“Internet Explorer 8 is set to be Microsoft’s most standards compliant browser ever. After originally stating that IE8 would default to the same non-compliant behavior exhibited by IE7, Microsoft relented and plumped for standard-by-default. The first beta of IE8 was released in March and it did indeed default to standards compliance. Web developers have been clamouring for standards compliance for a long time; IE is a long way behind the competition, requiring considerable hacks and workarounds to get pages working properly. IE8 should make things a lot better – but it will still fall far short of the standards set by Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Some of these problems are technical, but others are cultural. Where the other browser developers are open and communicative, Microsoft is still leaving web developers in the dark.”
Why do they call the standards compliant mode, “quirks mode” ?
From Wikipedia..
Quirk
Quirk may refer to
Odd habit
A quirk is an odd habit. Most dictionaries list this word’s origin as “unknownâ€. However, as the surname arises from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, and because the island is somewhat notorious for idiosyncratic behaviors, we may find the word’s origins there. Many surnames have fluctuated in their pronunciations and, hence, their spellings. Prior to the twentieth century, the most common variant for this “phylum†was Quark.
Is that not describing all versions of IE up to version 8 ?
After all, are the previous 7 versions not the ones causing the problems with broken sites ?
I am confused. Why do they call the standards compliant mode, “quirks mode” ?
FTA: Web developers will be able to add a tag to their page (or their web server) to force pages to render in the same manner as IE7. Pages without the tag will continue to use the “doctype switch” to choose between the old, nonstandard “quirks mode” and the new “standards mode”; pages with the new tag will still use the doctype switch, but this time to choose between “quirks mode” and “IE 7 mode.”
RTFA could prevent confusion (and probably immature MS bashing).
There is nothing immature about pointing out the flaws in both Microsoft’s products and their business practices. Even with the improvements IE 7 has, it is still the town idiot of web browsers. IE 8 will be the same.
As long as Microsoft’s browser remains as closed and tied to proprietary crap as it currently is, it will always be the most useless browser of the bunch.
–>There is nothing immature about pointing out the flaws in both Microsoft’s products and their business practices.
Pointing out flaws is of course not immature, except when the flaw pointed out does not exist as in the case of OP.
–>As long as Microsoft’s browser remains as closed and tied to proprietary crap as it currently is, it will always be the most useless browser of the bunch.
If by closed you meant closed source = crap, then I beg to differ and provide Opera as proof.
Regarding “tied to proprietary crap” I would be very much interested and appreciative if you enlighten me what exactly constitutes this proprietary crap. My sole objection of the kind was ActiveX (from a security standpoint) which have been already dealt with in IE7.
The only major issue remaining, web standards support, is supposed to be resolved in IE8.
Personally, I will not fancy the idea of using IE as I am so dependent on several Firefox extensions that my whole computing experience will take an unfortunate dive if I switch. Yet, calling IE useless as a browser, especially for the common ‘internets’ user is, at the very best, unjustified.
You’ve just used a word which has a lot of importance here, which is MAJOR. Microsoft had hard time in the past dealing with web standard, maybe because they thought they were so big that they monopolized even the web. The only thing we can hope, is they do it right this time. I guess IE8 is in fact what have been planned for IE7 and just got postponed. I remember reading a lot of stuff about IE7 supposed improved standard compliance. When Vista launched, the IE dev team finally issued a statement that standards compliance wasn’t so important.
Hopefully, if it true, prepare to get a whole new browsing experience, even with other browser, because MS will target their .Net framework and other web technologies at the standard web. A compliant IE means a better web for anyone. If web developers drop their dependence on old IE-bound technology, more people will start to use other browsers. A lot of people still use IE exclusively because they’re bound to it, because of their banking site or other important institutional site.
No more javascript and CSS hacking, yeah!
“Pointing out flaws is of course not immature, except when the flaw pointed out does not exist as in the case of OP.”
I don’t know. IE sucks so bad to program for that I think one may very well be justified in pointing out non-existent flaws as well.
“If by closed you meant closed source = crap, then I beg to differ and provide Opera as proof.”
No, I don’t mean closed source. I mean closed as in not following web standards, but instead following Microsoft’s proprietary closed standards. You are right, some of this has been fixed in IE 7, but not enough.
“Regarding “tied to proprietary crap” I would be very much interested and appreciative if you enlighten me what exactly constitutes this proprietary crap.”
