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Browser Comparison - Firefox 2 b1, IE7 b3, Opera 9 528

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fire-a-broadside dept.
mikemuch writes "The browser wars have heated up again, with Microsoft putting Beta 3 of Internet Explorer 7 out for all to download (not just developers anymore), Firefox coming out with the first beta of its version 2, and Opera releasing version 9. ExtremeTech has a shoot-out of the three browsers, with feature comparisons and tests of resource usage, startup time, and Acid2 standards compliance. Standout features are Opera's built-in BitTorrent support, Firefox's spellchecker for forms, and IE's Quick Tabs view. Firefox is still ahead in extensions, while Opera has some slick UI conveniences."
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Browser Comparison - Firefox 2 b1, IE7 b3, Opera 9 More

Browser Comparison - Firefox 2 b1, IE7 b3, Opera 9

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  • One Page (printable) version (Score:5, Informative)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:07PM (#15743925) Homepage
    Entire report on one page. [extremetech.com]

    Submitter did a nice summary. BTW, another table shows memory usage, and looks like Firefox Beta 2 comes in a bit heavier (compared to 1.5.04) at least for startup and an initial load of six tabs - unknown if the memory leaks that cause this to skyrocket when viewing dynamic sites (such as this) [watching-grass-grow.com] are fixed.

    Also talks about the anti-phishing protection, but says they were unable to have this engage, so maybe it's not functional yet? That seems to be an area where more inovation could be done.
    • I call bullshit on the startup time for FF 1.5. I'm sitting here encoding a DVD (100% CPU usage) and FF 1.5 still opens in 4-5 seconds, and that's with 13 installed extensions.

      Then again, I'm not using the Windows version either.

    • Re:One Page (printable) version (Score:5, Informative)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @04:56PM (#15746191)
      Firefox has a preloader. If you really can't wait then load the preloader and then it will act pretty much like IE. With the preloader it launches much faster then IE.

  • It's unfair (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sohil ( 981376 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:09PM (#15743937) Homepage
    It's unfair to compare Beta versions with a completed version (Opera), besides IE has been out in Beta for ages compared to a few weeks on Firefox's side. And Firefox 2 doesn't pass Acid 2 because no work has been done on Gecko (it still uses 1.8, the same as Deer Park) Firefox 3 (which will use Gecko 1.9) will pass the Acid 2 Test.

    • It's unfair to compare Beta versions with a completed version...

      Why? This is a comparison of features, not stability, compliance or even speed. Betas are supposed to be feature complete.

      • Re:It's unfair (Score:3, Informative)

        by IANAAC ( 692242 )
        I haven't read the article yet, but even I managed to read this in the summary:

        with feature comparisons and tests of resource usage, startup time, and Acid2 standards compliance.

        Looks to me like they are comparing all those things. And that being the case, I also don't believe it's fair to compar beta with relased versions.

    • Re:It's unfair (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:22PM (#15744058)

      Firefox 2 doesn't pass Acid 2 because no work has been done on Gecko

      Oh come on, don't be such an apologist. Are you seriously saying "It's unfair! They're only behind on that because they didn't work on it!" How is that unfair? They had just as much opportunity to fix things as Opera did, the difference is that they chose not to. That may or may not be a good decision to make, but you can't exactly call it "unfair", can you?

      Firefox 3 (which will use Gecko 1.9) will pass the Acid 2 Test.

      That doesn't matter, what's planned for Firefox 3 doesn't make Firefox 2 any better. When Firefox 3 is released, we can compare that with Opera 10 and Internet Explorer 8, which will both have moved forward too.

      • Re:It's unfair (Score:3, Insightful)

        by El Tonerino ( 875866 )
        Internet Explorer 8, which will both have moved forward too.

        Yeah... about that... really... quick... dev..el..op..ment.. time ... that ... i...e... is doing.....

      • Re:It's unfair (Score:3, Informative)

        by theodicey ( 662941 )
        Can someone explain to me why Acid 2 is important (or even relevant)?

