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Get The Facts

June 19th, 2009 · 6 Comments · Windows

If they can skew the truth, so can I! Except mine will be more accurate and not as skewed. Still fun to do a LITTLE skewing though.

Internet Explorer 8 Firefox 3 Google Chrome 2.0 Comments
Security Yes Yes Firefox and Chrome both use Google’s excellent and proven Anti-Phishing and Anti-Malware lists which are continually updated. They have had this technology for longer than IE has. Furthermore, IE’s continued use of the long-proven vulnerable ActiveX technology makes it a danger to use.
Privacy Yes Yes Firefox and Chrome both include private browsing modes which make sure no trace is left on the user’s system. Furthermore, their lack of ties to a specific host OS, like IE has, allow users to take their favorite browser with them on a thumb drive whenever they use a public computer, further ensuring the privacy of their browsing history and accounts.
Ease of Use Yes Yes Supporting the latest web standards ensures that the browsing experience is universal regardless of which standards-compliant browser you use. Google Chrome’s slimmed down UI makes using the web simple, easy and fun, while Firefox’s high customization makes it easy to have YOUR web, YOUR way. Oh, and tried to use IE8 on Linux, MacOSX, or Windows 2000? Nope. Firefox runs on all of those. A pre-alpha version of Chrome is available for Linux and OSX.
Web Standards Yes Yes IE8 is only JUST implementing CSS2.1, something other browsers have done long ago. They are already movong on to CSS3! IE8’s Compatibility View is a step backwards, ensuring devs do not need to change their websites to adhere to standards if they are only concerned with IE; just tell users to click the button instead! Firefox and Chrome continue to improve their performance and compatibility, and both score highly on web benchmarks and compatibility tests such as Acid3. Internet Explorer has yet to break 20% in Acid3, which most other browsers are near or at 100%!
Developer Tools Yes Yes Firefox has a myriad of useful tools available as extensions, such as Firebug and DOM Inspector. Chrome has tools to allow you to debug scripts, view the DOM tree, and even see how long each resource on your page takes to download and render. As for profiling, the JavaScript engines used in both browsers are significantly faster… but Chrome has a script profiler anyway in the dev branch. And with Firefox extensions I can safely say it probably has one too.
Reliability Yes Yes Firefox does not yet have tab-process support, but it is stable enough not to need it for the time being, in my personal experience. Chrome has crash recovery as well as tab isolation. It’s possible the IE team didn’t notice because Chrome doesn’t crash very often, thanks to tab isolation!
Customization Yes Yes Customizability [sic] is not a word. Firefox has addons that can do anything you could want it to do. IE8 has… toolbars. Chrome already has better support for extensions than IE8 and that support is not yet ready for the public eye.
Compatibility Yes Yes IE has traditionally broken web standards more than any other browser. We have already established that it is not compatible with those web standards. Being compatible with proprietary standards YOU invented is EASY. It should also be mentioned that IE’s compatibility with ActiveX comes at the price of security and privacy.
Manageability Yes Yes The majority of desktop users are not concerned about Group Policy settings, even if they know what it means. Nevertheless, Firefox and Chrome both properly handle downloaded files, marking them as “untrustworthy” in Windows. Firefox also respects a limited number of applicable group policy settings for Internet Explorer. But ultimately if a group policy setting has to be enforced at the application level instead of the system level, a clever user will always find an application to work around it.
Performance Yes Yes Chrome is built for speed, and nothing can come close. Except maybe Safari 4. Firefox is also quite speedy, so it gets an honorable mention. Both browsers have newly designed JavaScript engines tuned for speed. IE8 is still using an outdated engine that is not. Oh they tried, but they didn’t use native code compiling like Chrome and Firefox are.

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