Web Browser Grand Prix 4: Firefox 4 Goes Final

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ericburnby

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[citation][nom]andy5174[/nom]Tab Browsing is also NOT "essential" to surf the web. Why would modern browsers (Chrome, Opera, IE9 inclusive) implement it? FOR EASE OF USE -> Better browsing experience ! TabMixPlus is there for this reason as well. Now would you easily show us a list of dozens of websites that IE9 handles better than other browsers? Get a life, moron![/citation]

I never claimed IE9 worked better with sites than FF. Numerous posters in this article discussion have said FF works better than IE9 because of the addons (how many posts are talking about adblock alone?). They should put up or STFU.

Again, reading comprehension > you.
 

jonyah

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I've yet to have to clean someone's computer of viruses or malware that uses Firefox. I have at least 1 person (friend or family) ask for my help each week to clean something up. EVERY ONE of them get infected via IE and for some reason I can't get them to switch. All they know is that that little blue icon is the internet to them. I hate IE, regardless of it's version, especially as a web developer. Good luck getting your site to render the same in IE 6/7/8/9, yet somehow it will work just fine in nearly every version of FF, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
 

andy5174

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TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus ........

How many times should I say it?

Browsing experience depends on many things and so it is foolish to ignore the ease add-ons bring to us.

Do you realize that you are keeping hitting the wall? Fail, goof.

 

tntom

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IE9 is the slowest browser on my WinXP PC. Oh, wait that is right it doesn't work with WinXP!!! Good thing there is FF4 it even works on my Android Phone.
 
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Hmm, did they take into consideration programming web pages around those browsers? For Internet Explorer, it's always been a nightmare because they don't ever want to do things according to 'standards' set. I've heard IE 9 has been improved in that aspect, but there are still tons of nagging issues always present that require 'hacks' to fix. Safari, Chrome and Opera have also their nagging little issues that never seem to want to work nicely (flash issues being the biggie) with standardized code. Firefox is the only one that strictly adheres to the standards. Ask any real website developer and they'll tell you the same thing, design for firefox, fix for the rest. That reason alone is why I still consistently use firefox and will not consider switching as my primary browser. If one of the others actually follow the standards set, there may be a change. Until then, firefox will stay #1.
 

IzzyCraft

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We live in an age of multiple operating systems. A web browser should be supported on, at least, major OSes. IE9 is only supported on Windows Vista or above. For this very reason alone, firefox FTW. Please, give up the good fight, Microsoft.
Well if you're talking major oses Then microsoft is support the major consumer oses, business and schools tend to still use xp. which is only windows by a large majority :D unless you're counting phones which is the only reason for the rise of thing like linux showing up.


You want to know how silly that comment is XP is what 9 year old now. You're so call beloved FF4 doesn't support PowerPC mac's which are as new as 2006 which makes it just about as old as xp sp2 the last real sp for xp sp3 was all about fixes and security issues that arose over the years. XP is a dead end os microsoft supported it long enough they are going to kill it off so why would they goad people along with using a very old insecure platform. Also you're saying FF4 the desktop version is the same as teh andriod version just because of their number right? Must mean IE mobile 7 is Ie7 on a phone or in reality it's just named like that becuase they wanted windows phone 7 to match windows 7 and they like 7
 

Tamz_msc

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IE9's tracking protection isn't as good as FF/Chrome with AdBlock Plus, and here is the proof:
IE9:-

Capture1.PNG

and
Capture2.PNG


FF4:-
Capture3.PNG

and
Capture4.PNG


Both IE9 and FF4 use the EasyList filter, and as you can clearly see(encircled parts), AdBlock plus blocks EVERYTHING.

Also, on the Gamespot page, there is a blank space with the flash logo.Its due to another great addon called Flashblock(its also available on Chrome).It blocks ALL flash content on the page.

So Firefox provides me with a better browsing experience, but don't get me wrong, IE9 is also a very capable browser.

 

electro1984

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The whole test is unfortunately little messed up.
1. IE9 is available only on Vista/7 OS so it's a bad thing and should be clearly stated.
2. FF4 on XP, FF4 on Linux and FF4 on Win7 at default settings are not working with the same speed on WebGL, HTML5 Canvas etc because of different approaches to hw accel (on my machine Ubuntu hd4670 + A64 2.8GHz hw accel is not existant even with MOZ_GLX_IGNORE_BLACKLIST, on XP hw accel also works like shit and can't be forced to run just as good as on Chrome). On the other hand simple flag enables Chrome hw accel on each listed OS without a single problem.
3. You claim you test browsers at default settings - that's right, but...when you compare feature set you take advantage of build-in theme manager of Chrome and speak of personas which IS NOT a part of official build but extension. So it's no problem to write about official EXTENSIONS for FF but it is a problem to talk about OFFICIAL functions disabled by default built into CHROME? C'mon - just say there IS hw accel since probably chrome 9 (or even before) but it needs to be manually set + show how fast it might be. It's not objectiveness to show one's features and hide the other one's.
4. HW accel enabled by default on FF4 gives some users blurry fonts and they have to disable it. I hardly see that as issue-free solution while there's not a single one who have such problem with Opera (dev) or Chrome & hw accel. There might be others (eg. Opera 12 crashes on webgl-bench and even sending crash report from that crash :p )
Concluding - all you did is test how those browsers are working on Win7 with default settings, not how really fast&good they are. And because of that the verdict might be worth something to those who uses latests MS OS and don't even bother to set few things in their browsers to customize it and optimize it.
 