        As far as I can tell it's just a meaningless statistic. It reminds me of the processor clock speed wars. You don't buy a processor because it runs at 3.3 GHz as opposed to 1.9 GHz, you buy it because it's actually faster in real-world usage scenarios.

        And in real-world web rendering tasks, Firefox is the best browser I've used.

        • Re:It's unfair (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @02:10PM (#15744887)

          Browsers are lousy in terms of supporting the various specifications people have published that define useful things web developers want and need to do. This has numerous effects:

          • It slows down and frustrates web developers.
          • It raises the costs of web development.
          • It makes some things impossible.

          All of these are pretty bad for web developers, but they have knock-on effects that end-users suffer from, but don't understand. For example, when was the last time you ran across a bug on a website? Did you ever consider that a web developer would have got around to fixing it before you had trouble with it if he hadn't been busy trying to work around a bug in Internet Explorer?

          The Acid2 test is merely a collection of all kinds of ways in which browsers screw up support for particular specifications. The idea is that it contains lots of things that browsers get wrong which cause hassle for web developers, and that browser developers can use it as a check-list for bugs. It's also a gimmick to raise awareness for these bugs to put pressure on the browser developers to fix them.

          The more browsers that pass the Acid2 test, the better support there is for web developers. The better support there is for web developers, the higher the quality of the work they put out. And you, as an end-user of that work, benefit. It's too many steps removed for you to see, but it's certainly not the meaningless statistic you think it is.

          To use your analogy with CPUs, imagine if every CPU screwed up 10% of the time, and applications like word processors and mail clients had to have 30% more code written to work around the bugs in CPUs. Would you say that was a problem, and demand better quality CPUs, or would you say "Hey, not a problem, the application developers can work around it, right?" Because that's the analogous situation; the "processors" of the WWW are utterly broken, and a huge amount of effort is being wasted because they aren't getting fixed.

    • And Firefox 2 doesn't pass Acid 2 because no work has been done on Gecko (it still uses 1.8, the same as Deer Park)

      While i'm as much of a Firefox fan as the next guy (maybe more), this is not an argument, no one cares whether or not work has been done on Gecko, what's tested is the output, and the output is that Firefox doesn't pass acid2.

  • I've seen better (Score:5, Informative)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:12PM (#15743962) Journal
    The "Features at a Glance" table is very inaccurate with respect to Opera. For one, Opera has very good theme support.

    And the author mixes up kb and mb on another page.

  • Searching from the address bar (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tet ( 2721 ) <slashdot AT astradyne DOT co DOT uk> on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:13PM (#15743969) Homepage Journal
    From TFA: the address bar is for URLs, not searches.

    I couldn't disagree more. One of the things that kept me with the original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar. Now that Firefox can do the same (and not waste screen real estate with an unneccesary extra box), I've switched. What do you possibly gain by having a separate search box? I just don't get it.

    Now if only they could fix Gecko's inability to render display: inline-block properly, it might become a halfway usable browser. Quite why it's taken so long is beyond me. It's was originally logged as a bug 7 years ago (it's bug 9458, if you want to vote for it). So, Mozilla Organisation, *please* stop adding more and more features that I really don't want, and fix your fscking layout engine. Wasn't that meant to be one of the original goals of Mozilla? To have a browser with a rendering engine that didn't suck? What happened to that concept?

    • Re:Searching from the address bar (Score:5, Insightful)

      by creepynut ( 933825 ) <teddy(slashdot)&teddybrown,ca> on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:20PM (#15744028) Homepage

      Also from TFA: in Firefox requires going through menus, or double clicking on the empty space to the right of the last tab (if you knew about that--usability is about making needed features obvious)

      Having it in the search bar makes it practially hidden. Having a second bar, which by default has the Google icon, makes it a little more obvious that the browser has built in search capabilities, and where it can be accessed.

      • What you quoted is in reference to adding a new tab. They complained FireFox hasn't a single-click method of adding a new tab. The first thing I do when I install FireFox on a new computer is add the "New Tab" toolbar button (right-click on an existing toolbar button, select "Customize..." then drag "New Tab" onto the toolbar). Apparently the author of the article is not aware the toolbar is customizable?

