IE8 Beta 1 vs. Firefox 3 Beta 4: Who is Faster?
The history of Internet Explorer 7 is a vivid example of how not to delay the development and release of programs. Announced on February 15, 2005, it became available to users only in October 2006, not to mention the fact that before that Microsoft had not updated its browser for 5 years. This delay was quite enough to create alternative products such as Firefox and Opera. Their popularity is growing every day, and most of Internet Explorer is used as the easiest way to download an alternative browser.
These events could not affect the policy of Microsoft regarding the development of its Internet applications: the company decided to release Internet Explorer updates every year. And while many people reacted to this promise with a great deal of distrust, Internet Explorer 8 did come to light, at the moment anyone can try its first beta version.
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If you believe the research Net Applications, the share of Internet Explorer in the market is about 74%, despite the constant decline, which occurs mainly due to the outflow of users of IE6. From January to February 2008, the share of Firefox increased by 0.29% and currently stands at 17.27% against 74.88% for Internet Explorer. The release of IE8 and Firefox 3 will not lead to a strong change in the balance of power in the market. According to analysts, indicators will grow in favor of Firefox, its market share by the end of the year will be close to 20%, while Internet Explorer will remain at 70%. The primary goal of the release of IE8 is to stabilize Microsoft’s position in the browser market, and also to eliminate the outdated IE6. Judging how it will turn out to be difficult at the moment, but the first impression is often correct, therefore, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 should be rated right now.
In terms of the design and usability of Internet Explorer 8, it practically doesn’t differ from the 7th version; all the improvements mainly affected the menu structure and the new panel for quick opening of bookmarks, familiar to Firefox users.
Of the innovations, it is also worth noting special features for developers of sites, which are in the Developer Tools button, after pressing which the edit window of the viewed site appears.
The “Emulate IE7” button deserves special attention, after clicking on it, Internet Explorer 8 starts displaying pages in the same way as version 7 of the browser does. This is currently the most useful feature, as some sites in IE8 are distorted to the point of impossibility. Also noteworthy is the fact that in this mode of operation the pages load faster than in IE7, and the stability of the browser is at a high level, as for beta.
Of the new features in Internet Explorer 8, the most interesting are Activities and WebSlices. They are special add-ons that help the user interact more actively with various online services. In the case of Activities, this interaction consists in installing add-ons from various sites, with the help of which, upon further use, you can select text to search for it, for example, on Yahoo! Maps or on e-bay, without leaving the page with the selection. In practice, it all looks like this:
It is even more difficult to explain how WebSlices (“web slices”) work, since its operation requires a website specifically designed for this function. At the moment, you can check the operation of WebSlices on a special version of e-bay, which works quite well with it. Once on the main page, we enter the desired product in the search field, after the page with the search results is displayed, we move the cursor over any purchase offer and a purple icon appears on its left side.
After clicking it, the browser offers to subscribe to WebSlice with this product, and after confirming the selection, a new tab will appear on the quick launch bar.
But to call it simply “bookmark” would be too easy, this is the very WebSlice, when you click on it, information about the previously selected product or service appears. Plus, it will be updated, so that the user can easily track the price change and make a purchase at any time convenient for him, the same is true for weather services, etc.
This is, perhaps, all that can be said about the functionality of Internet Explorer 8, and although it works stably, the final version is still far off, so there is no point in praising or scolding it.
Comparing Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Firefox 3 Beta 4 with each other is, of course, not entirely correct, but it’s very difficult to do without considering Microsoft’s new browser, especially since these versions of the programs are nothing but prototypes of future final releases. Therefore, in order to understand what may change in the “browser wars”, it is worthwhile to conduct a small test.
Before you provide information about the results, it is worth a little to talk about the testing methodology. All measurements were carried out on a laptop with a Pentium M 1.6 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM in Windows XP SP2 using two Acid tests, as well as a JavaScript speed test found on the Celtic Kane website.
