"Right at this moment, big changes have or are about to occur in three well-known browsers: Internet Explorer is finally being updated, with version 7 in its third beta and almost ready to roll out the door; Firefox is also ripening an upgrade beta for its Version 2.0 - it's in beta 1; and finally Opera, which has a devoted but smaller following, has recently come out with Version 9.0. So, three new browsers in the same year, after no action for a half decade. How do they stack up?"
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2006-05-11
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"Umm... Damn right you are Mr. Reviewer. Firefox has a BOOKMARKS button which you can add to the browser. It's there by default as well; no extensions required.
Attention to detail... none!"
Funny, it is not in my Firefox unless I download the extension. There is a bookmarks menu, no bookmarks button.
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Though some things are essential (like security, pop-up blocking, etc) others are not.
Yes, i might use lot this or that feature but many people don't and for some it's just confusing and/or bloat.
Having said this, i think the article doesn't try to "benchmark" the browsers but instead do a good clean comparison.
Thumbs up!
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It seems to me that Firefox 2 has this http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1990854,00.asp">miss... feature.
At least, if I read the http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/releases/2.0b1.html">re... we see:
Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash.
By the way. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191605&cid=15744000">Someon... May be with an extension.
Edited 2006-07-19 20:42
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One peeve: Why isn't there still a one-click button (by default) for adding a new tab? You can use the middle mouse button ..., but sometimes you want a new empty tab, which in Firefox requires going through menus, or double clicking on the empty space to the right of the last tab ...
Did they take away CTRL-T? That's one of my most-used key sequences when using Firefox. I wouldn't use those mouse thingies in any case.
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2005-07-18
We also ran the browsers through the Acid2 Browser Test, from the Web Standard Project. It's an attempt to test how well a browser complies with web standards.
Yes! That's what I wanted to see. And Opera wins. I'm disappointed the other two didn't pass, especially Firefox.
Actually, I would also have liked to read more about CSS implementation improvements and bug fixes.
Member since:
2006-04-20
I think the article gave us a fair and even-handed comparison of the three rival browsers. What I found slightly annoying: the rather simple list of what was new in their latest incarnations, 'according to the makers' (or some such phrase). This gave me the idea ExtremeTech looked in from the outside, so to speak. A regular user knows exactly how a new version differs from an earlier one. That's why I myself, for instance, have still not 'upgraded' to Opera 9, because I don't have a use for widgets or a torrent client. Opera 8.54 is perfection.
But, all in all: a nice, informative review.
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This was already on OSNews before from another source 
(quite different results though...)
http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/157
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2005-08-18
"But all the themes we found merely changed the interface buttons and perhaps added an image to the top menu area; they don't change the window borders the way you can with WindowBlinds."
Nooooo, really? Did anyone seriously expect Firefox to skin the entire OS?
"Unlike the other two browsers in this roundup, IE7 has an RSS button that's always there below the address bar."
Oh, just like how Firefox also has an orange button for sites with RSS feeds? It's even right there in the addressbar.
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2005-10-20
Memory Usage in MB (no pages loaded)
Firefox 2 Beta 1: 42
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3: 24
Opera 9.0: 53
IE 6.0: 17
Firefox 1.5.0.4: 17.8
We used the same group of tabbed pages on all of the browsers—ExtremeTech home, Yahoo, PCMag.com, YouTube, BBC World, and Flickr (with the same picture showing). With this tab load the results were as follows:
Memory Usage in MB Loading Six Tabs
Firefox 2 Beta 1: 73
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3: 70
Opera 9.0: 52
IE 6.0: 155
Firefox 1.5.0.4: 56
So This proves that Opera actually uses less memory, when it has 6 tabs loaded, then Opera without any page open. Wow. Does this translate into -- if I open 100 tabs in opera, the memory usage would be 10 MB and if I open 500 tabs then Opera will not use memory at all :).
Pun Intended.
Otherwise a nice article.
Member since:2005-07-12
>> So This proves that Opera actually uses less memory, when it has 6 tabs loaded
I think they screwed up on that one - on XP Opera's normal footprint at LOAD with no tabs open is 41,820kb... Once you've opened some tabs though, regardless of how many you have open or closed it hangs around 52k, and doesn't really climb past that until to total size of the pages you are viewing exceeds 8 megs.
What I think happened there is they closed opera with tabs open, started opera, it opened the tabs they had open when they closed it... then they closed all of them for their reading, giving a false number higher than a true 'baseline'
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