Same as above. Microsoft’s CSS support is still not up to snuff, and IE should just drop ActiveX support all together. At least IE7 finally made XMLHttpRequest a native object instead of a retarded ActiveX object. All the other browsers follow open standards, Microsoft traditionally has not. They are coming around, but too slowly.
“The only major issue remaining, web standards support, is supposed to be resolved in IE8.”
We’ll see. When I can write web code on my OS X or Linux machine and have it run in IE without all the hoops and headstands, I’ll share in your optimism.
“Yet, calling IE useless as a browser, especially for the common ‘internets’ user is, at the very best, unjustified.”
I’m not calling it a useless browser for the average user at all. I’m saying it is a heap of crap to program for.
Now, IE does only run on Windows, and I would say that with the exception of games, Windows is a useless OS compared to everything else out there, so by association…
Except that you really don’t have any point to make. IE8 is standards-based. You can embed content in your pages to provide compatibility with previous browser versions, but that isn’t the default. So, really, what is your point, other than venting?
Compare the security records of Firefox, Safari, and IE7. Unless you’re one of those people whose ideology prevents him from objectively evaluating cold, hard facts, you’ll discover (oh, the shock, the horror) that Firefox/Safari have had, in fact, far more vulnerabilities than IE7. Yeah, all of that bunk about browsing “safer” was just that: bunk. Further, for all those “advances” that Firefox has made, it’s had remarkable difficulty getting plug-ins to work from one update to the next. I’ve lost count of the number of times that it’s crashed; meanwhile, I’m told to get rid of my existing plug-ins before installing new updates, and then reinstall the plug-ins, afterward. Wow… remind me about all this newfound efficiency that I’m supposed to be seeing…
Opera is closed. Does that make it “crap”, too? Nope, didn’t think so. And what, exactly, is “proprietary” about IE8? Like Opera, it’s built on prevailing Web standards.
Edited 2008-06-16 07:30 UTC
And if you examine those facts without your blinding ideology, you’ll see that the mean time between a security issue being raised, and the patch being issued is a factor smaller than with IE; for whom Microsoft not only does not fully disclose many vulnerabilities, and tries to mask them as Windows bugs, they leave people in a state of complete insecurity for weeks, months and even years before finally patching that zero-day exploit.
In 2006, IE was insecure for 284 days waiting for patches, where Firefox experienced just one 9-day period for that year. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/01/internet_explore…
As a computer doctor fixing messed up, virus-ridden machines every day, I *know* Firefox is more secure than IE, and the facts back it up.
—
Secondly, IE is not standards based. It has standards tacked on. Try developing something serious for it, and then get back to me on how good it dealt with the standards. There’s no native SVG, the Javascript implementation is a complete disaster, the DOM is still full of proprietary junk. The CSS engine still fails at the basics.
I just love the lame justifications: “Buh-buh… we fix our greater number of vulnerabilities FASSSSSSSSSSSTER”. As if that’s supposed to make me feel better about using a less secure product, in the first place.
Example?
Clue phone: ALL browsers have unpatched security bugs. It’s just the nature of the beast.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=37&tag=nl.e589
Hilarious. And ancient history. You’d rather not talk about IE7 compared to Firefox, so you’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel to come up more than 2-year old IE6 data. Hilarious. Try talking about the latest browsers. It’s a very different conversation.
Ooooooh. If you SAYYYYYYY so…. LMAO…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
Reference?
I have. It handles HTML, Javascript, and other core technologies more or less the same as Firefox etc.
It doesn’t come with a ham sandwich, a flat tire repair kit, or the Season 5 Seinfeld DVD, either. So, what’s your point? SVG isn’t part of HTML, Javascript, or CSS. It’s an optional add-on technology.
Explain. Try to keep the foam in your mouth while doing so …
It’s a superset of the DOM that you find on all other browsers, so it doesn’t impede you at all.
Example?
Not that I’m an IE-proponent or anything, but let’s step back for a second, just because you opened the door.
How do you *know* Firefox is more secure? What facts are you referring to? Have you scrubbed the code? Have you run it through pen tests? Can you cite the last major virus-inflicting vulnerability that involved either Firefox or IE that didn’t involve a plugin, such as flash, or a site-based XSS exploit?
Like I said, IE isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but let’s not fall into cliches when dissecting it. There’s much to not like about it, but frankly, Adobe scares me more than Microsoft does when it comes to browser vulnerabilities, or Google with the frequent cross-domain hacks that they seem to be constantly addressing. Because, let’s face it, that’s the direction the black hats are moving in. The browsers are fairly secure nowadays, regardless of who makes them.
