Look Out, Firefox 3 — IE8 Is Back On Top For Now 662
CWmike writes "Internet Explorer 8 has shipped in its final version and is ready to take on its rivals. Preston Gralla reviewed it and says the latest version of Microsoft's browser leapfrogs its closest competition, Firefox 3, for basic browsing and productivity features — it has better tab handling, a niftier search bar, a more useful address bar, and new tools that deliver information directly from other Web pages and services. IE8 has also been tweaked for security and includes a so-called 'porn mode,' new anti-malware protection, and better ways to protect your privacy. The most noticeable new features? Accelerators and Web Slices. Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page. Web Slices deliver changing information from a Web page you're not actively visiting directly to IE8. There's one big problem for many, though. No add-ins, and there doesn't appear to be such an ecosystem on the horizon. So if you're a fan of add-ins and customizing the browser itself, writes Gralla, Firefox is superior. But for the actual browsing experience, IE8 has the upper hand — for now."
Best attribute (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, I think that whoever is using Firefox will continue to use it regardless of what IEX Browser comes out. The people that will be moving to IE8 will be those people that have used are privy to the previous IE Browser incarnations.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The people that will be moving to IE8 will be those people that have been subjected to the previous IE Browser incarnations.
FTFY
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Informative)
Nevermind that /. comment links don't work in IE8 unless you enable compatability mode for the site. Additionally this comment box for replies, even in compatability mode, extends far off to the right and blows out the formatting for the site.
There are still issues with the rendering engine and IE8 should NOT have gone live yet.
All of that stuff works in FF.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fault! (Score:5, Funny)
1. "Detect MS Enemy"
2. "IfEnemy ScrewUpSiteLoad"
Examples:
A. Slashdot, the leading forum for Linux promotion
B. Google Gears Installed = IE8 hoses pages.
Wheee!
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Interesting)
I may dislike IE8 for a lot of reasons but I would not be so quick to pin this one on IE8. The slashdot code base is HORRIBLE. Just look at the html that is being written, I have had problems with this site in konqueror at various times, webkit and opera. Mostly I think they just hack this site until it works in IE6,7 and Firefox and then call it done and don't worry about all the simple bugs in it that should be fixed that would make it work in far more browers.
Actually I even started blocking some of the javascript on the page because it was slowing it down so much. Sometimes up to 3 seconds before the page would draw because it was waiting on one of those javascript tracking scripts.
Slashdot is definitely not an example of a remotely well written site. Just test that yourself and validate it.
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I'd like to know who the devs are for the /. UI. I like slashdot a lot, but one has to wonder: if slashdot's own code is this bad and the interface is this bad, just how much geek cred does /. have anymore? A geek site should set the standard. Looks like they got some MBAs to redesign this site.
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Interesting)
I think one of the confusing points is that geeks feel sites like Craigslist have a solid UI, yet it's basically black words on a white page. It does what it needs to, and loads very fast.
There's a subtle difference between minimalism and not giving a fuck.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Insightful)
Standards compliance and a page rendering well are not the same thing. IE6 is far less standards compliance than pretty much any modern browser, but most websites render well in it because they were written to render well in it.
If a page is not standards compliant, you can have the most standards compliant browser in the world and it will still render terribly. What you want is actually a standards *in-compliant* browser that smartly substitutes out its standards compliant mode for an appropriate quirks mode when it sees a site that is standards in-compliant.
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried the new Chrome 2 Beta which might not be what you're talking about. Definitely not ready for primetime by any means. Slow, clunky feeling, didn't load pages properly, etc. The old Chrome seems okay, except it has a problem rendering popular social networking sites.
Firefox's memory usage, test shows, is 1/2 that of Chrome or IE 8 with the same 10 tabs open. It has plugins, cooler themes, is very fast, configurable. So if by "better" you mean "faster"...Chrome 1 is pretty quick as long as you don't mind rendering issues. IE 7 I guess I need to disable completely the Phishing feature instead of just Turn it Off because the browser still waits to load pages as if it's considering whether it meets the MS standard of acceptable surfing.
Firefox works. Works well.
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're suggesting that should matter for web browsing something is very very wrong.
Why wouldn't it matter? With a properly coded web browser that is designed to support multiple cores, it will make a big difference.
