Friday, June 19, 2009

Microsofts Browser Comparison of IE8 vs. Chrome and Firefox

Microsoft recently launched a browser comparison of IE8 vs. what they believe are their next two biggest rivals. Here is my take on it as someone who deals with this on a daily basis:


Note: This page looks totally messed up. Partially because this theme in blogger does not support tables. And secondly because I totally cut and paste this code from the link above!


















Internet Explorer 8

Firefox

Chrome


Comments

Security

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Internet Explorer 8 NEEDS more malware and security protection because it's inherantly insecure, unlike the other two.

Privacy

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Similar situation to above. Chrome looses purely because of it's integration with google tracking.

Ease of Use

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No browser is easier to use than Chrome here. Most people simply view "Google" as their browser anyway.

Web Standards

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Firefox and Chrome have more support for emerging standards like HTML5 and CSS3, but Internet Explorer 8 invested heavily into catching up to what the other browser makers had for ages.
Sure IE8 might now have better CSS2.1 support if you squint really hard.

Developer Tools

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IE FINALLY has tools like HTML, CSS and Javascript debugging right in the box, along with Javascript profiling. Firefox has lots of tools available, but developers need to install them separately, which is fine because they're way better anyways; Chrome in no way lacks tools for debugging CSS and HTML, but they are the hardest to use.

Reliability

 


Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.
They all suck here in the end. But it's mostly the plugins fault and not the browser.

Customizability

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Firefox wins here by a LOT. They are the first with an extensive, usable and powerful extension architecture.

Compatibility

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IE renders more sites "correctly" because they have been the dominant browser maker for so long. However, sites look better on Chrome or Firefox if you're using the latest CSS3 features, which IE8 lacks. Not to mention how brutal coding for IE has been for so long. IE8 though for base level support does finally tie with the others.

Manageability

 


I have no idea what they are talking about.

Performance

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IE7 was one of the slowest browsers on the market, IE8 is a huge step up. Firefox also was a dog in version 2 and they did a lot in 3 and even more now in 3.5. However Chrome does take the cake here. I've switched to it as my primary browser as it is noticably faster, especially with multiple tabs open.

TOTAL: 3 6 5 Looks like Firefox Still wins. In the end it's all of us who win as these browser continue to compete for our web space.