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Microsoft Says IE Faster Than Chrome and Firefox
An anonymous reader writes "According to its own speed tests, Microsoft's Internet Explorer loads most websites faster than both Chrome and Firefox when looking at the top 25 websites on the Internet. 'As you can see, IE8 outperforms Firefox 3.05 and Chrome 1.0 in loading 12 websites, Chrome 1.0 places second by loading nine sites first, and Firefox brings up the rear by loading four sites faster than the other two browsers. Also, in case you missed it, IE loads mozilla.com faster than Firefox, and Firefox loads microsoft.com faster than IE, just for kicks.'"
I'll believe it when I see it for myself.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I don't care if page loads faster if it doesn' show correctly. I bet lynx can load it faster than IE, but that doesn't make it the best browser.
IE8 doesn't even have full CSS3 support. No corner-radius? What the heck is MS thinking?
...Microsoft tests its own release candidate software on its release candidate operating system and finds it faster than existing tried-and-tested software.
Very fair.
...it's faster than the soon-to-be-old version of Firefox, and the soon-to-be-old version of Chrome. Way to stay ahead of the pack, there.
Though, to be honest, that's actually not to bad for IE.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Upcoming version of browser outperforms current version of competitors is not remarkable. A most relevant comparison would include Firefox 3.1 (already in Beta) and Safari 4 (also in Beta).
IE always has been faster. And I'm a firefox fanboy. Even with the bulk of add-ons stripped out, FF is still sluggish. IE is practically part of the OS, and that's a competitive advantage that FF can't beat. It just beats IE in every category other than speed.
I don't know if it's because I'm using Adblock and Noscript but Slashdot loads really slowly on my Firefox and locks it up while it's doing it.
IE always has been faster. And I'm a firefox fanboy. Even with the bulk of add-ons stripped out, FF is still sluggish. IE is practically part of the OS, and that's a competitive advantage that FF can't beat. It just beats IE in every category other than speed.
No. On Windows, IE starts faster than Firefox, much the same way Safari starts faster on Mac OS X (big surprise). However, even on Windows, the latest versions of Firefox beat IE in rendering and Javascript performance benchmarks.
Sounds like Microsoft has been taking lessons from the NVidia and ATI/AMD School of Benchmarking. Lesson one at that school: pick some subset of data and "optimize" your benchmarks until they make your product look faster.
My blog
This is a stupid thing for Microsoft to do, because:
(a) if an independent source verifies the test, then nothing will be reported (because there is nothing to report)
(b) if an independent source refutes the test, then Microsoft are liars.
(c) if no independent source tests the test, then no one will believe Microsoft, except those that want justify their existing use of IE.
The smart thing to do would have been to get a completely independent and respected source to run the original test - or to destroy the reputations of IE6 and IE7 by comparing them with a vastly improved IE8 (which would have been trusted results from Microsoft).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Yes, but then they could just have a local cache server running on the test machine... It could just be the case that IE is more aggresively cacheing (or even incorrectly cachine) content. IIRC the default install for IE is "Always use the cache" whereas Firefox et al, it's "Check with server". Internet Explorer users could be being served outdated content faster, but Firefox users be served newer content slightly slower.
The load time of IE6 is irrelevant. It's a nearly 8-year old browser, service packs notwithstanding. Lynx starts up faster than just about anything, but you don't see people bringing it up, because it doesn't belong in this discussion.
Good point, and Firefox can't touch IE in terms of damage caused by becoming infected with a trojan.
Wait, wait, who cares about startup times. You mean, like, you actually close your browser?
Now, don't tell me you also reboot your system.
Let's be fair here. For the longest time, the argument of Linux booting slowly has been rebuked with a tongue-in-cheek "I see where you come from, but real systems needn't be rebooted every other hour to remain stable". For me it's the same with browsers, I close them once every couple days.
Yet, sadly, I have to agree that FF has a problem here. It becomes really, really sluggish (and a mem hog) after a few days...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hate it when people say this. You obviously are leaving out a huge part of any research: discussion of the findings. You don't prove or disprove anything with the numbers. You use the numbers from your research COMBINED with existing literature and then hold a discussion of the findings. Numbers on their own mean nothing, but in proper research you give those number relevance by applying the appropriate context in which to understand what the numbers mean. What you MEAN to say is that PEOPLE can make the numbers say anything they want, because the numbers themselves don't prove anything.
