Grizzly Adams (not sure where the bad 80s drama comes into things)
Ground to Air (IE could be a Weapon Of Markup Destruction..)
Goatse Arse (Ass if you're American)
Gabon (.ga is the country code for there..)
Standards Non-compliant (using Microsoft Alphabet)

Re:What's "GA"?

When Microsoft releases a product it goes from CTP (Community Technology preview) to RTM (Release to Manufactuing) to GA (Genuinely Assinine).

Georgia

I think it's Georgia. Internally Microsoft doesn't use terms like "alpha" and "beta": a product starts in "Florida" and moves closer to Redmond, so "Washington" means "bug-free". When it reaches "Georgia", it's ready to ship.

this is not news

If you've even remotely been keeping up with FireFox, WebKit and IE progress, it's no surprise that IE8 fares poorly. It fared poorly the day it was released, which was about two months ago. Why are we getting this story now?

As a side note, IE8 does fix the pathologically bad performance IE6/IE7 exhibited on certain SunSpider benchmarks. That alone should improve its overall SunSpider score by an order of magnitude. Its javascript engine will still be 2-3X slower than FireFox and Safari, but it will at least be in the same "ball park".

Microsoft's foolish mistake

For the life of me, I can't understand why Microsoft continues to abandon its strength.

It feels like the .NET koolaid is coming even to the IE team. Microsoft's .NET push now borders on maniacal, standardizing on .NET and in places where it should not be standardized. Performance matters, particularly when processors aren't getting any faster, just more parallel. Microsoft's has left C++ to languish, has all but abandoned C, and as such has no real performance tool in their own arsenal.

At the same time, the OSS community is actually slogging through and solving some of the difficult problems of making large projects in C++ that perform - getting better experience with the STL, when to use and when not to use, changing compilers to respond, developing automated testing methodologies to overcome what the compilers can't detect, and so on.

There should be no reason for the Windows desktop to be stagnant for fast applications, but Microsoft has basically abandoned it and is pushing developers to do the same. All the new display stuff in Windows requires .NET.. one wonders, how long will it be before Linux has similar systems but are presented as a simple C library that any system can use, regardless of whether it is a managed platform or not.

Fair tests?

I don't see that the things they mention are fair or informative tests. Yes, there's some browser infrastructure involved but other components are doing most of the work:

• papervision3d.org is entirely down to the Flash plugin
• a 3D Java render is entirely down to the Java plugin
• sunspider - OK, fair enough, we've known about speed problems with string concatenation in IE since sunspider appeared
• ACID - yes, this isn't a priority for this release for IE so this isn't news either

Maybe Firefox 3.1 is much faster than IE 8 but this article doesn't tell me anything new.

Yes, but how about stability?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but Firefox 3.0.3 sucks on my three XP machines. Version 3.0.2 worked just fine. I let Firefox upgrade itself to 3.0.3 and it immediately started crashing. It crashed so much that I actually had to use IE to download a copy of 3.0.2 to downgrade Firefox on those machines. And Firefox 3.0.3 crashes on my Ubuntu machine far far more often that earlier versions ever did (although I'm still using 3.0.3 on Ubuntu).

Um

IE 8 is a major revision.
FF 3.1 is a minor revision.

Just about any version of Opera is faster than them both.

Learn to compare things.

Re:Um

Opera used to be faster, but not any longer now that Mozilla, Apple, and Google have been improving performance so much. If you look at the links in the previous post, you can see that Opera beat Firefox in only one speed test. Yes, Opera is faster than IE, but that's only because IE is so slow.

SilverLight Test?

Where's the SilverLight test, huh? I bet IE wins that one..

Now, can they cut down the spam?

I mean, OK, it's nice to have the name and URL both in the dropdown from the location bar, but do they have to use so much space doing it?

Camino had that months earlier, without burning nearly as much real estate on it.

VERY misleading summary!

The summary mentions IE8 more than once, but the article is comparing Firefox 3.1 to IE 7 (yes SEVEN - you know, the OLD one!)

The Javascript engine in IE8 is much faster than the one in IE7, so it's a pretty unfair test in the first place and should never have been posted in the first place.

Many posters above already seem to be confused about the IE7/8 thing.

Re:Does this really matter?

I don't know about that. I switched to, and am still using, Chrome since it seems much faster. For many people, all they use their computer for is the web browser, so a faster browser could be significant.

Re:Does this really matter?

There are people who will use 1 browser because it is "the internet".
there are people who will use 1 browser because it is God's only browser and there is only one.
There are people who will use 1 browser because they cant be bothered to change.

And then there are people who will want to latest, fastest, feature-rich, talked-about browser. And if FF gets "superfast" stickers all over it in the popular press and blogs, people will want to use it. Nobody really wants to be stuck with yesterday's slow old slowness, not in the Internet Age. We've all been conditioned to always go for the upgrade, give us any reason and very many of us will.

Re:And yet

Their speeds all suck next to lynx!

