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

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."

One Page (printable) version

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.

Re:One Page (printable) version

So... you're using different software on a different platform and experiencing different results... fascinating. Please tell us more.

Re:One Page (printable) version

Ben Goodger is standing over my shoulder (I swear) and says "I've seen some retarded comments, but this is pretty good."

Alphas and betas are not shipped in debug mode.

Re:One Page (printable) version

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

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.

Re:It's unfair

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

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.

I've seen better

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

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

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.

Re:Searching from the address bar

Hooray for anti-ADHD search boxes!

Hooray beer!

Wait... what were we talking about?

Re:Searching from the address bar

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.

Re:Searching from the address bar

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*

Re:Searching from the address bar

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

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.

Spelling checkers

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".

Re:Spelling checkers

Contrary to your statement, opera does not have spell checking out of the box. It's available as a 3rd party add-on.

I know that's what the article says, but it's highly misleading. Opera hooks into the native spelling checker on each platform it runs on. On OS X, this is an official system service. On other platforms, it uses Aspell - which comes as standard in virtually every Linux distribution and installed on most UNIX systems. Windows doesn't provide a standard spelling checker, but Opera still uses Aspell if it's installed.

So "third-party add-on" is a long way from the truth. It's automatically available without any add-on necessary on most platforms, and it automatically recognises a common spelling-checker if it's installed on Windows. It's nothing like Firefox 1 and the Google extension at all.

well,

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?

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?

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?

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?

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.

Re:What about extensions?

It isn't just images that need to be zoomed; it is also the layout. A site like penny-arcade or digg is almost unreadable on my tiny laptop screen because they use a fixed pixel width layout. Opera shines here as it zooms everything. You currently can't get the same out of firefox, even with an extension.

Re:What about extensions?

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.

my views

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.

Overlooked: Printing

I think one major feature that is lacking in Firefox is good printing support.

A bit off-topic, but...

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.

"Favorites button"

MSIE: Yes
Firefox: No
Opera: No

wtf is a "Favorites button" button? Is it like a bookmark button?

ie on acid

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

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

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

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.

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.

Pro IE 7

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.)

Be warned

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

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

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.

Memory usage charts wrong

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

Re:Memory usage charts wrong

I'm more curious how he managed to load six tabs in IE 6.

Opera gets no respect

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.

Re:Opera gets no respect

I like Opera. I use Opera.

Me, too [lee-phillips.org]. I think there is a reflex to ignore Opera becuase for so long it was pay- or ad-ware.

IE 7 and PNG

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

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.

Re:Beta?

Not really, if you're only comparing announced features. You probably shouldn't complain about problems that are clearly bugs though, and this article does just that several times.

Re:Opera's UI is slick?

I'm with you here. I'd use Opera much more if it actually looked like the desktop environment it runs under.

Re:Opera?

Are you also aware that Opera has been free for some time? That is, Opera on the Desktop, their mobile versions still cost money.

Re:Opera?

Opera Mini [opera.com] - a-less-than-100Kb Java ME application that makes web surfing on a bog standard phone a joy.

Free, of course.

Re:Opera?

very understood the "pay for a web browser" bit

I guess you meant "never". And FYI, it's been a free download for a very long time. IIRC Ubuntu has it even in the package manager

Re:Opera's UI is slick?

Opera's UI is extremely customizable [opera.com]. Skinnable interface and lots of flexibility with toolbar and button placement, on the output side. On the input side, you can set up your own keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures if you don't like the default ones.

Re:Opera's UI is slick?

The application should be clean and intuitive out of the box. It's good interface design.

Being extremely customizable is not always a good thing. Most people would never bother and some will probably be scared by excessively complicated customization.

I used to go out of my way to customize everything I can, and in some cases I still do so. I went as far as creating new visual themes for my Sony Ericsson phone. But more often than not it's a waste of time. Additionally, the vast majority of skins available for every application are unprofessional and sloppy.

Apple interfaces are successful not because of customization. In fact, you're usually stuck with what they give you. However, they clearly put a lot of thought into usability. Those interfaces work because they're clean. I don't necessarily like the visual style, but I appreciate the simplicity.

Re:Opera's UI is slick?

Tools > Appearance > Skin > Windows Native

Re:Opera?

ActiveX empowers webdevelopers. FF extensions empowers users. ActiveX can be used by bad people to exploit your system because it allows remote sites to do stuff on your system. FF extensions are run only on your own system, most of them have nothing to do with the webpages you load. And the ones that do just filter out ads. Some are more complex, such as greasemonkey, but you only run those only on sites you trust.

Also extensions aren't installed by default, so there isn't any danger of a feature you never use compromising your system.

Re:Opera?

FF extensions enhance the capabilities of the browser, and only the browser. ActiveX controls can affect your entire computer (hurrah for integrating the browser with the OS!.) Also, the "authentication" of an AX control is being "signed" by something as trustworthy as Verisign, an agency I wouldn't trust to make me a peanut butter sandwich without somehow setting my kitchen on fire and charging me thousands of dollars for the bread before feeding it to some random kid on the street.

Re:Beta?

Hardly seems fair to compare different browsers based on beta builds.

Three points: First, which generates more revenue - fairness or page hits?

Second, by the time some products are released, everybody who cares has been using it routinly for months or (in a few cases) even years anyway.

Third, in a lot of cases, it's hard to tell the difference between beta and released software anyway. Let's have a quick show of hands of all the people who believe that IE 7 will have been officially released for an entire month before a major security hole is found. Hmm...I'm not seeing any hands...and I don't think the fact that I can't see any of you really makes much difference in that.

Re:Opera?

The facts that exceptions don't install under the hood without telling you helps a lot, I guess.

The fact that it takes you 2 clics to list your extensions and 2 more to delete an offending one also helps.

The final reason is that Firefox' extensions are actually extremely useful and add wonderful flexibility to the browser thanks to XUL. They also allow the Firefox dev team to see what the users want (they just have to check the most popular extensions and find out why they're popular in the first place).

Re:Beta?

Comparing bleeding-edge betas to bleeding-edge betas IS fair.

Comparing, say, Firefox 2.0 (beta) to MSIE 6.0 isn't a very fair comparison.