        Dan East
    • I'd like if there was a simple button to switch the text entry field between "URL processing" and "searching". I don't want some bizarre search just because I mistyped a URL.

      And I *certainly* don't want the search to default to bringing me to the first result automatically.

      • Re:Searching from the address bar (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Go to google or wherever, right click on the search box (where you type in your search terms) and select something like "add keyword for this search" and set the keyword to 'g'.

        Now, to search with the address bar, just type "g searchterm1 searcheterm2 etc"

        In conjunction with the alt-d "goto address bar" shortcut, this rocks.

        --Murph

    • Re:Searching from the address bar (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:30PM (#15744120)

      Now if only they could fix Gecko's inability to render display: inline-block properly, it might become a halfway usable browser. Quite why it's taken so long is beyond me. It's was originally logged as a bug 7 years ago

      Seven years ago, that was a proprietary Internet Explorer property. It's been added to the upcoming CSS 2.1, but that's still only a draft. It's not like it's been a missing part of CSS support for seven years, until recently it was totally non-standard, and technically it still is.

      • It's been added to the upcoming CSS 2.1, but that's still only a draft. It's not like it's been a missing part of CSS support for seven years, until recently it was totally non-standard, and technically it still is.

        Agreed. However, it is an essential layout ingredient (to the point, where many layouts can't be implemented without it, short of resorting to tables). Also, the W3C is shooting itself in the foot by releasing specs so slowly. The last officially approved CSS spec was released in 1999. At this

      • Re:Searching from the address bar (Score:4, Funny)

        by pNutz ( 45478 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:30PM (#15744592)
        Seven years ago, that was a proprietary Internet Explorer property. It's been added to the upcoming CSS 2.1, but that's still only a draft.

        Wow, it sounds like Dvorak was right about something.

        *ducks*
        *no, fuck that, runs*
        *runs for his goddam life*

    • I couldn't disagree more. One of the things that kept me with the original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar. Now that Firefox can do the same (and not waste screen real estate with an unneccesary extra box), I've switched. What do you possibly gain by having a separate search box? I just don't get it.

      I'm totally with you on that. Although I can understand why newbs^H^H^H^H^Hsome people might want a separate search box, the c

    • I couldn't disagree more. One of the things that kept me with the original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar. Now that Firefox can do the same (and not waste screen real estate with an unneccesary extra box), I've switched. What do you possibly gain by having a separate search box? I just don't get it.

      I assume then that you've been on Firefox for a while now. Keyword based searches have been in FF for many years.

      In the prop

    • Re:Searching from the address bar (Score:5, Informative)

      by doti ( 966971 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:52PM (#15744312) Homepage
      One of the things that kept me with the original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar.


      You should learn to use Quick Searches.

      I don't use the search bar in firefox (custumise toolbar and drag it off), rather search directly from the address bar.

      These are some I have (removed http:/// [http] so /. won't create links and mess the % char).


      g: www.google.com/search?q=%s
      img: images.google.com/images?q=%s
      w: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
      man: www.linuxpakistan.net/man.php?query=%s
      fm: freshmeat.net/search/?section=projects&q=%s
      ext: addons.mozilla.org/search.php?app=firefox&type=E&q =%s
      sf: sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words= %s
      sl: slackware.it/en/pb/search.php?v=current&t=1&q=%s
      pkg: www.linuxpackages.net/search_view.php?by=name&name =%s

    • Re:Searching from the address bar (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:39PM (#15744660) Journal
      What do you possibly gain by having a separate search box? I just don't get it.

      Indeed, you don't.

      If I have a host named "porn" on my network, and I type "porn" into the address bar, I better damn well get the host I want and not some search.

      We have a host named "pegasus" and I can't tell you how many times I've been to the pegasus mail web site and didn't want to be.

      • If I have a host named "porn" on my network, and I type "porn" into the address bar, I better damn well get the host I want and not some search.

        That's not a problem with the concept it's a problem with the implementation.