Except maybe for Apple.
Uh-oh, did I say that out loud?
The point being made here is that someone shouldn’t need to write any code to make their sites compatible with IE8 because it should have been done right in IE from day one.
Thanks for admitting that IE has been a clusterf*** for compatibility from the very first minute.
I love the way security problems are categorised in the Windows world ;-).
Has it? Hmmmm.
The answer is no because it actually works properly, and doesn’t make life difficult for web developers because they want to write code that locks you into their browser.
I don’t think you understand what proprietary means. Have you not picked up anything since you’ve been around here? You can’t just pull the term ‘web standards’ off an MSDN blog and start shouting it from the rooftops.
“Except that you really don’t have any point to make. IE8 is standards-based.”
As I said in a previous post, “We’ll see”. When I don’t have to pull my bottom lip up over the top of my head and staple it to the back of my neck to get some Javascript or CSS to work right in IE, I’ll stop calling IE a complete waste of time to program for.
“Compare the security records of Firefox, Safari, and IE7.”
I’m not talking about using IE. I don’t run Windows, so I don’t use it. I have wasted many hours trying to get code that works fine in Opera, Firefox, and Safari to work right in IE though. As long as that is the case, IE is and always will be the town idiot.
“Opera is closed. Does that make it “crap”, too? Nope, didn’t think so.”
Actually, that’s debatable. I don’t particularly like Opera from a usability standpoint. It is a good browser though. However, I am not talking about closed source. I am talking about closed, Microsoft-only ways that I have to interact with the browser as a developer. I don’t give two hoots in poop what browsers other people use. I only care when a browser wastes my time as I’m programming and IE has definitely done that.
“And what, exactly, is “proprietary” about IE8? Like Opera, it’s built on prevailing Web standards.”
When, like Opera, I can write a web app without having to waste a bunch of time writing workarounds, I will stop calling IE a heap of poo.
Edited 2008-06-17 05:48 UTC
We’re talking about IE8 here. Not IE7. Using IE6 or IE7 as the baseline for future releases is simply stupid.
Again, you’re using your experience with older browsers to formulate opinions about IE8. Not applicable.
I’m well aware of what we are talking about. I was also very explicit in stating that I would wait and see what kind of support IE 8 offered. If I can write code that works in Safari, Opera, and Firefox and run it unaltered in IE 8, I will congratulate Microsoft on finally arriving in the 21st century (at least as far as browsers go).
@tomcat
Oh, I forgot to comment on your statement regarding Firefox plugins.
I would MUCH rather uninstall old code and replace it with new that have the Firefox guys build in support for every previous version ever made. That is another one of the big reasons IE sucks. ActiveX support, for instance, should be dropped and dropped hard. It should have never been included in the browser in the first place. It was a bad, poorly implemented idea from the start.
In my opinion, it is always best to force people to migrate away from outdated technologies and “standards” like ActiveX.
As soon as Firefox plug-ins start falling into disrepair — and they already have — this problem is going to get worse, not better.
So is using Firefox plug-ins. It’s binary code running in the browser. It’s not that fundamentally different from Active-X. And, quite frankly, Active-X hasn’t been an issue since IE6, because IE7 disables Active-X plug-ins by default. So, do try to catch up.
Rrrrrrright. Migrate to new outdated technologies like Firefox plug-ins. Nicccccccccccce….
“So is using Firefox plug-ins. It’s binary code running in the browser.”
If you don’t know the difference between Firefox plugins and ActiveX controls, we cannot have an intelligent discussion.
“Rrrrrrright. Migrate to new outdated technologies like Firefox plug-ins. Nicccccccccccce….”
I would recommend you take some time and read up on what Firefox plugins are and what ActiveX controls are and then come back so we can have a valid discussion.
They’re so close in terms of functionality and operation that the distinction is essentially moot.
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_Plugin_API_Reference:Plu…
How Plug-ins Work
The life cycle of a plug-in, unlike that of an application, is completely controlled by the web page that calls it. This section gives you an overview of the way that plug-ins operate in the browser.
When Gecko starts, it looks for plugin modules in particular places on the system. For more information about where Gecko looks for plugin modules on different systems, see How Gecko Finds Plug-ins.