I'm hesitant to get involved in a flame war, but here's my two cents. I've been running Chrome since about 2 days after it was released. In that time, the browser has crashed maybe a handful of times, vs. probably once a week with Firefox. When something does go wrong, it usually is specific to the page/tab, and doesn't bring down the entire browser, and while I had issues with tabs crashing early on, it almost never happens with the more recent updates. Speed? Seems plenty fast to me. I do have a couple of sites that won't work with Chrome, but it's a very small fraction.
I was a dedicated Firefox user for several years, and I still use it for web development and those few sites that still won't work with Chrome. But until the Firefox guys come up with a new version, it's just plain outclassed by Chrome for day to day web browsing.
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Informative)
Given the KHTML/WebKit guys' reputation for actually targeting the spec (as opposed to Gecko--hello, moz-* CSS attributes), when there's a discrepancy between Gecko and WebKit, I'm going to assume that WebKit does it more correctly unless evidence to the contrary can be found.
Both WebKit and Gecko have experimental CSS properties that they safely isolate under a namespace using an obvious prefix. Here are a couple of examples.
x-moz-border-radius-topleft: 7px;
x-webkit-border-top-left-radius: 7px;
This is considered a safe way to extend CSS. Any web site with a standards-compliant CSS is unaffected by the browser's ability to do something with these properties. Furthermore, any web site that uses these experimental properties will gracefully degrade to a box with square corners when visited by a browser that does not recognize them. In the future, when rounded corners are in an official CSS spec, both Gecko and Mozilla can merely tie this behaviour to whatever the CSS spec calls this property.
This is very unlike the bad old days of exerimenting with changes to HTML. Both Gecko and WebKit are doing the right thing here.
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Informative)
Just some clarification, the "x" in front of the above properties is a character that I added to "comment out" (in a sense) these properties from a file I was working on. (Changing them to a name that no browser recognizes is a convenient way to dike them out, anyway.) I didn't mean to include them when I pasted them into the above post. The actual properties are:
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 7px;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius: 7px;
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Informative)
If you're still using Firefox for something other than Web Developer and Firebug, I'd be willing to say you're doing it wrong.
I run Linux you insensitive clod.
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, which one of IE8 and Chrome run in Ubuntu? Or should I go pay $$$ for Windows, so that I can pay $$$ for anti-virus/spy/adware/malware, so that I can update it every other day and still be paranoid about where I click, all so that I run one of those browsers? Oh, and learn all about definitions and exploits and security bulletins?
No, thanks, for browsing the web Windows is way too much hassle and too much money. I want simple, I don't want to make a hobby out of using the computer. I'll stick with Ubuntu.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Real men download ubuntu over bittorrent using only telnet and doing the checksums in their head.
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Funny)
Telnet?
I handle all of my torrent traffic using netcat - It runs in one of the terminals on my rightmost monitor that I control using the keyboard allocated for my right hand. Isn't that how everyone does it?
Re:Best attribute (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Telnet? Real men would use SSH instead of telnet,
Real men telnet to port 22 and do all of the key exchange and encrypt/decrypt in their head.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Besides having to get up. Go to the store find the box. Pay a fair chunk of money. Go back and install it on your PC. Vs. Downloading it in 30 seconds for free. I don't know I think we actually have improved the process a bit.
Re:WIN!!!!!! WIN! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best attribute (Score:4, Informative)
No. In that case, "asploded" is the correct term.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fluff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fluff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fluff (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, what's the point of "better tab handling" and a "niftier search bar" if the results look like crap because it can't render everything properly?
Be fair.. it renders everything perfectly....... Everything written for IE8 that is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. Every browser EXCEPT IE can play the game in my sig. That's not the only example of such complete and total rendering failures on Microsoft's part.
Why would rendering take a back seat to convenience? If you can't view the page, all the convenience in the world isn't going to help you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Add-ins (Score:5, Funny)
[IE8 has] no add-ins, and there doesn't appear to be such an ecosystem on the horizon.
Never fear; I'm sure there will be plenty soon enough, and they will most likely install themselves! Check here [us-cert.gov] to find out about new ones as they get released.