Re:And yet

Well, javascript-wise, maybe not. I've spent the last week doing some extensive testing on pure javascript performance (not DOM-tree manipulation, etc) using a little raytracer [googlepages.com] I hacked up overnight.

Opera is noticably above average, in this respect. More importantly, however, you might note that the Firefoxes are absolutely, hideously bad at memory management. When rendering a big scene here, Safari will do it in a fraction of the time using 60mb of RAM, whereas Firefox 3.1beta's memory usage spirals out of control and into swap space. And the JIT compiler is way broken still :)

Anyway, here are some figures (only meaningful when comparing different browsers on the same box):

IE 7.0.5730.13 -- 10.1 seconds
Firefox 2.0.0.17 -- 9.9 seconds
Safari (win32) 3.1.1 -- 5.9 seconds
Opera 9.60 -- 3.6 seconds
Firefox 3.1b2pre (no JIT) -- 2.8 seconds
Safari (win32) 2008-10-15 -- 1.0 seconds
Google Chrome 0.2.149.30 -- 0.8 seconds
Firefox 3.1b2pre (JIT) -- anywhere between 0.6-35.0 seconds

Re:And yet

Actually, you're wrong -- Firefox 3.1 comprehensively outperforms Opera in pretty much all tests now.

On the other hand, what does blow the FF 3.1 beta out of the water, are the latest WebKit betas. Here's the stats on my machine:

Sunspider (faster times are better)
FF3.0.3 - 2697.2ms
FF3.1 - 2442.8ms
WebKit - 702.6ms

V8 Benchmark (more runs are better)
FF3.0.3 - 199 runs
FF3.1 - 241 runs
WebKit - 2087 runs

ACID 3
FF3.0.3 - 71 and significant laggyness
FF3.1 - 89 and significant laggyness
WebKit - 100 and passes timing tests

Re:Simple Really

Firefox is simply more minimal.

Hmm, I must have been teleported to some alternate reality where IE actually has more features than Firefox. The way I see it, even the barebones FF install has more than standard IE. One glance at about:config would confirm that.

Re:Simple Really

This destroys Microsoft's claim that their intimate knowledge of the OS that runs IE will increase performance.

Really? Where was this claimed?

This proves that Microsoft's intimate knowledge of their OS actually inhibits performance of IE and therefore all other Microsoft products.

That's quite the leap there. Where's your evidence to bridge those thoughts?

The issue is similar to the ones that have always plagued Java; you have to load massive libraries to do miniscule tasks and that causes noticeable overhead, when they were sadly intended to save time! Firefox is simply more minimal, and it is through their actively sought after security footprint that they deliver better performance by default.

I don't think anyone said using libraries increased performance. What it does do is allow you to build an application faster, because you don't need to re-invent the wheel. You're also acting like speed is the only important factor here. I've been using IE8 beta more because of the built in developer tools, and being able to switch between IE8 standards mode and IE7 mode... which means I don't have to check FF's rendering as much. Besides, IE8 is so fast, that it hardly seems worth if it FF is faster.. either will be great for browsing, because both are now really really fast. It's not like the ridiculously slow IE7.

Add with that experience, superior plugins like NoScript, and you also save bandwidth because Flash files don't load by default and scripts don't tie up resources unless you approve them to do so. NoScript was designed for security, but with the added benefit that you get faster performance with it.

Performance is not the end-all be-all of browsing. I'm sure someone so included could whip up an add-in like NoScript in IE as well.

Even when you look at Google Chrome, which is also a valid attempt at increasing performance (they flaunt security as a pillar of their design, but their cheerleading is unwarranted), the fact that you can't control scripts that are allowed to run, limits the user and make the user bound to the control of the webmaster, who typically controlled by a business or corporation that is only in it for the money and will infringe on rights of users without any form of conscience or compassion.

I'm not sure most users care as much as you about controling scripts. For example, I'm looking forward to see what features FF comes up with, because I think there are other new features in IE8 that look pretty compelling, like WebSlices and Extenders.

Re:Simple Really

Even when you look at Google Chrome, [snip] the fact that you can't control scripts that are allowed to run, limits the user and make the user bound to the control of the webmaster, who typically controlled by a business or corporation that is only in it for the money and will infringe on rights of users without any form of conscience or compassion.

Is it surprising that a company that makes it's money from advertising would want to make it difficult for users to block adverts? I think not.

Re:Simple Really

Remember those anti-trust cases with the Win95/98 and IE bundling? Yeah, around that time.

No, I don't remember performance being mentioned in the anti-trust cases. And why would they? It would highlight an uncompetitive advantage and weaken their position.

Citation needed.

Re:Simple Really

As for Google Chrome, it makes perfect sense to bind the user to the webmaster's control. After all, for many important things like e-mail, calendaring, and many more, that webmaster is probably Google. (After all, how many yahoo.com or live.com users would install a Google browser?) And Google loves it when you can't block their cookies or stop them from doing whatever they want to spy on you.

This can't be true because Google said they would do no evil. Unless OH SH-