28 replies to this topic

[xboxrulz]

Well, both browser just came out within the span of 2 weeks, and I got the chance to review them.

I posted my review on my website.

http://www.ae-net.cj...php?a=topic&t=8


Feel free to comment, rant. However, please don't flame unless you have to.

xboxrulz

Edited by xboxrulz, 02 November 2006 - 07:10 PM.

[saint-michael]

Well besides the fact that IE is like one huge security hole, they lack the useful extensions for the browser as well, but since I made the post about useful extensions for firefox I doubt to many will use ie but just to keep it updated.

[szupie]

The main thing I don't like about IE 7 is its flashy and distracting design. But maybe I can get used to it, like how I got used to Firefox's new 2.0 design.

I haven't really tried Internet Explorer 7. Even if they say it's much more secure than the past versions, I'm still afraid to try it. Microsoft will need to come up with a great feature that is unavailable in Firefox if they want me to forget about their past and switch.

[Quatrux]

In addition, like for a simple computer user who is not interested to use a computer at all.. not interested into learning how to use it. For example he/she is only interested in browsing the web sometimes for school or work or university etc. to find something in wikipedia or any other resource.. So he/she really wouldn't use Firefox or Opera, she/he would use IE and IE7 having tabbed browsing and more compatibility with CSS is really much better for such a user than IE6. I won't be using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 unless for some kind of tests, but I am quite "happy" that a simple user could have a better web browsing, something like that Sometimes I call a simple user on the web an "idiot" but of course I don't have anything against him, this is just a word. So web got better for idiots.

[polarysekt]

I actually like the new IE7 design a lot more - although it's pretty much the same - the menu bar is still a Toolbar32 - although in addition to their Rebar, they seem to have added an InternetToolbarHost (to hold the links toolbar) and a DirectUIHWND (for the tabs) - that menu bar HAS moved, to the lower right, and the navigation controls are moved slightly.

It's unfortunate you cannot move the "menu" to a more familiar location - but the addition of all the things that brought me to firefox in the first place will keep me an IE user (although I debug my site from several browsers).

All in all though, it's much less cluttered, and fits right into the Windows GUI.

I only argue in favor of IE to provide objectivity. It almost seems "trendy" to use firefox, in the same way kids believe anarchy is trendy. I just think it's good to see both sides of the picture. Although, speaking of pictures... has anyone else had problems with transparent .png's in IE?

[webintern]

I am a long-time Firefox user (since it was still called Phoenix), but I have recently been "forced" to use Internet Explorer 7 by an IE-centric website that I frequently visit. I cannot comment much more beyond the appearance of the two browsers, because I have not used either long enough to notice a dramatic difference in performance or features from the previous versions.

Regarding the user interface, I must admit that Internet Explorer seems more elegant and less buggy than that of Firefox. Contrary to what szupie said, I feel Internet Explorer has a good combination of "flash" without going overboard. I suppose the same can be said of Firefox, but Internet Explorer's looks less blocky (I can recognize a similarity with its new Media Player 11). Unfortunately for me (I am no sure if anybody else may have this problem), Firefox also has a rendering bug where a mouse rollover on my tabbed bookmarks will affect the appearance of my tabs. It is not a dealbreaker, but it can look pretty bad at times.

Although Microsoft has added "add-ons" to its new browser, it naturally lags in the number of available extensions. Only time will tell whether Microsoft catches up to Firefox. I doubt it. And unlike extensions in Firefox, the Internet Explorer add-ons require you to run an executable file which registers in your control panel. This is an annoyance I would prefer to avoid, so Firefox still wins in this department for me.

In terms of performance, Firefox is somewhat sluggish. That may be a function of my own browser with its numerous extensions. Then again, it has become quite bloated compared to its Phoenix days. I cannot say much about Internet Explorer and its speed, because I do not use it enough to tell. In any case, Opera still wins hands down when it comes to speed.

Hmm ... a short treatise on the second generation browser wars became a longer reply than I originally anticipated.

[Arbitrary]

I don't really see anything wrong with IE7. It seems perfectly fine, especially if you don't want to deal with the hassle of getting used to a new browser. The tabs are great, and I've enjoyed the tab previews. But for me, I think I'll still stick to Firefox, mainly because of the extensions. I can't live without Adblock or Gmail manager these days. And if I really needed IE, the IE Tab extension comes to use as well.