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Funny)
Such convenience! Verily, IE is superior to Firefox. :P
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Interesting)
Add-ins are the "killer app" of the browser for me. I don't think I'll ever switch from Firefox if competing browsers don't have this feature built into it. I just couldn't live without stuff like foxmarks, flagfox, customisegoogle, etc..
Yeah, IE8 can render pages faster but who really cares when pages render in a matter of seconds in any of the browsers on the market. 1 or 2 second difference means nothing to me. Add-ins mean alot to me and are the defining feature and without them it makes IE an inferior browser to Firefox.
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Funny)
Bah. IE's add-ins are literally killer-apps!
Try to beat that. ^^
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd bet that a faster render engine WITH ads still loses against a slightly slower one and adblock.
Sheldon
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they don't do jack to modify the behavior of the browser?
Find me the toolbar that gives IE support for:
- Selective blocking of advertisements
- Experimental 3D Canvas
- DOM Inspection
- Preview page on link hover
- 3D Bookmark management
- Sidebar preview of tabs
- FTP Manager
- Warning of Site Tracking scripts
These are expansions to *core* browser functionality. Toolbars don't do that. ActiveX plugins do, but there's no real ecosystem around ActiveX these days. (In fact, it seems like everyone's trying to figure out how to get rid of it.)
BTW, when did you become a Microsoft apologist Blakey? I've been noticing you coming out in support of IE at every opportunity. I can't figure out why for the life of me.
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Informative)
I don't consider myself a Microsoft apologist, I'm just allergic to bullshit so I try to combat it wherever and whenever I see it. On Slashdot, when talking about Microsoft, it's all over the place.
Whether or not IE's addins are good or completely suck, whether or not there exists an ad-blocker addin for IE, the simple fact of the matter is that IE *does* have addins, and *has* had addins for longer than Firefox has existed.
I can't go through and cover your entire list, but I do know that there's an IE addin to do DOM Inspection. I use it all the time. The aforementioned Google Toolbar does a lot of page manipulation, as well, like highlighting search results. I wouldn't be surprised if every item in your list exists in IE. (Except perhaps for "3D bookmark management", what does that even mean?)
Re:Add-ins (Score:5, Informative)
Which is to say that you're unwilling to see the other side of the issue. You'd rather find some way to slip an argument through the needle?
Only if you're nitpicking language. Firefox add-ins are technologically similar in principle to what IE is capable of, but not the same at all from a user's perspective. From a user's perspective, they open the add-on manager, search for something cool, install it, and get new features in their browser that are embedded deep into its function. With IE, they can get a toolbar installed with various software (often whether intended to install it or not) that adds more useless buttons for them to click. How is the experience even remotely comparable? And some functionality is presented as an ActiveX control or ActiveX plugin. Which is yet another different thing that the user doesn't associate.
Basically, Internet Explorer has nothing like this catalog: https://addons.mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org]
That's what a user believes. And they're more or less correct from the perspective they're looking at it.
Slight misspeak on my part. It's 3D Tab Management I was thinking of.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8879 [mozilla.org]
3D bookmark management is a different browser. ;-)
Security? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Security? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Accelerators are most useful for people who are on dialup or slower broadband connections to download possible future pages while they are looking at the existing one. It makes their life, as in your [clients|customers|visitors] browsing experience better.
If you don't want accelerators hitting your site, don't have a public site. Or deploy counter measures that block or limit the accelerators. Don't bitch and moan about visitors (or potential visitors) leeching your bandwidth when you put it out there fo
Re:Security? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they are not consumers or rather not doing it fairly.
By your argument a resturant shouldn't bitch and moan when a customer takes an entire bowel of free after dinner mints rather than just one.
Also by your logic people who can't buy/afford a large non-limited bandwidth connection shouldn't bother to make things publicly available on the internet.
Effectively, you're saying that only those with enough money to afford the higher cost should be allowed free speech on the Internet.
Re:Security? (Score:5, Funny)
an entire bowel of free after dinner mints
What a terrible image!
Re:Security? (Score:5, Informative)
Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page. Let's say, for example, that you're on a Web page with an address on it. Highlight the address, and then choose a maps accelerator, and you'll see a map of the address displayed in a flyaway -- a kind of pop-up on the page -- or else on another tab, depending on how that particular accelerator was written. You can interact with the flyaway map just as if you were on the map site itself.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Did you RTFA? These "accelerators" are merely additions which allow users to retrieve related content without leaving a webpage. Highlighting a street address and having a map appear is mentioned as an example.