A few weeks ago, the IE8 developers reported that the browser completely passed the Acid 2 test, this is indeed true, but at the same time there are several questions to this statement. The results of Internet Explorer 8 in Acid 2 are a bit alarming, since, while passing the test on the official website of the Web Standards Project, it correctly displayed the image, but when re-checking the results on the Acid Tests website, the picture turned out to be a bit distorted. In the IE8 developer blog, these results are explained with browser protection settings that prevent it from using ActiveX controls when accessing Acid Tests website. Perhaps this is true, but, nevertheless, all this is very much like the application of the policy of double standards, who knows on which other sites the protection of IE8 will not allow ActiveX to be enabled. In this case, it turns out that the Acid 2 browser was half as it were; he showed this result in Acid Tests:
Firefox 3 did not have any problems with Acid 2 at all; it correctly displayed information in the test with the Web Standards Project and with Acid Tests.
The next Acid 3 test turned out to be much more difficult for browsers, and this is not surprising, because at the moment it is the newest tool for verifying compliance with the requirements of the Web Standards Project.
Despite the fact that the developers of Firefox 3 strive to fully comply with all W3C standards, the Acid 3 browser results were above average.
In Internet Explorer 8, things are much worse, it seems, having concentrated on Acid 2, the developers have not even looked at Acid 3, at least, this is what the test result indicates. It is possible that in future versions of the browser will increase, but it is unlikely that its final version will be able to pass Acid 3
The speed of both browsers is at a high level, it sounds a bit strange for Internet Explorer users who are used to minute page load expectations, especially when using dial-up. However, subjectively, the speed of IE8 can be compared with the speed of Opera, but in practice it is not quite that: the browser speed has increased, but it is still lower than that of Firefox.
To check the speed of browsers, a test was used that shows how fast they are with JavaScript. The best result in it was shown by Opera 9.50a, it is 615 ms and when compared it can be considered a reference.
Firefox 3 scored 693 ms, which can be considered an excellent result.
Internet Explorer 8 performance was higher than the previous version of the browser, but compared to other results are not outstanding.
As a result, Firefox 3 wins almost all items, the results of comparative testing of the final versions of browsers will show a similar result, there is no doubt about that. However, the achievements of Internet Explorer 8 in comparison with its previous versions should not be underestimated either, for Microsoft it is a great achievement, which, undoubtedly, will win its adherents. One can only hope that the final release of Internet Explorer 8 will happen this year, otherwise all the efforts of the developers will be nullified.
http://itc.ua
These events could not affect the policy of Microsoft regarding the development of its Internet applications: the company decided to release Internet Explorer updates every year. And while many people reacted to this promise with a great deal of distrust, Internet Explorer 8 did come to light, at the moment anyone can try its first beta version.
')
If you believe the research Net Applications, the share of Internet Explorer in the market is about 74%, despite the constant decline, which occurs mainly due to the outflow of users of IE6. From January to February 2008, the share of Firefox increased by 0.29% and currently stands at 17.27% against 74.88% for Internet Explorer. The release of IE8 and Firefox 3 will not lead to a strong change in the balance of power in the market. According to analysts, indicators will grow in favor of Firefox, its market share by the end of the year will be close to 20%, while Internet Explorer will remain at 70%. The primary goal of the release of IE8 is to stabilize Microsoft’s position in the browser market, and also to eliminate the outdated IE6. Judging how it will turn out to be difficult at the moment, but the first impression is often correct, therefore, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 should be rated right now.
In terms of the design and usability of Internet Explorer 8, it practically doesn’t differ from the 7th version; all the improvements mainly affected the menu structure and the new panel for quick opening of bookmarks, familiar to Firefox users.
Of the innovations, it is also worth noting special features for developers of sites, which are in the Developer Tools button, after pressing which the edit window of the viewed site appears.
The “Emulate IE7” button deserves special attention, after clicking on it, Internet Explorer 8 starts displaying pages in the same way as version 7 of the browser does. This is currently the most useful feature, as some sites in IE8 are distorted to the point of impossibility. Also noteworthy is the fact that in this mode of operation the pages load faster than in IE7, and the stability of the browser is at a high level, as for beta.