        Konqueror does this right:
        just type in something => url
        type "gg:something" and you get a google seach for something

        It's both unambiguous, and not wasteful of screen real estate.

  • Spelling checkers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:14PM (#15743978)

    Standout features are Opera's built-in BitTorrent support, Firefox's spellchecker for forms, and IE's Quick Tabs view.

    How can Firefox's spelling checker be a "standout feature" when Opera, Safari and Konqueror already have it built in? It's more of a "catch-up feature" than a "standout feature".

  • well, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:14PM (#15743980) Journal
    I've been impressed with what I've heard about IE 7, it really seems like they are making some good moves with it finally. Being a Linux user I'll probably never see it but it seems that I wouldn't be that annoyed using it these days. IE will never be as good as Firefox because of the extensions, there just aren't that many good programmers who would be willing to give up their time to MS for free; so Firefox still has the edge.

    I wish they would all get their act together and pass the ACID2 test though.

  • No new tab buttion? (Score:4, Informative)

    by turbo_magic_hat ( 555235 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:16PM (#15743998)
    One peeve [about firefox]: Why isn't there still a one-click button for adding a new tab?

    Not exactly rocket science to add one (Right-click > Customize > Drag the new tab button > Done) but I wonder why it's not there by default.

  • What about extensions? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Blimey85 ( 609949 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:16PM (#15744000)
    I don't think comparing stock Firefox with anything is very relevant. You need to compare Firefox loaded with some extensions to show the true power of the platform. Same with the other browsers and their addons or widgets.

    One example of not doing this is in the feature comparison table where it says that Firefox can't remember open tabs for the next session. My copy of Firefox not only does that when I want it to, it also has crash recovery so when I restart I can choose to reopen all of the tabs or not.

    • Re:What about extensions? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Blimey85 ( 609949 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:21PM (#15744040)
      Another example is the claim that Firefox can only zoom text and not images. There is an image zoom extension that does what the name implies.

      Maybe the Firefox developers should do a build that has every (non-conflicting) extension that exists just so the comparison will really show the power of Firefox. How else will people know what it really can and can't do?

      After reading this I would think that Firefox lacks a few features that I use, in Firefox, on a regular basis. Maybe the author of the article doesn't use Firefox on a regular basis. Otherwise you'd think he would know about this stuff. Not like these are real obscure extensions that you can't find on the main extension sites.

      • Re:What about extensions? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:24PM (#15744066) Homepage Journal
        The problem with FireFox is the extensions. People want a good browser, not fiddle around hunting for what exists. Power users do that, sure, but not regular users.

        Zooming images accordingly with the text should be a basic feature on all browsers, zomming the text only makes no sense IMO.
        • I disagree. Keeping the functionality in extensions keeps the base install smaller. Pretty much everything should be implemented through extensions. It's a web browser, so it's not like fetching extensions from the web is much of a stretch. All one needs is a nice guide to them, the existing addons.mozilla.org site is quite good but it could use some more help in the "easy to figure out what the hell you're doing if you're a newbie" department.

        • Re:What about extensions? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by kthejoker ( 931838 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @03:31PM (#15745569)
          The obvious solution to this is that Firefox should make the browser homepage open up and offer you (concisely and quickly) the 10 Most Popular Extensions, and some links to some more.

          They should make Extensions part of their introductory spiel, and they should make them more accessible and drawn in. They should have "Extensions Packages" wherein you can download 5 XPIs at once and have them all install. I'm a power user, and even I'm turned off by the prospect of hunting through dozens of extensions to find something worthwhile.
  • Disclaimer: No, I haven't RTFA yet.

    So they're comparing the first FIRST of Firefox 2.0 to the THIRD beta of IE7 and the RELEASE version of Opera 9.0. Call me crazy, but wouldn't a proper comparison look at all three browsers after they have reached their final release versions?
    • As was stated above, they are comparing the features that the different browsers have. Betas are supposed to be feature complete, thus the comparison is fair. As long as they are not comparing render speed, memory usage, &c., there is no reason to cry foul.