When the user opens a page that contains embedded data of a media type that invokes a plug-in, the browser responds with the following sequence of actions:
check for a plug-in with a matching MIME type
load the plug-in code into memory
initialize the plug-in
create a new instance of the plug-in
Gecko can load multiple instances of the same plug-in on a single page, or in several open windows at the same time. If you are browsing a page that has several embedded RealAudio clips, for example, the browser will create as many instances of the RealPlayer plug-in as are needed (though of course playing several RealAudio files at the same time would seldom be a good idea). When the user leaves the page or closes the window, the plug-in instance is deleted. When the last instance of a plug-in is deleted, the plug-in code is unloaded from memory. A plug-in consumes no resources other than disk space when it is not loaded.
Ergo, the only distinction is the misguided one in your brain.
Great! You’ve cut and pasted some text from Mozilla’s web site. Now do yourself a favor and do a search for and read about what an ActiveX control is and how they started. Then do yourself another favor and go read about the myriad security issues with ActiveX, which are not bugs, but a flawed design from the beginning. Now go read about all the security issues with Mozilla plugins, oh wait…
Now that I think about it, I know you’re not going to go research anything for yourself because you already have this preconceived notion and you seem to want to defend it rather than learn something, so I’ll provide the following:
There is nothing wrong with plugins. Plugins help make the internet a more interesting place. As fun as those gray backgrounds, black text, animated GIFs, and <hr> tags were in the 90s, we really want something more.
So, why are Mozilla plugins OK and ActiveX is an acrid lump of poo? Because the Mozilla plugins are solely for Internet plugins and were designed for that purpose. ActiveX controls are nothing more than a retooling of OLE2 technologies and provided all kinds of fun capabilities, like subverting your machine or deleting files off your hard drive.
Because of the way Mozilla plugins are downloaded, they are generally considered secure (as long as the Mozilla plugin server remains secure anyway). ActiveX plugins, on the other hand, can be downloaded and approved for use from anywhere. This opens up your browser as a vector for malware.
There is good reason why Mozilla plugins are still popular and common place on the internet and ActiveX isn’t. It isn’t that plugin technology is bad, but that ActiveX was poorly conceived and executed and should have died a lot earlier than it finally did.
For further information, use Google.
did you read on ?
Pages without the tag will continue to use the “doctype switch” to choose between the old, nonstandard “quirks mode” and the new “standards mode”; pages with the new tag will still use the doctype switch, but this time to choose between “quirks mode” and “IE 7 mode.” The tag will be supported in beta 2 of IE8 (due in August), and is also available to IE 8 beta 1 with the latest security update.
in fact, in case you missed it again….
but this time to choose between “quirks mode” and “IE 7 mode.
They’re clearly talking about IE7 modes there, where it chooses between IE7 quirks mode (IE6 behavior) and IE7 mode, which is still pretty quirky. Notice they don’t call it IE7 standards mode, they just call it IE7 mode.
Watching Microsoft try to make IE8 relevant is funny. They are so entrenched in their own monopoly fantasy they can’t even put out a “standards compliant” browser without having to spin it. Why can’t they just rely on the doctype of the the page… you know, like the spec says. If it’s XHTML 4.01 STRICT.. then follow it!!!
Microsoft has allowed crappy web development for so long they can’t balls up and be like Apple to simply fix it and tell developers to fix their pages. They went to lengths to get developers ready for IE7 because it wasn’t “just like” IE6 rather than just telling them to follow the specs!!! Of course if all the web browsers followed the specs, then we could have browsers with cool stuff like SVG and CSS3 which would make most of the proprietary stuff unnecessary… Microsoft can’t have that.
I’ve got news for you: Web development is, by definition, crappy. Yeah, it’s semi-useful for browsing toy web pages to read email, view lousy MySpace/FaceBook pages, and watch poor quality YouTube videos, but nobody in his right would advocate getting completely rid of client applications and moving to a completely browser-based model. That isn’t Microsoft’s fault. It’s the generally lame-ass state of browser technology. It’s barely advanced in the past 10 years — neither in quality nor reliability — and the same marketing hucksters are trying to sell us the same old crap in a seemingly new wrapper (“Web 2.0”); when, really, it’s just another attempt to separate dumb rubes from their money. Wake me up when something really noteworthy happens. Because the current state of browser technology is utter crap.
It may be hard to see it because of the hype, but “Web 2.0” if used well is actually a big improvement for the users. It may not be the best solution technically (actually far from it) but it’s just the way things have evolved and these things sadly will not change over night.