The speed of IE 8 let me get first post! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, thanks to the new javascript a-
Well, crap.
Re:The speed of IE 8 let me get first post! (Score:5, Interesting)
You are modded Funny, I would have modded You Insightful but decided to comment.
In a time where even Joe Avarage's webpage starts utilizing javascript frameworks such as JQuery, ExtJs, GWT, prototype and the such I have to ask who cares about html rendering speeds?
Trident, the rendering engine of IE, has been famous for it's bad Javascript performance (especially on string manipulation which is often heavily used). Does IE have better javascript performance? I ask, because the competition is successfully upping their standards in this area.
-S
Porn Mode? (Score:5, Funny)
Will it prevent Sticky Keys from activating?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No add-ins? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No add-ins? (Score:5, Informative)
The article just basically got it wrong on that front.
A quick Google search (Score:5, Funny)
2. On the second search result, read the first line of the description.
3.
4. (Don't) profit!
Re:A quick Google search (Score:5, Informative)
And with a thought to those that might read this in the future, it reads: ..."
"Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) indicates the end of the Internet
Re:A quick Google search (Score:5, Funny)
How could they be reading it in the future? IE8 indicates the end of the Internet, duh.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And in case anyone in the futures wonders why the result appears as it is, here is the original quote:
Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) indicates the end of the Internet Explorer 8 beta period.
That page has already been changed to say
This final release of Internet Explorer 8 is about delivering a browsing experience for all that is richer, easier, and more secure.
so, expect the Google search result to change real soon now.
Does it adhere to standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
My first question with every new release of IE is, "How well does it render valid HTML+CSS?"
Yeah, I don't really care if it's fast and has "Web Accelerators". Will it display properly written pages properly? Are developers going to have to keep putting hacks into their pages to deal with IE quirks? If they aren't adhering to standards, then it's not really worth much.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
<a href="http://www.getfirefox.com">Page doesn't look right? Click here.</a>
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Competition driven market, it works (Score:4, Interesting)
This whole market thingy seems to work.
There is competition driven innovation, and a number of large companies are fighting for the market share.
I like it... although I doubt that my Ubuntu will run IE8, so I guess I won't use IE8 too much - perhaps I'll check it in Wine ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it does seem to work-- just so long as the US federal government, several state governments, and the whole EU are battling Microsoft to keep them from engaging in anti-competitive practices.
The free market works, but this is a case where governmental intervention is required to keep a market free.
Reloading a tab at the point that it crashed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool as that seems in theory, doesn't automatically reloading the exact state that the tab was in when it crashed mean that it will probably just crash again as soon as you reload it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
All alone (Score:5, Funny)
You know that kid who rushes to the top of the hill, just knowing that he's finally going to win King of the Hill for the first time ever? Then when he gets to the top of the hill, he's elated when he realizes he's at the top... only to realize a few moments later that all the other kids ran up a different hill?
That's Microsoft.
new and innovative security issue (Score:4, Insightful)
I have this set up with widgets. It is useful to have certain snippets of web pages at ones fingertips. So I agree that it is a cool feature.
OTOH, implanting this in the browser seems like a serious security risk to me. How many times have we seen something like this used to steal someone's password to their bank account or otherwise make people believe they are on a secure site? How will they keep this feature from being hijacked?
In the end this sounds like feature bloat. It is not part of what MS said IE8 would be, which is a faster, more standards based browser.
Oh great (Score:5, Funny)
Niftier search bar? What, did they include Clippy?
a more useful address bar,
How much more useful can one make an address bar? It's sole purpose is to provide a place to type in a web address. If by useful, do they mean that horrid Awesome Bar?
and new tools that deliver information directly from other Web pages and services.
Oh joy. Nothing like having your connection come to a crawl as some Flash advertisement tries to load in another page as it it's "delivered" to your system.
Ya know, there's something to be said for simplicity. But then, we are talking about developers who don't know the meaning of simplicity.
How about multiple reviews Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft's New Browser Is Better, but Still Not Best [washingtonpost.com]
After using the beta and RC1... (Score:3, Informative)
This causes problems with IE8 since it is closer to being correct; these "fixes" throw it off. I am sure that sites will begin to change as IE8 use spreads. Until IE6 finally dies (still has 20% market share) though, I am saddened that the world is still suffer with IE hacks.
