FireFox vs. Internet Explorer

[Some1 Somewhere]

I've got a rather processor intensive feature on my web page. I noticed that it runs a lot faster in Mozilla Firefox than in Internet Explorer. Can anybody tell me why?

I don't really care as far as performance goes, but it would be interesting to know.

http://www.dcameraman.com/modules.php?name=Chance_Or_Not
Josh

[JPnyc]

Darn, from the thread title I thought this was gonna be a cage match.

[johneva]

Basicly cos IE is crap.

And FF rules.

[designer4life]

man...stop following the ff bandwagon. All I hear is "IE Sucks!!", "IE is crap", etc..

If you compare all the problems IE has to Firefox, you'll notice that Firefox has a lot more bugs than IE.

Sources: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=7059

Firefox is faster than IE because it doesn't take up that much system resources.

[JPnyc]

Depends on what it is. Here's a mozilla rendering test page which consistently runs faster in IE than any Gecko browser I've tried (or Opera, for that matter)

http://scragz.com/tech/mozilla/test-rendering-time.php

[NogDog]

man...stop following the ff bandwagon. All I hear is "IE Sucks!!", "IE is crap", etc..

If you compare all the problems IE has to Firefox, you'll notice that Firefox has a lot more bugs than IE.

Sources: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=7059

Firefox is faster than IE because it doesn't take up that much system resources.
Just because anyone can throw statistics around: http://nanobox.chipx86.com/security_summary.php

Without recourse to all of the raw data, none of us can really know which is better/worse since, "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians." (Mark Twain, I think?)

[wamboid]

Darn, from the thread title I thought this was gonna be a cage match.
Carefull what you ask for!

I actually use both quite a bit, and try to use others as well even though I don't especially like them. I feel like it's my responsibility as a developer to know what the users are having to go through.

I have found that most pages I go to load faster in IE, but there are many that load faster in FF. I've never really found an answer as to why.

[Charles]

MSIE sucks for two reasons.

After the collapse of Netscape Microsoft thought that the browser wars had been won and they closed down the development team. It was Opera that woke them up and before they could restart the team FF had already come along and started to whoop their behinds. So MSIE is simply old technology.

A long time ago Bill Gates had this dream that people wouldn't have to buy all of their software. If you only had afew flyers to do a year you would rent the use of Publisher onthe internet. Publisher would run as a web application through Internet Explorer. But for that to work the web applications would need access to your file controls - and that's where all those computer viruses got their start. And MSIE is big and slow to support the weight of that plan.

[johneva]

man...stop following the ff bandwagon. All I hear is "IE Sucks!!", "IE is crap", etc..

If you compare all the problems IE has to Firefox, you'll notice that Firefox has a lot more bugs than IE.

Sources: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=7059

Firefox is faster than IE because it doesn't take up that much system resources.


I am not just jumping on the band wagon the reason I like FF is cos of the web developer extension it makes lots of common tasks easier to do.

It has nothing to do with the speed for me.

Maybe the reason you keep hearing it is cos it is true.

Anyways it is only an opinion if you prefer IE then stick to it I am not saying you have to use FF.

I still have to use IE myself for certain things I always check the stuff I make on all browsers also the online A+ course I am doing at the min will only work propley though IE.

[designer4life]

I use IE, Firefox, and Opera for development. I actually perfer Opera because of their active tab. I see too much IE sucks, Ie is crap, etc. without a valid reason why and it makes me bitter.

[johneva]

I use IE, Firefox, and Opera for development. I actually perfer Opera because of their active tab. I see too much IE sucks, Ie is crap, etc. without a valid reason why and it makes me bitter.


Yep I too use Oprea not keen on it my self though, just not used it much though.

Same with Netscape got it but dont use it much, just for checking my webiste look ok in it really.

Like I say my fav at the min is FF mainly cos some of the extesions are just so usful.

Yes your right it does make you rather bitter by the sounds of it.

Dont you think you should find out more about me before accusing me of being a mindless sheep?

[knowj]

i personally dont think any of them are better than each other. yes firefox has extentions, tabs, its open source etc... but it has its flaws.

its everyone down to personal preferance.

FF ADV:
extentions
"standard browser"
open source
tabs
RSS tabs

FF DIS:
slower to load
not all sites are compatible (due to people using features built into IE)
not always as stable
open source so expoiters can find out expolits easier

IE ADV:
quick to load
comes with windows
automatically updates with windows
simple/easy to use for new users
many programs are made to work with IE

IE DIS:
sometimes unstable (recently alot better)
usual anti microsoft hackers/exploters
no tabs
attacks from adware and spyware

i know theres alot more but its not a simple case of ones better than the other they both have pros and cons.

i mainly use FF when designing/developing as usually if it works on FF it will work the same in IE with minimal editing. i also take advantage of many of the extentions such as the dev toolbar.
but...
when i just want to run a quick search and FF isnt open ill use Ie as it loads quicker and loads the pages just as fast 99% of the time.