My customers love that I’ve started to upgrade their interfaces with ones that are heavily javascript/ajax driven because it is a big improvement in terms of usability and efficiency.
That said, there’s no point in trying to move every desktop app to the web using the current technology, but that doesn’t stop people from trying, people always try to push the limits of things. And even though they might not be successful it will usually result in advancement of technology that might prove itself useful for other applications.
I would prefer if we could just forget about the current web and start over from scratch with something that is actually built for what we use it for. But it just won’t happen.
I think there is a tedency within the IT world that when a technology is introduced, it is first flogged to death, then there is a slight reprieve as people come down out of their ‘high’ and realise the limitations of the said technology. I remember when Java first came on the scene – software companies went crazy with all manner of “Java power products” – Triteal developed a ‘Network User Interface’ that was apparently ment to make the desktop more ‘interactive’; Corel released Wordperfect Suite for Java etc. You get the story.
Web 2.0 will be just like this. There will be some great situations where Web 2.0 is able to enhance and improve the user experience – in alot of cases, replacing where flash used to be used (Flash is now simply being used in alot of cases as a container format for h264). There are those today who are flogging it to death; trying to use it as the ‘silverbullet’ to address all of lifes problems. There will be a gradual pulling back and realisation that Web 2.0 will be one tool in an arsinal of technologies used to address customer demands.
Crappy yes. After 10 years it still feels like its trapped in quicksand – all because the biggest player hasn’t played ball.
Heck if browsers had gone standards compliant five years ago then Flash would not be a normal browsing requirement.
Lol. Where the hell have you been these past eight years or so? I’ve got news for you sweetheart. Guess why so few organisations have made any move to VB.Net?
1. VB.Net does not suite the use cases for which VB was traditionally used.
2. People are not going to rewrite all their code for zero benefit.
3. If they are rewriting code then they’re writing web applications because they don’t have to worry about clients, and more importantly, client installation and configuration issues.
Enlighten yourself:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
Who’s fault has that been then? You’ve admitted that IE has been devoid of any standards compliance from day one, and has been unbelievably slow in adopting any web technology (CSS for one thing) that makes life that bit easier.
I really want IE 8 to install itself silently and to spew malicious executables on my desktop.
Seriously though, really the problem is that they just can’t change things on a dime, countless intranet apps are dependent on the non-compliant nature of IE 6 and 7.
I like they way they are moving forward, gives developers time to get all their ducks in a row.
No it doesn’t. It turns developers off, unless they are somehow mentally entrenched in Microsoft technology; either by corporate decree, or by personal ignorance.
I’m a web developer and I simply won’t deal with IE anymore. If my code runs on IE, great, but I’m not going out of my way to make it do so.
When my customers weigh the costs of making code work with IE or simply installing Firefox, the choice is pretty clear.
Some web developers don’t have this luxury, but for those who do, IE is completely irrelevant. The longer Microsoft remains non-compliant with well documented standards, the worse it will get for them.
“No it doesn’t. It turns developers off, unless they are somehow mentally entrenched in Microsoft technology; either by corporate decree, or by personal ignorance.”
I’m not talking about internet web apps, I’m talking about the millions of corporate intranet sites that use IE 6 functionality. Regardless about the correctness about how they are written, there are a lot of these out there, and the business world doesn’t just change over night.
Being a sysadmin, I would prefer this route than having to spend hundreds of thousands to fix/upgrade/replace all the broken custom web apps deployed at my site, or having to keep all my desktops running IE 6 (In my defense I didn’t work here when most of this crap was written)
You win the award for “most clueless post ever.” I’m sorry, but any web developer who says the 80% of the market still on IE is irrelevant has never really developed any real application on the web. While I *wish* we could behave like that, any business would be foolish to ignore IE entirely. It would be suicide to launch a site that did not work properly in IE, and irresponsible for someone claiming to understand the web to condone it.
I can’t imagine who would actually hire a developer that actually said that. I don’t know what “customers” of yours are content limiting themselves to just the 10-15% of the market not on IE, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. IE is anything but completely irrelevant.
Again, spoken like someone who has no idea what they’re talking about. Sure, it’s easy to install Firefox on a machine. What about an enterprise with 500+ desktops? Firefox is distrbuted as an EXE file, not an MSI. It cannot be managed by policy in Active Directory, and when it is, it’s some third party build that is usually not current. It needs constant updating, but it’s not automated, and not everyone runs their machine as admin.
I understand your POV, but the fact remains that the real world doesn’t actually work like your XP desktop.