And I don't really think the design of Firefox 2.0 is all that great. It's better than before, sure, but it's still a bit plain.

[Chesso]

Nice review xboxrulz!

I still personally prefer FireFox as always but I haven't actually went and gotten Internet Explorer 7 yet to try out. Iv'e heard alot of good and bad and read some reviews like yours.

It looks like FireFox is still ahead .

[xboxrulz]

I could've made a more bias review, but I was trying to give out a fair comparisons without bashing it.

I still prefer Mozilla Firefox 2 over it any time. Especially that I'm running on Linux.

xboxrulz

[tezza]

I understand where everyone is coming from saying about the security issues.
However I have always been comfortable with IE, I guess because I have always used it and never experienced problems. However I know a lot will disagree with me.

My point isn't that either browser has vulnerabilities or that one is less insecure than the other. My point is how the conversation regarding these and other insecurities that you just know certain people are racing to find will very likely overshadow the conversation about why these browsers represent advancements over their predecessors. Instead of upgrading to them for their features, the first question will be, but are they secure? Answer: No software except for "Hello World" is 100 percent secure.

[Diaphanous]

Well...
The thing's that Firefox wins when talking about speed...But that's all.
Internet Explorer, used to be slower before, but this version 7 is proving it's increased a lot, really.
Firefox's keeps faster than it, anyway, IE is the champion when talking about compatibility, and security. The difference of the number of bugs between IE and Firefox is considerable.
But, no, I'm not defensing any of them. The thing is that I've just started to use Opera browser.
I used to consider it simply an "unknown and sourcesless" browser, 'cause I didn't know it. But it's making me surprise. If you want a good tip, use Opera. It's as good as IE when talking about compatibility, and sometimes offer even more sources the this second one. And, it's better than Firefox when talking about speed. So, believe me, you'll not wate time with Opera.

[Chesso]

I downloaded Opera the other day after hearing all these great things about it...... well just looking at it and seeing how slow it renders pages and just using the program.... I'm not very impressed .

[Quatrux]

Well...
The thing's that Firefox wins when talking about speed...But that's all.
Internet Explorer, used to be slower before, but this version 7 is proving it's increased a lot, really.
Firefox's keeps faster than it, anyway, IE is the champion when talking about compatibility, and security. The difference of the number of bugs between IE and Firefox is considerable.

IE6 is much faster than IE7, usually about 2 times, just make some css and javascript tests online and try scrolling a html file over 1mb with lots of tables or other tags!

@ Chesso

It can't be that Opera is rendering slower than Firefox on the same system on your computer, Opera loads faster, is much faster by css and javascript tests and the scrolling speed on 1mb html file is much faster and changing between tabs is also much faster.. It is just the view, when I was using Firefox as my main browser, I didn't like how Opera rendered my created websites and the gui, but now I don't like how Firefox does it

Of course if you have a fast computer, it is hard to see the speed difference, but if you have a quite older computer, say not more than 1ghz CPU, not a superb graphics card and not lots of ram, or ram not being DDR and etc. The speed difference is very different. I am usually pissed of now with what browser is better, Firefox and Opera and Konqueror and Safari are very good browsers, IE is just a bad browser. The 7th version of Explorer improved, but.. other major browsers are ahead of them.

[Arbitrary]

Of course if you have a fast computer, it is hard to see the speed difference, but if you have a quite older computer, say not more than 1ghz CPU, not a superb graphics card and not lots of ram, or ram not being DDR and etc. The speed difference is very different. I am usually pissed of now with what browser is better, Firefox and Opera and Konqueror and Safari are very good browsers, IE is just a bad browser. biggrin.gif The 7th version of Explorer improved, but.. other major browsers are ahead of them. wink.gif

I am also tired of all these arguments. I say that Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, IE7 and Safari are all good browsers. Which one you ultimately decide to use depends on you. If you need a bunch of extra things offered in Firefox extensions (say an FTP uploader or the web developer extension..), then maybe you'd choose Firefox. But if you were more into speed and less of a memory cruncher, then Opera would be good to go. The reasons to use each browser abounds; you just have to find one that's right for you. (Preferably not something insecure like IE6 though; I doubt many people would find that right for them...but hey, if they had good other-party antivirus protection, then IE6 might not be a horrible choice)

So basically, use each browser instead of deciding based on what others say. Your opinion doesn't have to coincide with the masses. :]

[xboxrulz]

IE6 is much faster than IE7, usually about 2 times, just make some css and javascript tests online and try scrolling a html file over 1mb with lots of tables or other tags!