[Some1 Somewhere]

Hello all,

Thank you for all your posts. I think I was expected too much of a cut and dried answer. Basically when you filter through all the bias, it boils down to IE being a bigger program than FF. Kinda like running XP on your computer and then switching to windows 95 and watching it fly.

Sorry for asking such a controversial question.

Oh and by the way the link up in my first post should work now. . .

Or

http://www.dcameraman.com/modules.php?name=Chance_Or_Not

Thanks for your time.

Josh

[devnullseo]

FireFox
advantages: more ease of use features; more secure.
disadvantages: can be slow at times

Internet Explorer
advantages: fast
disadvantages: any day now we'll see yet another Microsoft vuln that affects IE; IE crashing can require a reboot

Opera
advantages: Fast and more secure.
disadvantages: Still has some misc. problems with javascript/java-enabled sites.

_________________ (http://party-sign-up-bonus.com)
Live long, play good!

[Charles]

Basically when you filter through all the bias, it boils down to IE being a bigger program than FF. Kinda like running XP on your computer and then switching to windows 95 and watching it fly.There's a bit more to it than that. MSIE is actually causes harm and it does this two ways.

To begin with, it doesn't support a lot of features that we need in order to make pages that are accessible to all users. Id est, the Q and ABBR elements, huge chunks of the CSS2 specification. If we follow the simple rules and make pages that work on every other browser then we have to play all kinds of complicated games to get them to also work on MSIE.

It does however, support a host of non-standard and enticing stuff. This encourages people to make pages that rely upon this stuff and we end up with pages that only work on MSIE. This was an intentional tactic employed because of the browser wars.

It's not bias, it's an informed judgement. MSIE is evil.

[pcthug]

MSIE is evil.
Agreed!
**Actually ill refrase that for you; Not just is IE evil but the whole of M$ is evil.


Infact my firewall does not even permit IE to access the internet, its only still on my computer for testing :eek:

[jDillard]

I've got a rather processor intensive feature on my web page. I noticed that it runs a lot faster in Mozilla Firefox than in Internet Explorer. Can anybody tell me why?

I don't really care as far as performance goes, but it would be interesting to know.

http://www.dcameraman.com/modules.php?name=Chance_Or_Not
Josh

FF is much more efficient in manipulating DOM via javascript. It's well over twice as fast when, for example, adding elements using document.createElement, appendChild, and so on. It's faster in querying DOM, as well -- for example, document.getElementById. So basically, DHTML is processed faster in FF. IE is faster in rendering general html. I believe default configurations has some impact. After FF is installed, it can to be fine tuned a little bit to make it load general pages faster.

[JPnyc]

Run the test I posted above. It uses javascript to calculate the rendering time. FF is consistently slower than IE on that page, at least on my pc. Both stock out of the box settings.

[jDillard]

Run the test I posted above. It uses javascript to calculate the rendering time. FF is consistently slower than IE on that page, at least on my pc. Both stock out of the box settings.

Yeah...it calculates render time in javascript, but that's all it does in javascript. The table itself was built server-side, not with DHTML. You've pinpointed exactly the major performance difference between IE and FF. IE renders raw html that it receives faster. However, FF manipulates html dynamically faster. FF is much faster with DHTML/DOM. Build a large table client-side using javascript (e.g., AJAX) and you'll know exactly what I mean. The link Some1 Somewhere provides (http://www.dcameraman.com/modules.php?name=Chance_Or_Not ) shows the remarkable speed difference with dhtml between FF and IE. Scroll to the bottom of page and try the "Very Fast" setting on both browsers. I'm sure you have already. You have no comment on that at all? IE manipulates DOM like it's crippled, compared to FF.

[MstrBob]

On the subject of the DOM, I've actually had a few instances where IE wouldn't redraw. That is, I would alter an element and it wouldn't appear to be affected on IE. I ended up resizing the element to force a redraw. Bugs like this (especially when you get into CSS support) FireFox (and Opera) much more appealing to web developers. Because when it comes to supporting and implementing web technologies, Trident lags behind all the other rendering engines.

Even from a User's perspective, there are very little positives. I'd say that with IE you have one advantage: You know 99.99% of pages will work with it. That's all I'll give it. You may say it's faster, it's slower whatever. Firefox actually turns out to be slower than IE (Not that you may notice it on newer computers, and Gecko tends to start drawing the page before Trident will. What this means is that Firefox will start to show the page as it comes in and IE tends to wait to receive a large chunk of the page before it starts showing it) and Firefox also uses more memory than IE. But, Opera, on the other hand, beats out both hands down. Faster, lighter, and very standards compliant.

