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FireFox 3.1 Leaves IE in the Dust
Anonymous writes "Granted, FireFox 3.1 is just a beta and IE 8 is also in beta, but it looks like Microsoft has some ground to make up when it comes to browser performance. Given that Mozilla appears to be on a much faster cycle than Microsoft with this stuff, it's also possible that it could increase the gap even more before IE 8 is GA, no?"
both are slower than Opera.
This destroys Microsoft's claim that their intimate knowledge of the OS that runs IE will increase performance.
This proves that Microsoft's intimate knowledge of their OS actually inhibits performance of IE and therefore all other Microsoft products.
Microsoft is a victim of their own feature-rich corporate culture. They are a victim of their customers non-uniform demands.
The issue is similar to the ones that have always plagued Java; you have to load massive libraries to do miniscule tasks and that causes noticeable overhead, when they were sadly intended to save time! Firefox is simply more minimal, and it is through their actively sought after security footprint that they deliver better performance by default.
Firefox loads what you need to surf and also lets you modify the experience -- you are in control.
Add with that experience, superior plugins like NoScript, and you also save bandwidth because Flash files don't load by default and scripts don't tie up resources unless you approve them to do so. NoScript was designed for security, but with the added benefit that you get faster performance with it.
Even when you look at Google Chrome, which is also a valid attempt at increasing performance (they flaunt security as a pillar of their design, but their cheerleading is unwarranted), the fact that you can't control scripts that are allowed to run, limits the user and make the user bound to the control of the webmaster, who typically controlled by a business or corporation that is only in it for the money and will infringe on rights of users without any form of conscience or compassion.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's perhaps a bit confusing to mention IE8 in the subject as it was not compared to FF3.1 - IE7 was. I.e. a more apples-to-apples test might have been production FF3.0 versus IE7 or better yet, beta FF3.1 versus IE8.
Having said that, the speed improvements are very impressive, in what ChannelWeb says and other reports. And yea, FF3.1 is setting a darn high bar for IE8 - bring it on FF!
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Is it just an excuse to get you a free pass on bugs?
When is the press going to realize that Java != Javascript? (Or Java !== Javascript, even!) Comparing "Java" performance between browsers is meaningless. (And isn't what SunSpider does anyway.) Comparing JavaScript performance has a very real impact on the users.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Is "GA" a common abbreviation? I assume it's a contraction of "generally available", but I did think of, and discount, a few other possibilities first given it's used in conjunction with IE8;
God Awful (too obvious)
Grizzly Adams (not sure where the bad 80s drama comes into things)
Ground to Air (IE could be a Weapon Of Markup Destruction..)
Goatse Arse (Ass if you're American)
Gabon (.ga is the country code for there..)
Standards Non-compliant (using Microsoft Alphabet)
http://twitter.com/onion2k
How many people are going to try a browser because "it is faster?" It is great for the people who already use Firefox, but the majority of new Firefox users had the kid who knows computers down the street install it for them. Those using IE are probably going to continue to use IE until someone manages to get across to them how bad an idea it is, or until whatever apps they are using at work which only work in IE are replaced.
As far as I can see, this is a comparison of Firefox 3.1 with IE7, not IE8 as the summary seems to imply. I am as happy as the next man that FF3.1 is faster, but as a benchmarking exercise, this is pretty limited. How about a comparison including IE8, Opera, Chrome and Safari?
If you've even remotely been keeping up with FireFox, WebKit and IE progress, it's no surprise that IE8 fares poorly. It fared poorly the day it was released, which was about two months ago. Why are we getting this story now?
As a side note, IE8 does fix the pathologically bad performance IE6/IE7 exhibited on certain SunSpider benchmarks. That alone should improve its overall SunSpider score by an order of magnitude. Its javascript engine will still be 2-3X slower than FireFox and Safari, but it will at least be in the same "ball park".
For the life of me, I can't understand why Microsoft continues to abandon its strength.
It feels like the .NET koolaid is coming even to the IE team. Microsoft's .NET push now borders on maniacal, standardizing on .NET and in places where it should not be standardized. Performance matters, particularly when processors aren't getting any faster, just more parallel. Microsoft's has left C++ to languish, has all but abandoned C, and as such has no real performance tool in their own arsenal.
At the same time, the OSS community is actually slogging through and solving some of the difficult problems of making large projects in C++ that perform - getting better experience with the STL, when to use and when not to use, changing compilers to respond, developing automated testing methodologies to overcome what the compilers can't detect, and so on.
There should be no reason for the Windows desktop to be stagnant for fast applications, but Microsoft has basically abandoned it and is pushing developers to do the same. All the new display stuff in Windows requires .NET.. one wonders, how long will it be before Linux has similar systems but are presented as a simple C library that any system can use, regardless of whether it is a managed platform or not.
This is my sig.
I don't see that the things they mention are fair or informative tests. Yes, there's some browser infrastructure involved but other components are doing most of the work:
Maybe Firefox 3.1 is much faster than IE 8 but this article doesn't tell me anything new.
It's not like IE has not been a slow dog in javascript performance and standards adoption. Yeah, IE 7/8 are supposed to be an improvement, but since IE is years behind and their development cycles seem to be as slow as their javascript engine (probably due to compatibility) it's not like IE 8 or 9 is going to catchup with the rest of the browsers easily.
BTW, those benchmarks in TFA were probably run with the new tracemonkey javascript engine disabled (it need to be enabled manually in about:config). And my firefox nightly version passes 93/100 on the acid 3 test.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but Firefox 3.0.3 sucks on my three XP machines. Version 3.0.2 worked just fine. I let Firefox upgrade itself to 3.0.3 and it immediately started crashing. It crashed so much that I actually had to use IE to download a copy of 3.0.2 to downgrade Firefox on those machines. And Firefox 3.0.3 crashes on my Ubuntu machine far far more often that earlier versions ever did (although I'm still using 3.0.3 on Ubuntu).
