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

Searching from the address bar

[Tet]

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

[Bogtha]

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.

What about extensions?

[Blimey85]

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?

[Yvan256]

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.

A bit off-topic, but...

[Yvan256]

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.

Re:It's unfair

[Bogtha]

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.

ie on acid

[fuzzandwater]

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

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Opera's UI is slick?

[MaWeiTao]

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:It's unfair

[Bogtha]

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.