  • my views (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:18PM (#15744014)
    I am a firefox user but have all three installed. I like the firefox spellcheck since I am a lousy speller and the Opera torrent downloading since there are times legal downloads are only available in torrent and I do not want the full install. For some reason, msie just seems cleaner. Forget netscape.

    The only problem I am having with any of the three is with the firefox beta 2.0 crashing with Vista. The last alpha version did not.

    Its going to be an interesting battle.
    • Since you're probably running Windows, you should check uTorrents for your torrents: you don't need to install it (it's a single small exe), and it's many times faster than Opera.

  • Overlooked: Printing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dduardo ( 592868 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:20PM (#15744031)
    I think one major feature that is lacking in Firefox is good printing support.

  • A bit off-topic, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:21PM (#15744045) Homepage Journal
    Will Internet Explorer 7 run on Windows 95/98/ME/NT4? If not, then MSIE7 won't be "95% of web users"... And with Nintendo going with Opera for both the Nintendo DS and the Wii, Opera's marketshare might soon explode beyond 1-2%.

    Just keep that in mind before jumping into the "MSIE7 has nice proprietary features" train.

    • I read something about Firefox dropping support for older versions of Windows. Maybe it was Firfox 3 though.

      -matthew
    • I think Nintendo decided to go with Opera for several reasons. 1) Being they've developed versions of Opera for mobiles, pocket pcs, etc.. 2) If you use Opera you should try out mouse gestures (it's built in). I guess Nintendo imagined people surfing the internet with Wiimote gestures or Stylus gestures, or whatever..

  • "Favorites button" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:28PM (#15744106) Homepage
    MSIE: Yes
    Firefox: No
    Opera: No

    wtf is a "Favorites button" button? Is it like a bookmark button?
    • I guess what they're getting at is that IE has a button to let you bring up the bookmarks toolbar, rather than having to go to the menu or use a keyboard shortcut.

      Or maybe they're referring to the "Add..." button on the Favorites sidebar.

      Either way, I'm sure that if anybody cared enough to create this feature it would be an extension. It sounds like the sort of thing you do as part of a tutorial titled "My First Incredibly Easy Extension". It hardly sounds like a feature on par with a pop-up blocker. And in
  • One feature unique to IE7 is its tile view of your tabs, called Quick Tabs, accessible from an icon just to the right of the add favorites icon

    Not really unique. In Opera, just hover over the tab for a second or two...you get a thumbnail of the page.

  • ie on acid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzandwater ( 989789 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:29PM (#15744116) Homepage
    It's ridiculous that they defend IE by claiming "no pages seem horribly messed up." Clearly the author is not a web developer. If he were, he would know that the reason the pages display correctly in IE is javascript hacks, css workarounds, web developer headaches, Dean's IE7 javascript library, a separate stylesheet for IE, etc... It's not that IE is inherently displaying the sites correctly, it's that the site developers were forced to make them play nice with IE.

    • Re:ie on acid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by trifish ( 826353 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:04PM (#15744396)
      Actually, almost every site looks good in IE because webmasters preview/test their sites primarily in IE. Why? Because vast majority of people use IE. Quite simple and reasonable equations.

    • Re:ie on acid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Enrico Pulatzo ( 536675 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:07PM (#15744421)
      Regardless of the author's web developing skills, it's a valid metric for evaluating a web browser.

      No matter how well Firefox and Opera employ W3C standards, they still need to be able to display poorly created pages just as well as valid, semantic, XHTML-driven sites.

      Yes, there are a lot of people who make a lot of workarounds for a lot of browsers. Those who lament this fact should get over it. The companies involved know damn well by now what business they're involved with. Folks have got to stop belly-aching and bitching over these now decade-old problems. They're well-defined problems, which is a good thing. It takes some tricky work to keep your backwards compatibility and introduce new ways of working, ala Internet Explorer's DOCTYPE mode. If they are concerned about people introducing hokey work-arounds that they would eventually have to work around themselves, browser makers would do well to be more involved with the design community.

