Dueling Browsers: Explorer 8 vs. Firefox 3
Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s most recent warrior in the constant browser battle became available in March of 2009. And it’s most worthy opponent? Mozilla’s Firefox 3. It only makes sense to compare them side by side and see what all the hype is about. Several internet experts took the time to compare performance in several categories, all of which both browsers claim to excel in.
Availability: both Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 are only available (for now) through manual downloads from their respective online download centers. Microsoft has not yet specified when it will push Explorer 8 through the Windows Update service, although Explorer 8 beta users will see an Explorer 8 Windows Update before the general public does.
Speed: in tests conducted by Nick Mediati of PC World, the speed of both the browsers was compared using nine of the popular Web sites: MySpace, Amazon, PC World, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Apple, Wikipedia and eBay. Each site was loaded ten times into each browser and the process was repeated the next day to eliminate the possibility of any network traffic or server issues. The results? For all intensive purposes, it was found that Internet Explorer 8 performed well, and won out over Firefox 3 in the biggest percentage of the time trials. However, in most of the testing, Explorer 8’s advantage was half a second or less, and never more than one second, a difference that will probably be lost on most internet users, especially with the widespread access to broadband these days.
Security: both Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 boast enhanced security as one of the most important reasons to download them. But are either really any safer? Explorer 8’s new security features include more protection against hacked sites, ActiveX lockdowns, malware site blocking and a private browsing mode. Likewise, Firefox 3 includes Firefox 3 attaches anti-malware features onto the browser, which use much the same mechanism as found in the anti-phishing feature in Firefox 2, harnessing a Google-generated blacklist of sites that are the hosts of malicious code. The Firefox 3 blog also includes the results of tests looking at the period of time that sensitive information is vulnerable on both browsers, obviously finding that Firefox 3 users were vulnerable only nine days out of the year, compared to Explorer 8 users who were allegedly vulnerable 284 days. As several computer publications have noted, security features have gotten to be a constant area of competition between Microsoft and Mozilla, with both companies constantly releasing updated versions to trump the other.
This is interesting to see both browser put side by side.
However, it does surprise me that IE8 is proven to be faster.
Because Firefox is lightweight, which means it’s not tied into Windows and runs efficiently on its own.
i’ve had enough problems from M$’s software, i’m sticking with ff