Internet Explorer Vs Firefox

[Valerie]

I'm new to the forum & I love online debates so I thought I would kick off my first post with this, I only just downloaded firefox and i love it, my vote goes to firefox and i will never go back! I mainly like it because it has tabbed browsing, its fast, includes spell checking, you can add extra plugins & extensions! if you use firefox already, upgrade to firefox 2 now, if you don't have it yet, download it FREE from: mozilla.com

Which do you prefer? please cast your vote & give your views...

[Olin Coles]

Hello Valerie, and welcome to Benchmark Reviews.

Here are the present statistics for visitors to our site for the past 90 days:

1. Firefox 39,358 49.27%
2. Internet Explorer 37,097 44.39%
3. Opera 4,123 4.17%
4. Safari 791 0.94%
5. Mozilla 662 0.83%
6. Netscape 166 0.18%
7. Konqueror 77 0.09%
8. Camino 46 0.06%
9. Mozilla Compatible Agent 41 0.04%
10. gzip 14 0.02%

I have never heard of Konqueror, so that's a new one. Somebody still uses Netscape, which is silly. In fact, anything other than IE and FF don't really make much impact around here. So your poll seems pretty much on target.

I have both for development purposes, but I prefer IE7 at the moment.

[Ginner]

I fell in love with FF when someone from my school showed it to me.. and only uses IE when FF doesn't work.. which is in one thing only ^^

so my vote is for FF

[Xero 1ne]

LOL my mom still uses Netscape. I think Konqueror is for Linux...not sure though. I've always loved Firefox, someone showed me Opera promising it was better but I didn't really care for it.

[Kevin Young]

Hello Valerie, and welcome to Benchmark Reviews.

Here are the present statistics for visitors to our site for the past 90 days:

1. Firefox 39,358 49.27%
2. Internet Explorer 37,097 44.39%
3. Opera 4,123 4.17%
4. Safari 791 0.94%
5. Mozilla 662 0.83%
6. Netscape 166 0.18%
7. Konqueror 77 0.09%
8. Camino 46 0.06%
9. Mozilla Compatible Agent 41 0.04%
10. gzip 14 0.02%

I have never heard of Konqueror, so that's a new one. Somebody still uses Netscape, which is silly. In fact, anything other than IE and FF don't really make much impact around here. So your poll seems pretty much on target.

I have both for development purposes, but I prefer IE7 at the moment.

Olin, those figues just go to show you that geeks prefer Firefox (myself included).
Global stats show IE6 at 51%, IE7 at 20% and Firefox at 13% (all numbers are global for the month of August '07).
When programming a website you have to program for the largest common denominator, which is the only reason Internet Exploder is even installed on my machine ;)

[Olin Coles]

Maybe I just see them differently, but since this is a geek website and IE/FF are sharing the browser share, perhaps there's still room for competition.

[ZhengHe]

Konqueror is, or was the default web browser on operating systems running KDE, so mostly Linux. I'm actually surprised you didn't know about Konqueror. It came on Knoppix live CD's going back for many years. Have you ever used Linux or just prefer Gnome when you do?

[BuffaloChips]

Well, for me Firefox is a given. I love it and just feel that it works more smoothly than IE. Opera is a good browser as well, I didn't like the no activeX deal it had when I first used it. Opera has crap for add on's. I need an add on for magnifying text when running higher resolutions and couldn't find one for opera.

Yes, I know we are beating on an old dead horse here!

[.:Cyb3rGlitch:.]

Firefox hands down. It renders websites better, easier to program for, better plugins. IE should be illegal. :P

[bobletman]

Fire fox owns all.

[Lambard]

although firfox is better but i still use IE cause am addicted to it

[BuffaloChips]

How can you be addicted to that piece of garbage?

[Olin Coles]

How can you be addicted to that piece of garbage?

To be honest, I find it narrow-minded that you could dismiss IE as garbage without identifying the problems in FF. I use both on a routine basis, and IE is usually my first choice for both personal and professional reasons. The only problem I ever have with IE, and it's a bit one, is that it crashes the browser on certain Adobe Flash applets. On the other side of the coin, I have random FF crashes, too. So in my book they are equally flawed, and neither is a perfect solution.

[BuffaloChips]

I have always had issues with IE, especially the clogging of the cache that slows it down to a crawl all the time. Haven't had that issue with FF and it runs way smoother. There's just something that I can't quite put my finger on, but I was always looking for an alternative to IE and finally found a decent one in FF.

[Olin Coles]

I don't like to use browser cache, but neither of them let me disable it completely so they have the lowest possible settings.

[BuffaloChips]

Well, you can set FF to delete that stuff whenever you close the browser. So, the cache is kinda meaningless anyway.

[Olin Coles]

Well, you can set FF to delete that stuff whenever you close the browser. So, the cache is kinda meaningless anyway.

Right, both IE and FF allow you to delete cookies and/or temporary Internet files after closing the browser, but I would like to completely disable the cache.

For nearly everyone except web developers, cache of some amount is necessary. Even on Benchmark Review, an 8 MB cache (minimum allowed in IE) can speed up subsequent page loads. Unfortunately, if you want to design a page in real-time, and view minor changes, you must clear the browser cache manually (or use a 3rd party tool) every time.

[cesium]

Right, both IE and FF allow you to delete cookies and/or temporary Internet files after closing the browser, but I would like to completely disable the cache.

For nearly everyone except web developers, cache of some amount is necessary. Even on Benchmark Review, an 8 MB cache (minimum allowed in IE) can speed up subsequent page loads. Unfortunately, if you want to design a page in real-time, and view minor changes, you must clear the browser cache manually (or use a 3rd party tool) every time.