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Not interested in Windows Benchmarks. I would like to see how they perform in linux and mac OS. No IE9 there, thank god.
 

HighPies

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Its funny, all the FireFox fanboys where out on the last grandprix saying that toms should have waited for Fx 4 and then see which is best cause they thought it would be the best. Now its not, but this time they make another excuse that all the other browsers dont have addons like Fx 4 does. lold at its best.
 

Tamz_msc

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Best!=fastest
 

wheredahoodat

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IE 9 is a dinosaur born from antiquated design philosophy that is behind the curve by 2 years. Cross platform compatibility with integrated cloud features is the future and even more important that any performance benchmarks.

Exclusive Vista/Seven requirements + no sync feature + sad state of Windows mobile = irrelevance. I believe IE 10 will probably address these concerns, thus will be the most important IE release ever, but will it arrive in time?




 

randomizer

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Look at how the Chrome is handling typing allready visited domains in the address field.
It's one of my biggest pet hates with Chrome, alongside the automatic addition of http:// and trailing / to the clipboard when copying from the address bar. Firefox will show up relevant browsing history when you begin typing, with the matches ordered approximately based on how much you have visited that page compared to the rest. That means that if each time I select the same match for "tom" out of the available 8 (for example), it will move up the list until it is the first match.

With Chrome there is no order. Chrome lists browsing history matches (and search suggestions if enabled) completely arbitrarily. Pages that I have visited once appear higher than pages I have visited 30 times. Pages that I have visited 30 times sometimes vanish from the list altogether. It's incredibly frustrating and many times I just type in the whole thing or close to it, because I don't get a match that I'm after.
 

electro1984

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@randomizer - you're so wrong. In FF if I start with "ben" I got not only www.benchmark.pl but all sites that consists "ben" in address or title (which I visited) so it's not much better that Chrome. And again - it never happened to me that once visited website appears firs in address bar instead of those frequently visited.
 

stalker7d7

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Last time I tried IE9 it had a huge memory leak related to desktop gadgets. In a matter of minutes a high % of my RAM was being used, and I had to close the processes that were using way too much memory, which turned out to be windows sidebar.exe(strictly related to the IE9 update tho). After I uninstalled IE9, the memory leak was gone.

Has anything changed about that?
 

Olle P

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"If we look at the results by category, Internet Explorer 9 still has the edge. ... There's simply no getting around it, ..."
I so much disagree with this conclusion!

To me the number one priority is to have few weak points, and in your list FF's only weak point is Flash.
Opera is second, with three weak points.
IE and Chrome have four weaknesses each, with IE having one strong point more than Chrome.
Safari comes last with as much as six weaknesses.

To me this makes Firefox the clear winner!
 

ericburnby

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[citation][nom]andy5174[/nom]TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus TabMixPlus ........How many times should I say it? Browsing experience depends on many things and so it is foolish to ignore the ease add-ons bring to us.Do you realize that you are keeping hitting the wall? Fail, goof.[/citation]

Oh, my poor, poor little baby. Are you getting all upset?

Hitting the wall? You haven't even shown me a website that FF handles better than IE9, which I've now asked three times. Someone else had to do it for your sorry ass, and even he could only show one website as an example.

The only one failing is you, the hater/fanboy.
 
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There are a couple problems with your javascript speed comparison that gives IE9 credit it doesn't deserve:

* SunSpider is not really a relevant benchmark any more; it's old and all browsers beat it in roughly the same 1/4 second these days (compared to 3-4 seconds for IE8).

* Firefox and Chrome are 2 or 3 times faster than IE9 in the two benchmarks that do count, and IE only 10% faster in Sunspider - yet they all get one point each in your scoring system.

* IE9 cheats on SunSpider; it includes "optimization" that will only trigger on exactly the code in the SunSpider test and provide no benefit in any real world code. See http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913368
 

ericburnby

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You know, I just thought of something. The FF guys are talking about the browsing "experience" being more important than raw speed or technical marks. I now have to apologize and say they are 100% right.

Why? Because I've been saying all along that the reason the iPad is so popular is because of the overall "experience" you get when using it. Even if other companies have tablets with better "technical" specs, they don't do as well because they lack the "experience" you get with using an iPad.

So I admit I was wrong and a hypocrite for not taking into account the "experience" you get with using FF.

Now it's time for the rest of you to admit you're all hypocrites because you claim the iPad is inferior by technical standards, even though it provides a better "experience".
 

mobrocket

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people love to talk about browers... its one of the few things nowadays we get more choice... unlike nearly everything else which is becoming just a couple / few companies .... ie banks / cell phone providers
 
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I have all five browsers, and personally i like Chrome the best. Internet Explorer is so clunky, it cant even properly load google.com or microsoft.com. Opera is very awkward to use, Safari is comparable to Chrome, but can't load flash at all of some sites, and Firefox is stable but not the fastest. Also, Chrome has nice themes and a nice "app store", for lack of a better term. IE9 might work for you all, but have yet to use a computer where IE works well.
 
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tried ie9 for 10 long minutes. kept fighting against the choices microsoft wanted me to make. gave up and got back to my favorite browser: opera.
 
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