The browser wars are almost at that point already, you know,
like when it became irrelevant just how fast your CPU was?
Most of the browsers are "good enough" for the average Joe, so
bragging about the loading times for a particular set of web
sites is falling upon deaf ears.
IE has always been a bug laiden, mish-mashed piece of software
and it became popular only because it came as part of the
windows operating system.
A lot of people use it at least once, to download a copy of their
favourite browser, which then replaces use of IE on windows.
The smarter people don't use windows at all.
This competition is futile and well past its usefullness.
If they were one big company, and controlled 75% of the market share, of course they would. Let's say this super car company existed. And all the cars they built were tall and so required 7' of clearance. Now some worldwide body comes along and says the real "standard" for cars is that they should require no more than 5' of clearance. And a few smaller startup car companies embrace that 5' standard and start building shorter cars (and they capture about 20-25% of the market).
Now, you're building a fast-food business in the U.S. and your building the cover for the drive-thru. Do you build it to 5' just because some international body said that was the "standard" or do you recognize the REAL standard and build it to at least 7'?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Notice that the number one website, Google.com, requires only about 0.2-0.3 of a second to load, which is significantly faster than most of the rest of the sites on the list. Seems reasonable that has something to do with it being number one.
Live.com, on the other hand, takes about 3.4 seconds to load. According to those numbers, I could pull up Google.com, enter a query, and get results before I could even load Live.com's home page.
You leave your browser open while playing games? Doesn't that eat up memory and cause slowdown?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
More like:
"My [unreleased Microsoft software] is [theoretically superior] to your [available and fully released software]."
This covers all MS marketing from the dawn of time.
"Don't buy our competitor, we're working on a product which will blow theirs away!"
Every time, in every market, this is their script. When will people learn?
In the case of IE8 performance, what they don't mention is that page render time is mostly irrelevant. The difference between the most performant and least performant browsers are not significant on modern hardware. What you'll really notice--and where Firefox is far ahead of *released* versions of IE--is JavaScript performance. Almost every site of modest complexity uses *some* javascript, these days, and 'web app' sites use a *lot*.
It's the old "benchmark something irrelevant" trick. Gives good numbers, fools the uninitiated.
I want my Cowboyneal
Yes, every site uses Javascript, but only to track users or fix browsers bugs.
Instead, take a site like GMail, which relies heavily on Javascript, and just open it with IE.
IE is very slow on large pages, when you use JS to manipulate the DOM.
Explorer has real rendering problems to resolve. The speed issue, to me, is MS posturing but the rendering part is a very big deal. Why doesn't ms use the same engine as chrome, firefox and Safari and leave it at that. I am a web developer who goes crazy when dealing with Explorer. Morgan's post is spot on BTW.
"Never stop questioning" - Einstein
Looking at the mean (a more accurate measure of browser performance than simply a count of how many sites its best at), Chrome comes in first at 3.4s, followed by IE at 3.5s and Firefox at 3.8s.
Of course Microsoft is gonna say this. And it's absolutely no different than Firefox's slogan of "Faster, Safer, Better". Two of those statements are outright false, and one is complete opinion. Yet people let Mozilla get away with using this line without a single complaint. Apple does the same bullshit with promoting Safari, and we don't hear a peep out of people then either.
Bottom line is, don't be a hypocrite just because of some childish need to hate Microsoft. Apple = Microsoft = Mozilla. There is zero difference when it comes to a company wanting to make money.
It also helps to benchmark your beta or release candidate against two point releases back of your most feared competitor who also has a beta available. Why is this IE8 vs. Firefox 3.0.5 rather than IE 7 vs. FF 3.0.x and IE8 vs. Firefox 3.1beta? I think we know. FF 3.1 beta must eat IE8's lunch.
Yes I leave my browser on all day.
However I also reboot my system every day when I wake up to save energy and incidentally $$$$. Unless we are talking about a server why should a computer be on when you are asleep*? That is just irrationally wasteful and when aggregated over millions of users probably to the tune of wasting a who power plants worth of electricity a year, ie hundreds of thousand of tons of carbon. Your uptime bragging rights are NOT worth making global warming worse.
*Admittedly some people may be downloading torrents or doing distributed computing, but does that have to be EVERY night?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?