One bad thing, reverting back to IE7 is pretty much impossible in most cases.
Another, some old Active X controls do not work.
Ok, one more, they use an interconnected process model like Chrome so that the whole world does not crash when one bad page causes problems. Yeah, that is a great idea, but in my experience, it locks your whole machine and crashes every instance. Boo!
Innovation is back! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good to see innovation is back in town. I won't be using IE anytime soon, at least not until there is a Linux or OS-X release of the browser. But I'm sure the Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc. developers are going to take a good hard look at those features, and we'll see the best innovations appear in other browsers really soon. And hopefully even more nifty functions inspired by this.
The last two, three years have seen more innovation in the browser than the ten years before that. FF 1 was nice and up to par - adding tabs but not that much more, FF 2 was a serious improvement, but only in FF 3 I start to see very serious changes and improvements - it starts to feel experimental at times - in an innovative way, something that I don't feel in FF 2. Is it because MS has picked up their pace in UI innovation? Is it because Google has launched Chrome with its super-javascript-engine? Or maybe because alternative Safari has gained mainstream recognition with its Windows version and the iPhone version? Or more likely all of the above?
Interesting times ahead, for sure. Very interesting times. And a lot of hard hard work for anyone involved in browser development to keep their brainchild on top. What a little competition can do! For once I will say: go, Microsoft, go, you're starting to do well in this. Just make sure you stick to the standards as otherwise you won't make it against the competition. The competition is too strong for that kind of tricks already.
It's still MSIE ... (Score:5, Funny)
First, a joke circa 1983: a hardware guy and a software guy (remember, this was 1983) take an HP Unix system to the roof of a 5 story building. They connect a long extension cord, boot it up, and throw it off the roof. There is a resounding crash and they rush down to see the results. "Wow!" shouts the hardware guy, "it's still running!" The software guy shrugs and says, "Yeah, but it's still running HP-UX."
What's my point? It may be better than previous MSIE attempts, but it is still Microsoft, it's still IE, and it still only runs on Windows. As a web designer the rule is still: make it look right in Firefox, then unbreak it in MSIE{6,7,8}.
Did Someone Say Security? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page.
Sounds like a *wonderful* malware delivery system.
Web Slices deliver changing information from a Web page you're not actively visiting directly to IE8.
Yet another malware delivery system.
Why, in 2009, are they slapping on another layer of lard on top of their needlessly complex and largely ineffective OS security?
One thing is for sure, they aren't going to stop releasing dumb things like this so I'll never be out of work babysitting their products.
Subjectivity Alert (Score:3, Insightful)
"...But for the actual browsing experience..."
Things like "browser experience" are so completely subjective as to have no meaning. The standard counters often include mentions of "general users" and other equally nonsensical strawmen. I don't mind people expressing opinions about their "browser experiences", in fact I think more people should talk about what they like and don't like. What I cringe at is when the difference between a review and opinion piece disappears, or becomes so ambiguous that it might as well be disappeared.
Yes, I know this is a dead horse, but even dead horses deserve a fresh flogging from time to time.
Features, Shmeatures. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not going to run windows just for "the best web browser." They want to resurrect the Mac IE port, I'm all for that - IE 5 for the Mac was the best browser on the platform until Mozilla came along.
It doesn't matter how "good" IE8 is - it's windows only, and Windows + Internet == Screaming Assrape. While I run windows at home and at work for non-Mac apps, I don't connect to the internet with my windows machines. I don't use samba (I use an SCP client which is slower but imo less of an asspain than windows networking), I don't download anything, and I damn sure don't install anything that didn't come from a vendor disk.
End result : exponentially fewer security problems than friends who run XP on their wintendos.
IE8 could give me winning lottery numbers and blow jobs... but I'm not running a web browser on Windows, ever. It's like having sex without a condom at an STD conference.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows + Internet only equals Screaming assrape IF YOUR DOING IT WRONG.
Damnit, a little bit of sense, a little bit of trepidation, a little bit of intellect will save you from ALOT of hassle on the internet. Remember, the browsing internet is like running around a main Road at 2am, it looks safe, it seems safe, but you still look both ways before crossing. And to be sure, the one time you cross without looking there WILL be a truck coming.
