Mozilla Infographic Compares Firefox And Internet Explorer
Is Internet Explorer 9 a modern web browser, and how does it compare to Firefox 4.
These are the two questions that Mozilla's Paul Rouget tries to answer with an infographic and a blog post.
The infographic looks at the technical side of things, web compatibility, platform support and hardware acceleration to name a few.
All show that Firefox 4, and sometimes even Firefox 3.5 or 3.6, do better than Internet Explorer 9.
In his blog post he comes to the conclusion that Internet Explorer 9 is not a modern web browser. The conclusion is that IE9 supports less web standards and less technologies than Firefox 4 and can therefore be considered "More modern, but not really modern".
One of the arguments brought forth describes how Firefox 3.5 supported technologies such as video and canvas tags years ago while Microsoft added support for these technologies only recently.
This raises a question from a user perspective. How many websites actually used those tags two years ago? The same questions can be asked for HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript Api compatibilities.
Are users actually benefiting from the additional 125 points of Firefox 4 in the HTML5 test or is the majority of users never going to visit a website that makes use of those tags? What if Microsoft plans to add support with the first major update of IE9?
The official transition to HTML5 will be in 2014 and while some web developers are already making use of HTML5 technologies the majority of websites do not require the technology yet.
Another interesting aspect of comparisons is to look at the things that are not mentioned or included. No mentioning of the Acid3 test? Probably because the values are to close (IE9 95%, Firefox 4 97%). No mentioning of JavaScript performance? Maybe because Internet Explorer 9 is a tad faster, albeit not much.
I think that Firefox 4 is a great browser and the developers should not feel the need to point at other browsers to show that. Internet Explorer 9 is another great browser, a huge step forward compared to Internet Explorer 8. Office users who are stuck with IE8 will sing out in joy when the system admin updates the browser. It is faster and offers better compatibilities.
What's your take on the infographic and blog post?
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it’s 2013 now, and firefox, chrome, and ie10 all have the same market share
ie10 is the windows 8 mobile browser, gets release on pc and performs exceptionally well for an ms product, firefox 22 and chrome still kills it in compatibility, add-ons, and are still marginally faster.
I think there is no comparison of internet explorer and Firefox..
“Maybe because Internet Explorer 9 is a tad faster, albeit not much.â€
{citation needed}
On http://arewefastyet.com/ you can see some benchmarks for non-IE browsers. Microsoft have been claimed to prohibit publishing of performance graphs that compare IE with other browsers.
Simon I’m referring to the Sunspider JavaScript test in the example.
” What if Microsoft plans to add support with the first major update of IE9?”
Does that graph lie, or are you proposing that MS could (and would) double the amount of supported features in the webbrowser in a “service pack” update? Doubling the features sounds like one or two major versions from my gut feeling.
“Are users actually benefiting from the additional 125 points of Firefox 4 in the HTML5 test or is the majority of users never going to visit a website that makes use of those tags?”
Well, I beleive there are javascript libraries and plugin that add the most sorely missing features in IE. Web developers can (and have been known to be doing — I have this on an internal webservice) plug in a compatibility layer to add much of the missing features.
As a user, if you’re stuck using IE due to misguided corporate policy you may perhaps be able to install the Chromeframe plugin.
“Maybe because Internet Explorer 9 is a tad faster, albeit not much.”
{citation needed}
>I think that Firefox 4 is a great browser and the developers should not feel the need to point at other browsers to show that
I agree, but as you pointed out yourself, the infographic and blog post were the work of one man. A man who happens to be an evangelist doing what evangelists do. Nothing unusual there, and no need to point at what the developers are doing either.
Firefox 3.5 do not support HTML 5…
IE9’s claim of false showing itself MORE standards compliant than competitors by showing falsely crafted tables is misleading and lying. Tests like HTML5test.com and caniuse.com are balanced tests where IE9 falls behind and by some margin.
Somebody want to mention Chrome 11? The canary build kicks both of their asses.
this was my take on it on the 10 when the ie9 was supposed to be out .
Chrome kicking butt
http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/179055_10150097827185025_546180024_6590196_1947844_n.jpg