@ Chesso

It can't be that Opera is rendering slower than Firefox on the same system on your computer, Opera loads faster, is much faster by css and javascript tests and the scrolling speed on 1mb html file is much faster and changing between tabs is also much faster.. It is just the view, when I was using Firefox as my main browser, I didn't like how Opera rendered my created websites and the gui, but now I don't like how Firefox does it

Of course if you have a fast computer, it is hard to see the speed difference, but if you have a quite older computer, say not more than 1ghz CPU, not a superb graphics card and not lots of ram, or ram not being DDR and etc. The speed difference is very different. I am usually pissed of now with what browser is better, Firefox and Opera and Konqueror and Safari are very good browsers, IE is just a bad browser. The 7th version of Explorer improved, but.. other major browsers are ahead of them.

Not true, when compared Opera and Mozilla Firefox on Windows XP, Firefox is faster than Opera. However due to the bloated GTK2 toolkit on Linux, Firefox is slower than the QT toolkit that Opera uses on Linux/UNIX.

I use a Pentium 4 2.53 GHz 512 MB RAM PC2100 NVIDIA GeForce 6600 for this comparison.

xboxrulz

[Chesso]

I have a Celeron D 2.4, overclocked at 3ghz.
768mb of DDR ram (PC3200).
nVidia 256mb GF5500 (memory and core clock overclocked).
Windows XP Home SP1.
ADSL 1.5mb/256kb (soon to be ADSL2+).

Opera still renders noticeably slower than FireFox and generally functions slower.

Pity it doesn't have any themes I don't like either , then again I haven't found any for FireFox that really hit the hammer on the nail either.

[Quatrux]

I don't know why you say so, but as I have Windows XP and Arch Linux and Opera is much faster on Windows XP, just see the test results and conclusions on the url about browserSpeed, I did a lot of different tests myself some time ago for what I said above of these two posts, the css, js and big html source files, the best results I got was on Konqueror using KDE, I had a site with all the results similar to this, but it isn't up and don't think it will be due to my studies.

http://www.howtocrea...owserSpeed.html
http://celtickane.co...cts/jsspeed.php
http://my.opera.com/...show.dml/428083

and. etc. the Internet is full of different tests and results, here are the facts, I just don't understand how can you get different results. In my opinion, you are just used to firefox and when using Opera you imagine it being much slower or you have some kind of smooth scrolling option on and stuff.

To summarise

So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.

On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.

On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino 0.8 is fast to start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.

I myself feel the difference on my system, usually have over 12 tabs opened and change between them frequently, the only thing I dislike about Opera is that when it is turned on on Windows XP for over 48 hours without a restart it eats a lot of memory and works quite slower.

If you really want to know some bad things about Firefox with proved facts, just read the Firefox myths: http://mywebpages.co...refoxMyths.html

Edited by Quatrux, 05 December 2006 - 03:37 PM.

[Chesso]

Well I don't often use internet explorer and it's by far the fastest at rendering on my pc and functions much quicker, followed by firefox, followed by opera.

I haven't used any others yet and Opera doesn't us emuch less ram than FireFox (although I was told different), i'm still looking for a less resource alternative to IE.

[sparkx]

Mozilla Firefox 2 is better! Its way faster, has less errors and is fully costimizable. I suggest you download Mozilla Firefox 2 and Google toolbar.
This gives you a small but powerful control panel (unlike Internet Explorer 7 which with all the useful controls can take up half the page.
Also I have experienced the following errors with Internet Explorer:

-No pages (page cannot be found on all pages, with full Internet connections and no restrictions from an antivirus)

-Crashing on new tab (no matter how hard I tried, after the first week, I started getting a program closing message. "Internet Explorer 7 has has some errors and had to shut down")

-Crashing on start up (After a while of the no new tab I started getting the same message when I opened the program... It did mention something about a dynamically loaded library .dll file but it looked fine)

So far I have not received any errors from firefox 2 and I strongly suggest you get this great explorer!

Thanks For reading,
~Sparkx~
Resources:
http://www.microsoft...ie/default.mspx
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

[Chesso]

FireFox 2 has crashed on me, on a few occasions, but if the tabs were really that important, I can recover the session mwuhahahah .