Re:Features, Shmeatures. (Score:4, Funny)
Psssst! You're doing it wrong.
I am not a linux/firefox fanboy (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a linux/firefox fanboy, so I am going to assess this browser fairly and try to answer a few questions brought up on this thread. Since I am probably the only user here running Windows by choice, so I consider this a duty. Furthermore, I am an Opera user, so my expectations for speed and performance are totally insane and unreasonable.
First off, what's wrong:
* I am using IE 8 to write this comment and I am already missing my integrated spel chekkar.
* All the fun browser hacks I use to test new browsers are not working still, so the standards support of this release is the same as before. Of course, you won't see too much upper level DOM and advanced CSS on the part of web people actually use.
* The tabs seem to open really slow, but I believe it is actually process isolating its tabs now. The memory use per tab is about 10-30 mb, which is around if not slightly below where Chrome is on this system.
* Acid 3: 12/100
What's right:
* The page loads are brutally fast- faster than Opera 10 in some cases. For instance, MSNBC and BBC News, two of my favorite sites pop up at crazy speed. However, Slashdot --which is specifically engineered to run poorly on every new release of IE (it's very firefox-quirky)-- comes up quite slowly. When I first saw the page load charts that Microsoft put out, my first response was that there was a good reason Opera wasn't on that chart- but IE did a fantastic job of playing to the most popular websites. Keep this in mind if you are either a facebook user or stalking your kids on facebook.
* If you only use IE to download firefox, you will be happy to know that the mozilla webpage loads faster on IE than any other browser, firefox included.
Conclusion:
The overall interface of the browser is quite nice. If you're used to using Firefox, this is actually much faster and handles its memory better and such. However, Firefox is not a particularly fast or well designed browser. The interface will feel sluggish if you're used to Opera or Chrome. As an Opera user, my idea of browsing the web involves launching through pages at break-neck speed middle-clicking links as I go along and loading about 20-30 tabs at a time. I have a feeling my computer would explode if I did that with IE 8. However, the same could be said for Firefox 3.
The article is quite correct in saying that this browser is very fast and correct for the real web which most people browse- and that's something that should be noted. It seems as though Firefox has gotten so obsessed with javascript benchmarks and other such fluff that it's let its real world performance slide to the extent that it's now being challenged by IE.
Since IE is still totally unchallenged by other browsers in terms of enterprise features like advanced group policy, this new release of IE will simply mean that browsing the web at work/school will be a lot less lame and obnoxious... but considering the state of the economy, you should be all be working very very hard right now.
If you have any questions or challenges for IE 8 and don't run windows or ie 8, let me know and I will give you the results.
Standalone version? (Score:3, Interesting)
So can anyone out there point me at a free virtual PC image that runs IE7 or IE8 so that I can do my QA work? Or to a standalone version of IE8?
Thanks in advance.
My browser is always in porn mode! (Score:3, Funny)
This is nothing new (atleast for me).
What?? How?? (Score:3)
Is this just fishing for page views? On what planet are they thinking the IE8 experience is better than any of the alternatives?
I've been using the IE8 builds at work since they released the beta. Sure, it's leaps and bounds better than IE7, which itself was better than IE6. But it still doesn't come close to Firefox or Chrome.
Even forgetting the extensions like AdBlock, IE's UI and rendering just feels sluggish after using Firefox or Chrome.
What is the crack they're smoking at computerworld?
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, Put simply, "No matter how slow it is, at least it has Adblock"
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Insightful)
And NoScript. And greasemonkey. And GMail Manager. And... The list goes on and on and on... Any one of my 'necessary' plugins makes Firefox more desirable than any other browser.
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes.
And don't forget NoScript.
The thing is, with Adblock and NoScript, browsing on Firefox *is* faster than on any other browser. A
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Funny)
I heard about this great plugin that makes Firefox even faster. It's called "NoHTML." Apparently it breaks some websites tho...
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:4, Insightful)
AdBlock is the first add-on I download whenever I setup Firefox. I've gotten so used to browsing with it that I am dumbfounded every time I have to browse the web without it.
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:4, Insightful)
> Do you not like the websites you visit? Don't you want them to keep running?