      • Re:ie on acid (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:51PM (#15744749) Homepage Journal
        Okay. No you are wrong. It really is that simple. IE doesn't follow standards and doesn't even support PNG files correctly. I use Firefox because I use more than one OS. I love me extensions to Firefox, and because I like it better than IE. It seems like a good number of people use Firefox now. So unless you want to exclude 1 out of 10 users from your site can not support just IE. I will not due business with a company that has an IE only site.
        Now the rub is this. IE doesnt support current standards. FireFox has some issue but it is much better then IE and Opera and Safari seem to fully support current standards. Yes web developers have every right to complain about Microsoft ignoring standards and making their life more complicated. Because of IE I can not use PNG files with an alpha channel on websites I design.
        Just because most people use junk that is no reason to
        a. Not tell them that is junk.
        b. Try to get the producers of said junk to make it better.
        c. Try to get people to use a better product.

        Even if IE was only 10% of the browser market good web developers would still put in all the hacks to support it. It is a stupid professional that wants to send away one tenth of their potential market.

        Telling the to get over it? Hell no. Microsoft fix IE 7 before you release it. Get PNGs working and ACID 2.
        Mozilla we are still waiting for ACID 2 from you as well. Get it done NOW.

         

  • Microsoft won the last browser war but failed. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:38PM (#15744179)
    Well the last war MS won but failed to keep their browser up to date. Thus failed in their primary goal of compleatly controling web standards. With IE 7 it is more of a step forward to following the standards and a step back because they realized they didn't get what they compleatly wanted. Many of the features in IE 4,5,6 which I warned were stupid because of security ended up being bad for security. [Cough] Active X [Cough] But now with .NET making Web Apps more standards Based, things like AJAX being standard, CSS and Javascript there are more robust metods of doing things now and latly IE has been the thorn to web devleopers.

    I am somewhat optimistic about IE 7, Vista... Microsoft sience IE 6 and XP has been getting a lot of heat and their stock shows it. Even a company Microsofts size can only make so many mistakes until bulk amounts people start switching. The Aditude has changed a lot sience then too. Before around Windows 95 and 98 Microsoft was (wrongly) considered the Technical Leader and their products were considered to be the best available. Now it is more of a deffeetest aditude of well I am stuck and I don't want to switch and it is not bad enough to switch yet but I am keeping my eyes open. I am not dumb though IE 7 and Vista will not be as great as the PR people make it out to be but it will be better then what they curently have. Much like Windows 2003 Server I havent seen any major problems with it nor do I see people wanting to switch to in in droves.


  • Strictly speaking the comparison table on page 2 is incorrect. Opera does have themes, many of them, albeit the browser isn't shipped with them as such.

  • Some Personal (Score:2, Interesting)

    by unPlugged-2.0 ( 947200 )
    As a person who has done some personal testing on the same matter except for Opera I have some comments. It is nice to see the results on a more formal article but I am afraid the depth isn't there. Firefox 2.0 beta is not the same kind of release that IE 7 is. Where as FFox2.0 has been in the works for 6 months. They have been working on IE 7 for what 2 years now. So in that way not really a fair comparison. A better comparison would be to look at the nightly builds and ahead to version 3.0 which wi
  • From the article:
    In one year, the open-source darling Firefox has pulled within a dead heat of browser the browser popularity crown, at least on the ExtremeTech site, where each browser claims just over 43 percent of our viewers.
    How interesting. Percentage-wise, visitors to the ExtremeTech web site use Firefox as much as IE. Wow... who would have guessed that Firefox is popular among computer geeks?

  • Pro IE 7 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:49PM (#15744286) Journal
    IE 7 is cool. I think I'll switch to it for my Windows computers (despite having used Firefox since its first beta). What I like about beta 3: tooltips that show keyboard shortcuts, in fact an entire list of keyboard shortcuts is available from the option menu on newly opened tab. Also I like the option on shutdown to open up with the current tabs next time.

    "But there are extensions for all that!"—In fact that gets me to what I hate most about Firefox. Extension hell. Every time I install Firefox on a new system I have to hunt down a list of extensions for it or my user experience is going to change radically. And all those extensions take up memory and processor time, and often have bugs or security flaws of their own.