Of the new features in Internet Explorer 8, the most interesting are Activities and WebSlices. They are special add-ons that help the user interact more actively with various online services. In the case of Activities, this interaction consists in installing add-ons from various sites, with the help of which, upon further use, you can select text to search for it, for example, on Yahoo! Maps or on e-bay, without leaving the page with the selection. In practice, it all looks like this:
It is even more difficult to explain how WebSlices (“web slices”) work, since its operation requires a website specifically designed for this function. At the moment, you can check the operation of WebSlices on a special version of e-bay, which works quite well with it. Once on the main page, we enter the desired product in the search field, after the page with the search results is displayed, we move the cursor over any purchase offer and a purple icon appears on its left side.
After clicking it, the browser offers to subscribe to WebSlice with this product, and after confirming the selection, a new tab will appear on the quick launch bar.
But to call it simply “bookmark” would be too easy, this is the very WebSlice, when you click on it, information about the previously selected product or service appears. Plus, it will be updated, so that the user can easily track the price change and make a purchase at any time convenient for him, the same is true for weather services, etc.
This is, perhaps, all that can be said about the functionality of Internet Explorer 8, and although it works stably, the final version is still far off, so there is no point in praising or scolding it.
Comparing Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Firefox 3 Beta 4 with each other is, of course, not entirely correct, but it’s very difficult to do without considering Microsoft’s new browser, especially since these versions of the programs are nothing but prototypes of future final releases. Therefore, in order to understand what may change in the “browser wars”, it is worthwhile to conduct a small test.
Before you provide information about the results, it is worth a little to talk about the testing methodology. All measurements were carried out on a laptop with a Pentium M 1.6 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM in Windows XP SP2 using two Acid tests, as well as a JavaScript speed test found on the Celtic Kane website.
A few weeks ago, the IE8 developers reported that the browser completely passed the Acid 2 test, this is indeed true, but at the same time there are several questions to this statement. The results of Internet Explorer 8 in Acid 2 are a bit alarming, since, while passing the test on the official website of the Web Standards Project, it correctly displayed the image, but when re-checking the results on the Acid Tests website, the picture turned out to be a bit distorted. In the IE8 developer blog, these results are explained with browser protection settings that prevent it from using ActiveX controls when accessing Acid Tests website. Perhaps this is true, but, nevertheless, all this is very much like the application of the policy of double standards, who knows on which other sites the protection of IE8 will not allow ActiveX to be enabled. In this case, it turns out that the Acid 2 browser was half as it were; he showed this result in Acid Tests:
Firefox 3 did not have any problems with Acid 2 at all; it correctly displayed information in the test with the Web Standards Project and with Acid Tests.
The next Acid 3 test turned out to be much more difficult for browsers, and this is not surprising, because at the moment it is the newest tool for verifying compliance with the requirements of the Web Standards Project.
Despite the fact that the developers of Firefox 3 strive to fully comply with all W3C standards, the Acid 3 browser results were above average.
In Internet Explorer 8, things are much worse, it seems, having concentrated on Acid 2, the developers have not even looked at Acid 3, at least, this is what the test result indicates. It is possible that in future versions of the browser will increase, but it is unlikely that its final version will be able to pass Acid 3
The speed of both browsers is at a high level, it sounds a bit strange for Internet Explorer users who are used to minute page load expectations, especially when using dial-up. However, subjectively, the speed of IE8 can be compared with the speed of Opera, but in practice it is not quite that: the browser speed has increased, but it is still lower than that of Firefox.
To check the speed of browsers, a test was used that shows how fast they are with JavaScript. The best result in it was shown by Opera 9.50a, it is 615 ms and when compared it can be considered a reference.
Firefox 3 scored 693 ms, which can be considered an excellent result.
Internet Explorer 8 performance was higher than the previous version of the browser, but compared to other results are not outstanding.
As a result, Firefox 3 wins almost all items, the results of comparative testing of the final versions of browsers will show a similar result, there is no doubt about that. However, the achievements of Internet Explorer 8 in comparison with its previous versions should not be underestimated either, for Microsoft it is a great achievement, which, undoubtedly, will win its adherents. One can only hope that the final release of Internet Explorer 8 will happen this year, otherwise all the efforts of the developers will be nullified.
http://itc.ua
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/24318/
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