Reality is ugly man. So what? This is Osnews! Rant away and be happy.
Edited 2008-06-16 15:07 UTC
“It would be suicide to launch a site that did not work properly in IE”
Actually, that depends on who your customers are. As I said, I’m able to get away with it just fine, so I do. For me, IE is truly irrelevant.
“I can’t imagine who would actually hire a developer that actually said that.”
Good, then I won’t have to worry about you stealing my customers.
“Again, spoken like someone who has no idea what they’re talking about.”
That’s funny. I would apply that same statement to your post. I’m making a successful living doing exacly what I said.
“Sure, it’s easy to install Firefox on a machine. What about an enterprise with 500+ desktops?…
…Firefox is distrbuted as an EXE file, not an MSI. It cannot be managed by policy in Active Directory”
Most companies who have 500+ desktops are not just blowing out software using policies. Rather they are using software from LANDesk or Symantec to blow out software updates. These kinds of programs can make batch-installable packages out of any EXE, so this is not an issue. Also, I don’t do much work for companies of that size.
Just a business tip. It is poor business in most cases to cater to everyone. You have to find a segment of the market you want to serve and only focus there. That’s what I do anyway and it works well for me.
“I understand your POV, but the fact remains that the real world doesn’t actually work like your XP desktop.”
I’ve never owned an XP machine. I dislike programming for Windows more than I dislike programming for IE.
Let us all know how the unemployment line is. It would be a shame to let developer ego get in the way now, wouldn’t it? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are brand spankin’ new to the world of web development…fresh out of college where it was engrained in your brain that anything/everything MS related is evil and not to be trusted.
You are doing both yourself and your so called “customers” a huge disservice by inflicting your beliefs on them. After a few months in this business, you’ll come around. You’ll have to, otherwise you’ll starve to death. You’ll start giving up on some standards to decrease overall TTM. You’ll stop worrying about something being off by a pixel in Safari when it renders fine in other browsers. And you absolutely WILL have to start including IE support as priority #1 in your service offerings.
Edited 2008-06-16 18:20 UTC
The world needs ditch-diggers, too ;-p
Edited 2008-06-16 19:28 UTC
Hey, its not that funny these days. Given the shortage of trades people in New Zealand, a ‘ditch digger’ can earn more money than a web tag jocky.
As for the original poster; yes, we need to ‘encourage standards’ but it shouldn’t be at the expense of end user ability to navigate the site. Now sure, have special features that are only available if you have a decent web browser (Opera & Firefox) – and thus cut down on coding time – but it shouldn’t stop the user, in the case of encommerce, to use atleast the basic functions of that site.
Or perhaps my customers are my customers because of their beliefs and desires. Did you think of that?
I do not write web applications for public consumption (well, not for work anyway) so I can get away with not supporting IE. Don’t get me wrong, I can support IE if my customers want to pay more to have me code in the necessary hacks, but most of them don’t.
I’m not looking at my post now, but if I recall correctly, I made it very clear that my case was an exception and that most people couldn’t get away with what I’m doing. Why are you all so upset by that anyway? Is it because you have to support IE and hate it, or is it because you like IE?
Anyway, I have been doing this sort of thing for about 8 years now and it has only gotten better and better. When it is no longer lucrative, perhaps I’ll subscribe to a different point of view.
don’t you thing it’s time to stop telling firefox is better than … ?
Firefox is heavy, buggy, you can make it hang your PC with a simple static html page, just create a form with a <SELECT> and put 300 <OPTION> and that’s it !
Safari is good bud need a lot of memory, and for what I saw from IE8, well it’s not too bad and at least my PC continue working on every web pages.
I’m still waiting for Safari with Firefox interface to get the best browser ever.
I just created an HTML page with a drop-down with 3’000 <option>s in it, and Firefox worked flawlessly.
Firefox 3 is the fastest browser, uses the least memory out of IE, Firefox, Safari & Opera, it releases memory better than the other browsers.
I think you’re talking complete crap to be honest.
I’ve been using Firefox 3 since a2 and it’s been really very good all the time.
People might not like Firefox because of personal flavor (I dislike Opera on Mac because of the terrible theme/layout), but it’s no good spouting falsehoods.
Are you running it under WinXP? The Windows version was and still is OK(you could even say GREAT) from the beginning but the Linux binaries crashed far too often for my taste. That might be fixed now as my last try was with B3 and 4. It could be that people are having problems with some distributions or OS versions.
ff3 is certainly as good as it claims. ff2 had many problems yet it still was better than the alternatives when they were compared as a whole.