Just hit ctrl+F5 or hold control while clicking the refresh button. it forces the browser to completely reload the page :) saves a hell of a lot of time :D

[BuffaloChips]

Right, both IE and FF allow you to delete cookies and/or temporary Internet files after closing the browser, but I would like to completely disable the cache.

For nearly everyone except web developers, cache of some amount is necessary. Even on Benchmark Review, an 8 MB cache (minimum allowed in IE) can speed up subsequent page loads. Unfortunately, if you want to design a page in real-time, and view minor changes, you must clear the browser cache manually (or use a 3rd party tool) every time.

Olin, you can also have the cache clear when you close FF as well. It isn't just the cookies and temp files.

[cesium]

the temporary files are the cache.

[BuffaloChips]

OK,whatever. I still think that FF is smoother and faster. Never had IE run as well as FF does.

[cesium]

OK,whatever. I still think that FF is smoother and faster. Never had IE run as well as FF does.

lol i'm not arguing there. i hate IE from a usability and web design standpoint. useless rendering engine breaks half the css I use

[xgme]

Even I use Mozilla Firefox, I realized that Firefox consumes tremendously more memory than the other that I have experienced (IE, Opera and Chrome). Firefox has a lot utiliity but it is very weak regarding memory consumption. Actually if you have not enough memory, as me, Opera can be a better choice. Here I want to show something:

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/9159/firefoxwag.png (http://img34.imageshack.us/my.php?image=firefoxwag.png)

Firefox is over than 600MB!!!

[RagingShadow07]

WHOA?!? Firefox is using 600MB of RAM?!? Something's wrong with your install of Firefox or something. How many tabs do you have open that it uses 600MB?

I do admit, though, it's rare for me to see Firefox using less than 100MB RAM. IE apparently uses half as much (http://i42.tinypic.com/ng8z5y.jpg) as Firefox does with the same tabs open (about 4 tabs per browser).

[Daryl Greene]

I just looked and my copy is only running @ 138 MB.

[Olle P]

Mine is <74MB right now.

I recall a notion that some early version of FF did use an accumulated amount of RAM during the session, so if you didn't close down the program for several days it would end up using huge amounts of RAM. A restart of FF fixed the problem temporarily, and later upgrades removed the issue.

Personally I prefer FF as being the best browser since Netscape 4. IE7 is okay, but previous versions weren't that good. (At work we still use IE6 as the standard browser :(, but will upgrade to IE7 soon. Fresh news: IE7 is being installed on the work computer as I write this!)
I have no experience with IE8.

Cheers
Olle

[Remacno]

I have found that Mozilla Firefox is better suited for your...exploration of the internet. Internet explorer seems to have some major issues that I don't really feel the need to deal with. However, lately, my Firefox program is laggy, and freezes quite often. I think it may be the computer rather than the program.

All in all, Firefox has been less of a hassle than IE.

I actually just checked on it...my Firefox process runs at 112 MB on average. Although, with videos...that almost triples which makes the program laggy, freeze, or become unresponsive.

[RagingShadow07]

It isn't just you with some freezing problems with Firefox. I've found since FF3, it's not uncommon for it to freeze up randomly.

And now with Firefox 3.5, it's having problems registering when I click Close Tab. I'll end up having to restart the program to be able to close any tab.

FF3.5 seems to use about ~20% less RAM than FF3 did. It's using about 75MB RAM with 3 tabs open right now, and FF3 would typically use about 95 in the same situation.

What are your system specs? As long as you have 2GB RAM or more and a dual-core, it shouldn't be freezing every time you open a video...

[Olin Coles]

Just remember: when you test the amount of RAM used with a browser, you have to ensure that the exact same system processes are running (no more no less), and that the exact same web page is open (no just the same domain). Every page uses code, and more code means more memory. My advice is to open up static pages that never change, such as Google or some old HTML page.

[RagingShadow07]

Hm... I was going to install Firefox 3.0.11 and 3.5 in separate folders and do a comparison screenshot of them, but apparently A. Task Manager shows them both as one process and B. As soon as I close the older version of Firefox, it auto-updates... I ended up re-installing 3.0.11.

[Remacno]

It isn't just you with some freezing problems with Firefox. I've found since FF3, it's not uncommon for it to freeze up randomly.

And now with Firefox 3.5, it's having problems registering when I click Close Tab. I'll end up having to restart the program to be able to close any tab.

FF3.5 seems to use about ~20% less RAM than FF3 did. It's using about 75MB RAM with 3 tabs open right now, and FF3 would typically use about 95 in the same situation.

What are your system specs? As long as you have 2GB RAM or more and a dual-core, it shouldn't be freezing every time you open a video...

It's not a great computer! It's a Dell that my mom got for $180. I miss my dad's computer. Lol That sucker never really froze and the only issues I had with it was the resetting issue when I used MoonLight Engine to hack some games.

I think that this computer is flat out garbage. My brothers filled the 37.2 GB hard drive up with nothing but crap. I can't even do a disk cleanup because of a virus that is on the computer that I can't seem to get rid of. Not to mention that I only have 5% free space left on the hard drive, and a defrag needs at leave 14% to run properly.

I'm just about to say screw it and reinstall windows...again...for the third time!

[RagingShadow07]

No offense, but you seem to have horrible luck with viruses! Did you not have an Anti-virus installed again?

With both the virus, and the free space at 5%, I'd say that would probably be the most likely cause of Firefox freezing.

Ever thought of building one yourself? Seems (if I remember correctly) it's usually someone else accidentally getting your PC infected with a virus or etc :p. It would probably be a big relief to have your own personal computer to work on/with, and not counting monitor or OS (Windows 7 is a great little 'tool' for system builders right now to save cash on an OS for almost a year) you could build a pretty good PC for about $500.