IE8 vs Firefox 3.5: The browser wars continue

Infoworld.com ^ | April 29, 2009 | J. Peter Bruzzese

[CedarDave]

Features in Internet Explorer and Firefox run neck and neck. Will a victor emerge? It may come down to convenience.

Every day I sit at my computer and open two browsers: Firefox and Internet Explorer (first 6, then 7 and, as of late, 8). ... Firefox opens my Yahoo and Gmail mail accounts. Internet Explorer is aimed at my banking and stock trading accounts. ...

... I made up my mind to drop Firefox altogether. [Then] Yesterday morning, I found out that Firefox released the 3.5 beta (4), and many features are the same as in IE8.

IE8 has a feature called InPrivate Browsing, which prevents IE from storing data about your browsing sessions, including cookies, temporary Internet files, history, and other data. ... Firefox 3 has Private Browsing, which provides the same functionality and does not retain visited pages, form and search bar entries, passwords, cookies, temporary or cached Internet files, and so forth.

They both offer at least one superscary privacy-invasion tool. In the case of IE8, it is called Suggested Sites, where your browsing history is sent to Microsoft to compare to related Web sites ... This feature is something that many (most) people are not pleased about. Microsoft said it will not store this information, but at the same time, Windows Help and Support information says that even items deleted from your browsing History "will be retained by Microsoft for a period of time to help improve our products and services." In Firefox, there is Location Aware Browsing (aka geolocation), where Firefox takes your IP address, information about nearby wireless access points, and a temporary cookie-like identifier and passes that off to Google ... so that searching in Google retrieves results that relate to your current location. ... That's something else I opt out of.

[Fan of Fiat]

I love how quickly Chrome opens, and how fast it renders pages. I have IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome installed at home, but by far, Chrome is my favorite.

[VA_Gentleman]

ping for later

[RobRoy]

Since installing Firefox over two years ago, I deleted ad-aware from my computer. I haven’t needed it in over two yrears.

[stylin_geek]

I would disagree with FF being the problem with web page rendering.

If a site renders correctly with IE and not FF, there’s a good chance the site designer was very sloppy coding the site.

It’s very possible to code site that will render properly with IE, yet will not render correctly with FF.

However, I have yet to run across a site that renders correctly in FF, but does not render correctly in IE.

[TomGuy]

Something has been happening with Firefox that has me puzzled however. It devours memory

That is a problem FF engineers seem incapable of resolving. It has been a consistent problem since about version 0.07. It was monstrous under 2. Somewhat better under 3.

FF blames it on add-ons. But, add-ons aren't the problem. FF fails to release memory whenever a webpage is closed. A high-graphics or flash video or other video webpage consumes allot of memory and retains it, even after the webpage is closed.

I typically have to shut FF once or twice a day to release the memory.

[sionnsar]

ping for later

[kevinm13]

I updated to Firefox 3.5b4 (the latest version is still considered a beta) a couple days ago. Don’t really notice too many differences other than the + sign on a new button to open tabs ( I usually use Ctrl-T to open new tabs and often keep from 12 to 20 tabs open at the same time). IE isn’t as easy to use with tabs and from what I have read isn’t as secure. IE 8 might be different that way. I haven’t actively used IE since IE 5. I have been using Firefox since the early days of Firefox 2. Earlier versions have crashed on me but I still love it. I now have a Mac and find that Safari is not a bad browser but it doesn’t have teh same functionality of Firefox.

I use a lot of add-ons as well. I know, with lots of tabs open and add-ons, it should slow down my browsing experience, but I don’t notice it so much.

[palmer]

OK, maybe one where I could just think of what I wanted to search and the computer would do it, no typing required!

I want the feature where I don't have to think and it does what I want.

[wastedyears]

The correct pronunciation of IE is......

[pepsi_junkie]

In fact it’s the most buggiest, crash ready, memory leaking, web page mis-rendering browser I use.

Personally I love Firefox, it's stable as can be for me, doesn't exhibit memory leaks, and works just great, much faster than IE7. That said, it doesnt work at all on my wife's computer. It blocks the CPU for several seconds periodically. Just locks up the whole PC, runs at 100% CPU for no good reason. I've run it with no plug-ins, tried every fix I could find by searing for "firefox 100% cpu" and still it does it. So she cannot use it. So it works perfectly on my laptop, not at all on her PC. Perhaps you have an issue similar to hers, whatever it is.

[martin_fierro]

or Safari if you’re on a Mac.

Or on a PC.

(Personally, I'm more a FF fan.)

[SWAMPSNIPER]

I just want my IE6 to work again! IE7 stinks and Firefox isn’t much better.

[aft_lizard]

OK I should say that IE does crash or lock up occasionally as well for me however FireFox does it at twice the rate IMO. I really want FireFox to succeed but IMO most of the oohing and awwing over it is not founded in reality, it allows malware through just the same as IE, it’s buggy or buggier than IE, the few websites I use show worse rendering in FF. I use FF the most because I can do more with it with plug ins than I can with IE and that is the only reason why it stays as my primary browser.

[numberonepal]

ie6- is a whole other level of suckyness.

Try coding for it. I have to use separate styles that are browser specific. Why o why can't IE just conform to the W3C standards? One day padding:5px; width:300px will render exactly the same thing in IE and FF.

[antiRepublicrat]

Duh, keep forgetting Safari is on PC. I haven’t installed it on my PC. I still mostly use Firefox on the Mac, although there are a few sites that Safari will render better.

[MotleyGirl70]

I downloaded Fire Fox about two years ago and have stuck with it ever since. IE doesn’t compare. IMO.

I agree.

I've been using Firefox since version 2 and would never go back to the hassels of using any form of IE on my personal computer. I've tried IE 6 and 7 just for the heck of it and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I’ve never had any of those problems with Ff. The worst I’ve seen is slow load times on XP because Ff doesn’t “TSR” like IEx. Vista and Win 7 don’t have that problem because of Super Fetch.

[Political Junkie Too]

I've been having trouble getting Zone Alarm's new ForceField feature to work with their Extreme suite. Now I see that IE8 (which I downloaded last night) contains much of the ZA ForceField features.

-PJ

[AFreeBird]

You might also want to try clearing cache.

[JackOfVA]

Clearing cache does not seem to do much. As an experiment, I cleared the cache using the Tools | Clear Private Data | Cache box is the only item checked and Task Manager showed memory went from 255 MB up to 260 MB after clearing.

It’s now at 262 MB after composing this message. In fact, if I stop typing and watch the memory usage, it climbs at a rate of 1 MB a minute.

Jack