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Look Out, Firefox 3 — IE8 Is Back On Top For Now
CWmike writes "Internet Explorer 8 has shipped in its final version and is ready to take on its rivals. Preston Gralla reviewed it and says the latest version of Microsoft's browser leapfrogs its closest competition, Firefox 3, for basic browsing and productivity features — it has better tab handling, a niftier search bar, a more useful address bar, and new tools that deliver information directly from other Web pages and services. IE8 has also been tweaked for security and includes a so-called 'porn mode,' new anti-malware protection, and better ways to protect your privacy. The most noticeable new features? Accelerators and Web Slices. Think of an Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page. Web Slices deliver changing information from a Web page you're not actively visiting directly to IE8. There's one big problem for many, though. No add-ins, and there doesn't appear to be such an ecosystem on the horizon. So if you're a fan of add-ins and customizing the browser itself, writes Gralla, Firefox is superior. But for the actual browsing experience, IE8 has the upper hand — for now."
Looks like a bunch of fluff. Not even anything about raw performance or memory footprint or standards compliance.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
My first question with every new release of IE is, "How well does it render valid HTML+CSS?"
Yeah, I don't really care if it's fast and has "Web Accelerators". Will it display properly written pages properly? Are developers going to have to keep putting hacks into their pages to deal with IE quirks? If they aren't adhering to standards, then it's not really worth much.
Or, Put simply, "No matter how slow it is, at least it has Adblock"
Agreed.
Besides, I think that whoever is using Firefox will continue to use it regardless of what IEX Browser comes out. The people that will be moving to IE8 will be those people that have used are privy to the previous IE Browser incarnations.
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
And NoScript. And greasemonkey. And GMail Manager. And... The list goes on and on and on... Any one of my 'necessary' plugins makes Firefox more desirable than any other browser.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Well, yes.
And don't forget NoScript.
The thing is, with Adblock and NoScript, browsing on Firefox *is* faster than on any other browser. A
But Adblock, NoScript, and Flashblock cause noticeable speed-ups, especially if your Internet connection is lousy.
Explain to me how Firefox is bloated. Compared to what? Its former self? Other browsers? The executable size of Firefox has been remarkable stable since version 1.0 --- it hovers around the 10MB mark. Just what is the bloat then? Nearly everything in Firefox has a direct browsing application. It is justified to call those features not bloat. The whole "SQLite database is bloat" argument goes out the window about 5 minutes after you start using the awesome bar. Bloat is one of those words that's easy to fling around. What would you get rid of? The plugin system? Look at the other replies to your comment. The crash manager? The tabbed browsing??? Firefox currently has its problems, but bloat is not one of them.
I'd bet that a faster render engine WITH ads still loses against a slightly slower one and adblock.
Sheldon
Yes, I'd like to know who the devs are for the /. UI. I like slashdot a lot, but one has to wonder: if slashdot's own code is this bad and the interface is this bad, just how much geek cred does /. have anymore? A geek site should set the standard. Looks like they got some MBAs to redesign this site.
blah blah blah