. Multiplatform (All major and minor OSes, all architectures)
. High market penetration (over 15%)
. Extensions (I don’t use them but they make a lot o people happy)
. Pleasant default themes(We can now forget ff2 ever existed).
I’m on Mac. I don’t know how Linux users are supposed to update tomorrow. I have an eee I’d like to update, but I’m not prepared to tango on the command line. All I want to do is download it, double-click and it be installed, is it too much to ask??
You could go through that mess on linux too, but I’d rather just tell the package manager to do it for me.
Try this one :
With a list of city in my case, the file is 40450 lines long and always contain 3 empty lines between the options. FF2 needs 10 seconds to print it and the CPU becomes very high !
All browser except firefox can read it without problems. FF3 is a little bit better than FF2.
I don’t criticize FF just to do it, I’ve been a fervent supporter of it, but it’s really time for this browser to become what it claimed at the beginnning, a lightweight and fast browser.
For those who say that it is fast, try safari, the javascript engine is incredibly faster, and I’m not talking about bench, you feel the difference when using it.
An HTML file over 40’000 lines long takes time to parse. News at 11.
Your original claim was 300 option items, even with four lines for each option (option plus 3 blank lines) that’s only 1’200 lines long.
If you want to prove something, please save the HTML file in question and upload somewhere so we can all test.
Regardless, this is a fringe case involving bad programming. Different rendering engines in different browsers choke on different things. Safari can be slowed down by things that have no effect on Firefox and vice-versa.
I’m not talking about the quality of the html code, just about how the browser treat it :
http://www.savefile.com/files/1612694
The end-user experience is not good as you will see.
Works fine on Firefox 3/Mac. 2.16GHz/2GB.
As a more fair test I also tried it on an eee pc (630Mhz/Firefox2), and whilst it took 5 seconds to load the page (nothing unusual for any page on this computer), the scrolling and response was good.
If you’re having chronic problems with this HTML, you should try disabling all your extensions in case any of them are re-parsing the html looking for things.
I’ve opened a bug on bugzilla but can’t find it anymore. The developper told me this problem was linked into gecko.
I’ve tried this on ***many*** different config and always got the same result, windows/linux w or w/o extensions.
FF3 is still not as fast as it’s competitors.
If your happy with it, I’m happy for you. Hammering that it’s good it’s fast it’s better is not enough.
Currently I use FF because I’ve no better alternative, but as soon as a decent interface with webkit (and extensions) will be available I’ll switch my browser.
this seems to be a corner case that only affects you. Everbody I’ve spoken to has said firefox is noticeably snappy, not even mentioning that benchmarks back up those claims
I’ve upgraded to FF3 yesterday and can see a real difference with previous 2.x version I was using. My previous test were with deer park some months ago.
The page print completely now when loading as IE does.
I downloaded it and ran it and it worked just fine in ff3, opera 9.5, Safari 3.1, and IE8. The fact that it’s almost a half a meg file might have something to do with it being slow.
Justed tested on both Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 on a Athlon X2 4200/4GB Windows XP SP2 and Gecko based browser from XO laptop. No slowndown on either browser than the initial parsing on the latter.
whats wrong with that file? I did not see any problems with it
I think you’re using a computer that is so fast that you can’t feel the slowness, or that you’re biaised.
A simple test using http://www.jfitz.com/dos/stopwatch10.zip:
REM —————————
stopwatch start > ff
“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” “C:\Documents and Settings\manuel.VAIO\Bureau\index.cfm.html”
stopwatch stop >> ff
stopwatch start > ie
“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” “C:\Documents and Settings\manuel.VAIO\Bureau\index.cfm.html”
stopwatch start >> ie
REM —————————
All programs closed. I click on File/close asap.
I’ve repeated the test 5 times.
So to load , print the page and close itself it took :
IE : 4s
FF : 24s
I would be happy to have a graph with cpu load too, cause my computer hangs with FF too.
To increase the effect just multiply the number of “select”.
I really don’t know what that stopwatch program does, but I edited the html to add a little javascript timer to it. The results are about what I expected:
IE7 consistently loaded the page in 560-590 milleseconds.
FF3 times varied much more, from 610-860 milliseconds. It was usually in the 600s but would occasionally spike up into the 800s, so I assume some cache was timing out or garbage collection was going on in those cases.