IE isn't a beast because it does more. It doesn't support more, actually, all the competition supports more. IE is a beast because IE 6 is at this point about 4 and a half years old, while all the other competition had releases in the second half of 2005. IE development stopped for a while. The core rendering engine is even older code that hasn't had any serious development since Version 5, which was over 7 years ago. Since IE has to keep all these old hacks in their Legacy rendering to keep a large chunk of websites working, while also trying to support the new standards, on code that hasn't had any serious rewriting in several years - you tend to get an underperforming browser.

[drhowarddrfine]

For where IE stands on the DOM compared to FF, click on my link below "IE is eight years behind the standards or wrong!" using one of the browsers then the other.

Charles, is correct in his posts.

[JPnyc]

No, I hadn't tried that until now. Yes FF runs that faster.

[etechdesigns]

I like firefox. However, I use all major browesers, such as FF, IE, Netscape and Opera. Anyone see IE7 beta version. You canvisit this link. :)
http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/23/internet-explorer-7-beta-2-preview/

[ErolinDesigns]

What's with the SPAM post?

Anyways, as a developer it is one my duties to see how the page renders in the three main browsers. One thing I don't like with FF is that it doesn't support the "back" gesture with a laptop's touchpad. It gets annoying. Does anyone know any solutions?

[trishainfotech]

i dont know why peoples claim that firefox is better . we have internet explorer and its complete in itself . lot of peoples claim firefox is better because they get $1 as referal fee when someone download firefox

[ErolinDesigns]

$1 referral fee? I haven't heard of that!!!

I think Firefox is better because of:

Extensions
Tabbed Browsing
Additional CSS2 support
More security
Built-in RSS capabilities
Quick turnaround time for critical updates


IE doesn't offer any of that. IE7 will only scratch the surface.

[Charles]

Sadly, however, MSIE does a much better job with XML and XHTML.

[drhowarddrfine]

Run the test I posted above. It uses javascript to calculate the rendering time. FF is consistently slower than IE on that page, at least on my pc. Both stock out of the box settings.
IE has not been able to meet ANY DOM implementations since 1998 while FF and the others are up to date.

[drhowarddrfine]

i dont know why peoples claim that firefox is better . we have internet explorer and its complete in itself . lot of peoples claim firefox is better because they get $1 as referal fee when someone download firefox
IE cannot implement modern coding techniques. It has poor support of CSS, the DOM, cannot recognize xhtml on the web, and on and on. It does not meet standards from 1998. Those it does recognize are wrong or buggy. You just need to understand the hoops coders must go through to get IE to work. Firefox and the others don't have as many issues and pretty much work well with published standards. That code frequently must be adjusted to work with IEs quirks and bugs.

[johneva]

i dont know why peoples claim that firefox is better . we have internet explorer and its complete in itself . lot of peoples claim firefox is better because they get $1 as referal fee when someone download firefox

IE cannot implement modern coding techniques. It has poor support of CSS, the DOM, cannot recognize xhtml on the web, and on and on. It does not meet standards from 1998. Those it does recognize are wrong or buggy. You just need to understand the hoops coders must go through to get IE to work. Firefox and the others don't have as many issues and pretty much work well with published standards. That code frequently must be adjusted to work with IEs quirks and bugs.


trishainfotech would not understand these problems though looking at there coding in that website that there sig links to.

[Jeff Mott]

If you compare all the problems IE has to Firefox, you'll notice that Firefox has a lot more bugs than IE.

Sources: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=7059It seems you heard only what you wanted to hear. That article is, in fact, refuting the claim that FF is less secure than IE. It is assumed that the number of advisories provided by Secunia--FF: 22, IE: 17--is used as justification. The problem, however, is that such claims have cherry picked their data--picked out the few pieces of statistics that, by itself, appears to be evidence for their claim while ignore the statistics that refute their claim. The Secunia page, in fact, says a whole lot more.

Secunia's overall rating for FF is "Less critical", compared to IE which is rated "Highly critical". Secunia also lists the solution status of the advisories--which of the security holes and errors have been fixed and which haven't. FF shows 95% patched and 5% partially fixed. So every error but one has been fixed, and that one is at least partially fixed. IE, on the other hand, has 41% unpatched, which means IE still has 7 known security vulnerabilities. We continue on to Secunia's criticality. FF shows 32% (7) of the advisories were either extremely or highly critical, compared to IE with 47% (8) either extremely or highly critical.

So, at the end of the day--or, in this case, the end of the year--FF is indeed more secure than IE.