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Last time I checked, Ctrl+Tab switched tabs in Firefox 2, it's just a new flashy display in 3.1
"The issue is similar to the ones that have always plagued Java; you have to load massive libraries to do miniscule tasks and that causes noticeable overhead, when they were sadly intended to save time!" - by mfh (56) on Monday October 20, @11:02AM (#25441013)
When you load a library, & call out its API functions to leverage in another executable (usually an .exe)?
You don't LOAD THE WHOLE THING @ ONCE into the calling app's memory space - YOU ONLY LOAD THE FUNCTION PORTION YOU NEED, period.
(API function call loads from .DLL's are NOT an "all or nothing load" into a calling apps' memory space (in-process calls))
----
"Firefox is simply more minimal, and it is through their actively sought after security footprint that they deliver better performance by default" - by mfh (56) on Monday October 20, @11:02AM (#25441013)
AND, FF doesn't do, or is by itself incapable of, doing much of what IE can in Intranet environs for businesses' internal apps (especially those that use ActiveX controls, or even some functions of .NET via say, ASP.NET).
Every considered that much?
APK
P.S.=> It's hilarious sometimes, when you "purely web guys" try to describe HOW the underlying OS really works, as well as its API (because most times, most of you are way, WAY wrong) in Windows, & the person I am replying to here is just yet another example! apk
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024.aspx
If they had simply added to this list: CSS 3 columns, multiple backgrounds, and
border-radius, I think I'd be pretty satisfied with it. *sigh*
Well, that's also not taking into account the abysmal js performance
it's going to have compared to FF3.1, Safari/Chrome & Opera.
At least they got most of CSS 2.1 in there. We can treat it as the
retarded sibling, rather than the quadriplegic sibling that has to be
turned a couple of times a day so it doesn't get bed sores.
I think IE8 will be a great competitor to Firefox.
Firefox v1.5.
I'm holding out for FIrefox 3.11 for Workgroups
IE 8 is a major revision.
FF 3.1 is a minor revision.
Just about any version of Opera is faster than them both.
Learn to compare things.
Where's the SilverLight test, huh? I bet IE wins that one..
I mean, OK, it's nice to have the name and URL both in the dropdown from the location bar, but do they have to use so much space doing it?
Camino had that months earlier, without burning nearly as much real estate on it.
The summary mentions IE8 more than once, but the article is comparing Firefox 3.1 to IE 7 (yes SEVEN - you know, the OLD one!)
The Javascript engine in IE8 is much faster than the one in IE7, so it's a pretty unfair test in the first place and should never have been posted in the first place.
Many posters above already seem to be confused about the IE7/8 thing.
And some of us installed "Old Location Bar" add-in within 20 minutes of installing FF3 because, as somebody so eloquently put it, "If I'd wanted to check my bookmarks, I would have *opened* my bookmarks".
I think it's Georgia. Internally Microsoft doesn't use terms like "alpha" and "beta": a product starts in "Florida" and moves closer to Redmond, so "Washington" means "bug-free". When it reaches "Georgia", it's ready to ship.
It's having the entire browser freeze up because some plugin (I'm looking at you acrobat reader) is downloading and rendering. Why can't this be done on another thread and let me continue reading in another tab?
I have been developing a few SVG based applications for the last 5 years and finally as of the 3.1 beta the performance is becoming acceptable(*). One of my applications is a control panel which has a number of SVG based buttons on it (somewhere around 30 buttons). In the past just moving the mouse over the panel would cause the CPU to chug along at nearly 100% utilization... but now that is mostly gone! Now you have to move the mouse pretty fast to see much utilization. Nice work guys, keep it up!
* On high-end hardware at least. Slower systems still can't handle anything very complicated. I'm hoping they improve performance even more because it's still very common to have a 1.5 Celeron or so (think netbooks) which still have problems with anything other than very basic apps.
It is my understanding that the primary advantages of FF 3.1 are speedups to Javascript and adoption of new HTML tags.
For me (and for much of the web browsing community, such as my cousin, aunt & father, e.g. the 50-84 y.o community) these are USELESS.
1) I am slowly converting my family entirely over to using Firefox with NoScript -- because *anyone* who allows random internet sites to run software on their machine is *nuts* [1].
2) A significant majority of "common" sites will not be using enhanced HTML tags because they have to continue to work with the installed browser base.
This is another example of Mozilla developers getting side-tracked with respect to what is important to *them* rather than what might be important to the community [2].
1. The *real* advantage of Firefox is the selected enabling of Javascript for a few "trusted" relatively non-commercial sites (e.g. gmail, ones bank, ones broker) using NoScript. I will assume the display of pages from such sites is relatively unimpacted by Javascript speedups (since they tend to be network bandwidth or user input consrained). [Though it is worth noting that the gmail javascript appears to be becoming a bit of a pig.]
2. It is worth noting that my cousin, my aunt and my father continue to survive on the internet quite well using dial-up connections (in large part because they live in regions where DSL (or fiber) is unavailable and Cable is too expensive). I presume that G3 service will fall into the $$$ category even when reasonably priced modems that can connect their computers to the net become available.
I don't think average users care much for performance issues. They are usually on slower connections, don't have many tabs opened, and waste more time trying to figure out where to click next. For simple user who probably doesn't read very fast and doesn't have practice in navigating quickly through web pages is loading speed not very important. And for them it just makes no sense bothering installing some other browser because IE is already there and works for their needs. Its the perfect customer for microsoft - they don't need to have the best browser, its enough for them to have just any usable browser which is not falling behind that much. IE is perfect (even if not for us geeks) if its development was not expensive.