So IE7 was maybe 15% faster on average, but 100 ms is hardly enough slower to really notice the difference. Granted I’m on a fast computer, but even a slow computer would likely be less than half a second of difference.
I suspect what you are actually measuring is the startup times of the browsers, and I don’t think anyone would argue that IE is going to win that race. It should, since half of it is loaded into memory when the system boots.
Edited 2008-06-16 23:54 UTC
Well from the site…
Based on this I think you are correct.. it is startup time of the app, how long it takes before it returns for the next batch command. So this in no way tests the loading of the page.
On my laptop (2GB Ram Intel Core2 thing) IE7 was the slowest by far, but that seemed to be it wanting to connected to something else prior to trying to load the file.
This is really strange behavior you have. I have just tried using the command prompt. Now I had both IE7 and Firefox already open (as I normally would have a browser open all day, and also to remove startup time from what you believe is a parsing/html handling issue) and then launched the file via firefox (3 RC2), IE7, Opera 9.27 and Safari 3.1.
First thing I noticed was that IE7 and Safari opened new windows while Opera and FireFox new Tabs.
Based on my watches second hand:
Safari < 2 secs
Firefox 2-3 secs
Opera 4-5 secs
IE7 >20 secs
Seems IE sits in ‘Connecting’ mode for ages, not sure if my setup has a call to base before loaded the page or what but it was really slow.
I would be interested to see what other people are getting. BTW what does StopWatch the program measure, because I did notice that IE7 returned to the command prompt very quickly after being called, but the page was not rendered for a considerable time after that.
Yeah, I ‘ll beg to differ on that. I know a lot of Mac-heads and none of them like Safari. They even laughed at me when I installed it on my XP box.
Firefox 2 is supposed to be modern at the expense of being heavy and buggy to an extent. Users who wanted a lightweight stable browser from Mozilla used SeaMonkey or Mozilla Suite.
Edited 2008-06-16 13:57 UTC
Your Kidding, right? SeaMonkey IS netscape, just the whole shebang opened up. Firefox was made to be a light weight, browser only version of it.
no Newsgroup readers, etc… that was in Mozilla, just the webbrowser itself.
Seamonkey / Netscape is the heavyweight in this one, FF the light weight.
Microsoft finally decided to catch up with the rest of the World(WideWeb).
go figure. move along, nothing to see here people.
You can tell who is or has been a web developer by the comments to this article. IE just plain sucks and you would know that if you have ever done any serious web development. CSS is just plain horrible in IE. Everything that is simple and works easily on other browsers has to be hacked to hell to get to work on IE. IE didn’t get transparent PNG support until IE7 for crying out loud. Now to be fair I haven’t done any web development since IE7 developed a fair marketshare so things are better now than they were then but from the looks of things Microsoft has a long way to go to catch up to other current browsers. Opera, Safari, and Firefox all outshine IE and they are much easier to develop for because most of the standard is implemented in all of them.
Actually things are way worse, the main problem is that if you do currently something in the web you still have to support IE6 you also have to jump onto the ajax bandwagon, additionally supporting IE7 which still is way inferior to all other browsers is a must as well.
The corporate world for instance still is locked heavily on IE6 and seeing IE8 there wont happen before 2010 if at all. The main issue is, IE6 has been there so long that almost every corporation has a load of IE6 only inhouse apps which they cannot get rid of or rewrite by now (a lot of those apps are asp,php,jsp based apps with no mvc so doing a rewrite is hard)
So IE7 is now somewhat three years old IE6 still will be an issue for at least another 3-4 years until it finally is phased out. Given that Vista did not catch on for many reasons which I can understand maybe even longer.
Face it the time when IE6 and all its garbage will be made obsolete arrives probably will be the time IE10 arrives but then all versions of IE until this version has to be supported as well.
In my experience only IE causes those massive support problems, version switches in Mozilla usually end up pretty swiftly with the old version being phased out within half a year.
I dont know why that is but probably because of all the critical tie ins the IE engine has into windows, and stubborn users who after so many years still think the web is ie6 only.
No. They’re just different browsers which implement the standard differently. For web developers there is no “better” or “worse” browsers, unless you believe the beauty of CSS has anything to do with coding productivity (ever heard of web frameworks? html/css generation?).
We want one web rendering standard. Doesn’t matter if it’s W3’s, Microsoft’s, or Firefox/Gecko, or Opera’s or Safari’s (oh yes their “standard” is different from gecko’s!).
Just One.