I'd rather they run without the superfluous crap that really isn't necessary and break the original intent of the Web.
Also, it's nice to be able to surf with impugnity without worry what sort of crap you might catch from some random website.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you not like the websites you visit? Don't you want them to keep running?
Actually, the websites I visit frequently have my permission to show ads, so long as they don't serve up obnoxious noise-making flyovers or something. Now that I think about it, I can't even remember how long it's been since I ran across a site with worthwhile content whose operators were also stupid enough to run obnoxious ads.
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, Put simply, "No matter how slow it is, at least it has Adblock"
The point is that with AdBlock Firefox is quick. Throw in NoScript and you can really control the "load" being thrown at the browser. Both of these mechanisms really give a superior browser experience compared to anything in IE8.
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:4, Interesting)
> It's bloated, has terrible memory management
Do you have data to back this up, by any chance? And we're talking about Firefox 3 or later, right?
Re:no and yes (Score:5, Informative)
> No data, just anecdotes
The problem is that actually measuring things gives different results... When Firefox 3 was measured head to head against other web browsers, it used less memory pretty consistently.
> Is browsing the web really so hard that it takes more memory and processing to do it
> than Eclipse and Outlook combined?
In a word, "maybe". Depends on the sites you're loading and what they do.
> It's using roughly twice what IE6 would use under the same circumstances.
You mean you've tried the same browsing pattern on the same sites and IE6 has 2x less memory usage? Or you have memories of how much IE6 used on some other set of pages some other time? Or something else?
> there's got to be a way to make it so that it's not the heaviest thing running on my
> machine
Not really, if it's the most heavily used app that has to do the most things... If you have 7 tabs worth of web applications open, then one would expect memory usage to be approximately equivalent to having 7 desktop applications open; if it's not, that's great.
Seriously, though, it's not uncommon for the browser to have to run several hundred kilobytes (no, I'm not making this up) of script when loading a web page. Let's take a simple example: http://www.cnn.com./ [www.cnn.com] This has about 95KB of HTML (including inline scripts and such) and links to 270KB of external scripts. Those scripts do various stuff that creates objects and are generally poor at dropping object references. Which means that while the page is open, every object it's created will typically still be around: it can't be garbage collected, because the page is still referencing it.
This is not to say that memory usage can't be improved; it can be and people are working on it. Same for CPU usage. In particular, the "cpu being used all the time" thing is a serious problem that's being looked into. A lot of that is in fact Flash being stupid (easy to test how much by disabling Flash), but not all. But in the end, Firefox is not particularly more "bloated" than any other browser that does similar things in terms of web compat and rendering (yes, it's more memory-hungry than lynx, I agree).
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Insightful)
Explain to me how Firefox is bloated. Compared to what? Its former self? Other browsers? The executable size of Firefox has been remarkable stable since version 1.0 --- it hovers around the 10MB mark. Just what is the bloat then? Nearly everything in Firefox has a direct browsing application. It is justified to call those features not bloat. The whole "SQLite database is bloat" argument goes out the window about 5 minutes after you start using the awesome bar. Bloat is one of those words that's easy to fling around. What would you get rid of? The plugin system? Look at the other replies to your comment. The crash manager? The tabbed browsing??? Firefox currently has its problems, but bloat is not one of them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he means the memory management problems, that some people still seem to have, or parrot about without checking if they exist for them.
I do not have any memory problems with Firefox.
But then again, I do not use Firefox like a complete idiot, having 30-100 tabs open at the same time, with tons of flash instances included.
Yes, it sounds crazy, but people really do this.
I think it borders on having OCD issues. Your brain can usually not handle more than 10 things (max) at the same time. So usually, you
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:4, Insightful)
"Bloated" is one of the most overused words on this site. It no longer has any meaning here, except as a generic insult. It's basically the equivalent of disagreeing with someone's opinion and calling them stupid. It's just something to say when you can't think of anything reasonable or intelligent.
Re:Firefox will continue to be superior (Score:5, Informative)
http://ieaddons.com/ [ieaddons.com]
Actually, IE has many, many plugins. You might even recognize some familiar names from Mozilla-land, eg. Foxmarks, StumbleUpon, Cooliris, ....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bite (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Possibly incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
Won't be released until Noon EST.