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."

Comments

One Page (printable) version

[xmas2003]

Entire report on one page.

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) 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

[evil_Tak]

Anti-phishing worked fine for me when I tried it. I didn't do anything exceptional.

Re:One Page (printable) version

[eqisow]

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

[killjoe]

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.

Re:One Page (printable) version

[bwilson]

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

[Myen]

Actually, nobody release the --enable-debug builds of Firefox. You can tell if you have one, because you'd see a bunch of text in the console (at the minimum, at shutdown when it tells you about the leak stats). If you're on Windows, that means actually opening a console window too.

It's unfair

[Sohil]

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

[IANAAC]

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

[theodicey]

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

[Shining Celebi]

If the Firefox team decides to de-prioritize the standards that people care about and instead work on fluff, then they deserve all the criticism they get for it. To gain your popularity from standards and then consciously choose to allow yourself to fall into dead last among modern browsers in standards support is, to say the least, disturbingly hypocritical.

Well, Firefox is still not "dead last" among other browsers. It's still well ahead of IE7 and roughly equal to Opera 9 (iirc Opera has a slight lead, but not much.) Tied for the lead is not the same as dead last. Not only that, but Firefox 3 should put Firefox way ahead, and it's due out May 2007, not exactly the distant future.

Re:It's unfair

[hankwang]

I think you have been taking my comment too seriously. :) I pulled the numbers out of my hat, but a popular non-tech site I maintain has 96% Windows, 85% MSIE, 11% FF. For another site which is has a few popular LaTeX pages it is more like 70, 44, 37%, but let's face it, this is not representative for the general population.

I've seen better

[dtfinch]

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.

Re:I've seen better

[Chosen Reject]

That's all fine and good, but the functionality is the same, and the table says that Firefox and Opera don't have it. So in essence they are claiming the Firefox and Opera don't have the ability to mark web pages for easy retrieval later. That's like saying the French don't have heads simply because their word for it is tete. Same thing, different name.

Re:Opera?

[creepynut]

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

No new tab buttion?

[turbo_magic_hat]

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.

Re:No new tab buttion?

[Kandenshi]

I just middle click on my "home" button. *shrugs*

Loads a new tab for me just fine with only one click. Or did you mean a single keyboard button?

For that, I suggest "e" =D

Re:Opera?

[Knuckles]

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?

[bartkusa]

Opera's UI is extremely customizable. 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?

[Troed]

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

Free, of course.

Re:Opera?

[14CharUsername]

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?

[Rob T Firefly]

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:Opera's UI is slick?

[bartkusa]

Tools > Appearance > Skin > Windows Native

Re:Searching from the address bar

[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:A bit off-topic, but...

[Yvan256]

First of all I'm not sure Windows XP is more secure than Win98SE (though it is more stable).

Second, not everyone can afford to pay for a Windows upgrade and/or new hardware. They're not going to switch to Mac anytime soon.

And third but not least, "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it." A lot of people are still using Win95/98/ME because it works fine for them. They're not going to switch to Linux anytime soon.

Re:Searching from the address bar

[doti]

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:/// 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:Spelling checkers

[Bogtha]

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.

Be warned

[The MAZZTer]

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.

Re:Searching from the address bar

[Dan East]

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

Re:yebbut

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the TabMix Plus extension, yes you can. Drag&Drop tab placement. I reorder my tabs to suit my wants/needs all the time.

Re:What about extensions?

[Breakfast Pants]

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:Pro IE 7

[Blimey85]

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 up and send an email. They check which ones they want to install, restart 'Fox, and they've got 'em.

I do get what you are saying about how it's very different once you get it tweaked and the stock install is pretty bland. The idea is for the core installation to be as small as possible. Users can then add whatever they want via extensions. You or anyone else could package Firefox with whatever variety of extensions you like and then people could install that but considering how easy extensions are to install (typically anyway, some end up not working at all or as you say, have bugs or security flaws), it should be fairly trivial for a user to get it setup just how they want it.

You say the extensions take up memory and processor time but you want lots of features enabled by default. I agree that Firefox uses more memory than it should however it would use a lot more if a long list of features were enabled by default. Although maybe the extension system causes features to use more memory than they would need if they were part of the main app.