Firefox 4 RC Vs. IE9 RC: the First Duel 176
An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 4 vs. IE9 is going to be an epic battle in a reigniting browser war in which Microsoft wants its IE to be seen as a capable browser again. Mozilla struggled to keep the pace with Chrome and IE9, but is about to release the first release candidate, which is expected to be the final version of Firefox 4 as well. This first review of JavaScript, Flash and HTML5 tests seems to indicate that both browsers are about even at the bottom line, while Firefox has the JavaScript edge and IE is ahead in HTML5 performance."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't use Firefox for performance reasons... (Score:5, Insightful)
How it is (Score:3, Insightful)
FF wins for flexibility, configurability and extensibility, the things that matter to most people on this site.
Things like speed and standards compliance are becoming irrelevant, as all 4 modern browsers are more than good enough. It's things like interface and how you can extend and configure the browser. In this Chrome is last, then IE, the Opera with Firefox coming in first, which is why it will be in the lead for a while.
Re:I don't use Firefox for performance reasons... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it matters (Score:5, Insightful)
The people that actually care about this have either made the switch already or have stuck with IE through it all, for whatever reason. Most of the end users I deal with that are on IE either don't have a clear concept of what a browser even is, or basically state they hate change and they've always used IE because "it's good enough" (likely because of all the IE workarounds we web developers have been forced to employ).
Don't get me wrong - from a web development standpoint I'm ecstatic Microsoft is trying hard to improve IE's standards support and functionality. But I just don't believe IE 9's performance is going to make a significant impact on people's perceptions of it.
Re:Anyone else slightly bored of the browser wars? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a little like that. Right now most of the fighting is between Javascript and rendering speed. Javascript performance is definitely no longer a bottleneck, a lot of work has been done there by a lot of people and all of the current browsers are orders of magnitude faster than browsers 5 years ago. Rendering speed is still an issue though, it doesn't do any good if I can manipulate the entire DOM in milliseconds if it takes the browser several seconds to render what I did.
But don't worry, even if it's boring for you the end result is better browsers all around.
Performance is one thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What?? (Score:2, Insightful)
QUOTE: "Ever wondered why Firefox is only just approaching version 4 after more than 6 years, when Chrome is up to version 9 in just over 2 years?"
No because I don't give a fuck about things that don't matter.
The new policy is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. Chrome and Firefox will be up to version 40-something by the end of the decade. IMHO it's more logical to avoid such large numbers by using decimal points. Release 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 this year, not 5, 6, 7.
Looks like marketers have taken over. "Bigger numbers seller better! Let's release Firefox 15 as soon as possible!"
How will this be a market share battle? (Score:1, Insightful)
Last time I checked, IE9 won't work on Windows XP... which is still the OS with the most market share. Many users like myself won't be abandoning XP any time soon, unless it is for a Mac or our Linux partitions. Since modern PC games suck and they contain more malware than gameplay), gaming is no reason for me to "upgrade the OS". I do not buy mainstream PC games any more.
So, can someone tell me why I should go with IE9 over Firefox, especially when I don't even have that choice unless I shell out for an OS upgrade?
Re:IE9 only support 59% of HTML5 features. (Score:4, Insightful)
Since you posted twice I know you're trolling, but I'll bite for anyone that doesn't know better. HTML 5 is in a draft state, much of it's functionality is still in flux with some parts being more stable than others. At this point we can't fault a vendor for not wanting to be stuck with an implementation that's broken later because they implemented an earlier draft.
It's not about the browser (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about open standards. The reason we root for firefox is because Mozilla's goal is not to dominate the web, but to push open standards that can be used by everybody (including Microsoft).
Microsoft's goal, obviously, is purely to dominate. The only reason we see them adopting web standards now is because IE's market share has dropped like a rock over the past 5 years. They have no choice, and we can thank Firefox for that.
Re:How will this be a market share battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it suddenly slashdots job to sell you on IE and Win7?