    Another thing I like about IE 7 is its sandbox mode on Vista. That should, I think, provide several security advantages over competing browsers. (In fact, IE 6 with ActiveX turned off was already reasonably secure.)

    • Re:Pro IE 7 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Blimey85 ( 609949 )
      You can acutally (through the use of two extensions) package up your extensions into a single extension that you can then move to other computers to painlessly get them setup the same way. Well, the extensions anyway and I think it might also include themes. I wanted something like this because I often have people asking me what extensions I'm running and then I have to hunt down url's so they can easily install each one. I have around 40 extensions installed so it's a real pain. Now I just package them all

  • Be warned (Score:3, Informative)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <(megazzt) (at) (gmail.com)> on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:54PM (#15744325) Homepage

    DOM Inspector is horribly broken to the point of almost being completely useless in Firefox 2 beta 1. At least it was for me.

    It also will crash Firefox very easily.

  • Printing support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chiller2 ( 35804 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @12:59PM (#15744364) Homepage
    The IE7 developers have really improved their printing options [msdn.com]. This is an area the Firefox team should focus on.

    e.g. In Firefox the scaling to fit the page just squeezes the content between wider margins rather than actually scaling the pages.

    Just yesterday a work colleague was trying to print off a page that was split horizontally into two frames. The top one had a company logo, and the lower one the table of figures she actually wanted. Printing normally just output the first bit of the lower frame. I had to view that frame only to get the full table in the frame to print.

    • Re:Printing support (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:17PM (#15744498)
      It is usually possible to make websites print decently in many different browsers, including Firefox and MSIE.
      Just define a separate stylesheet for printing. This stylesheet can hide the navigation items and specify how the fixed page layout has to be scaled on the paper when printing.

      Of course, not every site designer is careful enough to include a printing stylesheet.

    • Re:Printing support (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dcam ( 615646 )
      More to the point firefox should include a "print" option in their context menu for the page and the frame.

  • Memory usage charts wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @01:28PM (#15744577) Journal
    Their memory usage charts cannot possibly be right:

    Memory Usage Loading Six Tabs
    Firefox 2 Beta 1: 73K
    Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3: 70K
    Opera 9.0: 52K
    IE 6.0: 155K
    Firefox 1.5.0.4: 56K

    A single image on one of those pages could require more RAM than what the entire program is consuming. That's way, way off. What's even more amazing is, going by their charts, Opera actually consumes LESS ram with 6 pages loaded than when it first starts up! 53k -> 52k

    Dan East

  • Opera gets no respect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @02:33PM (#15745077)
    I like Opera. I use Opera. I read the comparison, and Opera looks to come out favorably. Then I read the comments. Firefox compared to IE, again and again. Reasons why Firefox is better. Reasons why IE is better. Reasons why more people use IE. But there are fewer comments on Opera. I can't understand why. It has lots of things that Firefox needs extenstions for built right in (and without significant differences in resources), and some things, like bittorrent support, that aren't available in any extension. It has better standards compliance than the other two. It has Widgets (like extensions) if you want to expand it more. But yet, a 3-way comparison is treated as a 2-way comparison. I thought this would be more of an eye opener, "Wow, I didn't know Opera did all that and did it better than the other browsers!" But instead, the comments read like the posters glanced at the IE and Firefox pages of the article (if they read it at all) and hopped right back on the IE vs Firefox war. I find it sad that a competitive browser receives to little consideration, especially from a group that is supposedly early adopters.

  • IE 7 and PNG (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Vexorian ( 959249 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @03:02PM (#15745325)
    why is that PNG IE7 still won't support PNG transparency? Besides of GIF(propietary) there is no other option for transparency in web development...

  • Irrelevant comparisons (Score:4, Insightful)

    by njdj ( 458173 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2006 @04:17PM (#15745929)

    I don't really care about features (except tabbed browsing, a must-have, but they all have that). I care about standards compliance. Apparently Opera is in the lead here, with the rest nowhere.

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