Great article by tomshardware comparing all the leading web browsers in the market. From the test done by them, it proves that how I felt was right that IE 9 is a big improvement in speed. RWendi
After using IE 9 for couple of days now, I have to say that I’m pretty impress with it. I know it’s only a couple of days, but seriously Microsoft finally did a good job on improving Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 9 comes with a new UI, clean and simple. As you can see below, by default it only has an address bar, IE tabs, and 5 buttons (back, forward, home, favourite, and settings). This of course very similar to Google chrome UI, just some re arranging of the controls, but still a welcome changes. 
Similar to Google Chrome, the address bar in IE 9 is also serve as a search bar. It uses Bing as its default search engine, but this can be changed to other search engines. 
The best thing that is greatly improved by IE 9 is speed. Internet Explorer 9 is a speed king. It’s comparable of that Google Chrome. The old days of slowness of Internet explorer is gone now thanks to IE 9. I have no actual data to prove this, but I’m pretty sure you can find them on the net. Just by using it, I can tell speed improvement is there. A LOT!! With IE 9, Internet Explorer now a better HTML5 Web Browser than IE 8. Why better? because it partially supports HTML 5. For some reasons Microsoft only implemented parts that they think are most important. Of all the web browsers that supports HTML 5, Internet Explorer 9 scores the lowest in HTML5 Test. Considering how people are fuzzing about HTML5, I think IE 9 should fully support HTML 5. The only problem with Internet Explorer 9 is that it’s only available for Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP 2. This means for XP users, they have to settle for other browsers (IE 8, Chrome, Firefox, etc). This’ a big blow for Internet Explorer 9, or Internet explorer itself. Windows XP still owns more than 50 percent of OS market share, if XP users want to use Internet Explorer, they have to use IE 8. Lets face it, Internet Explorer 8 could not compete with Chrome or Mozilla. They really need to consider to support Windows XP too. RWendi
Saw someone tweet this link. It gives a good and simple explanation of the much misunderstood relationship between HTML and XHTML. Misunderstanding Markup: [Link] RWendi
Beginning of the week Microsoft released a new search engine called Bing.com, formerly known as Kumo. It is believed to be Microsoft last and greatest attempt to compete with Google’s supremacy in search engine world. I have decided to give the new search engine a try to see if it is any good. I used Bing.com exclusively this week to do all my searches. I have to say that Bing is pretty damn good. In my first couple of searches, I would do the search in Google as well to see if Bing's result is as good, and it is. It did not give me the same search result as Google’s but it did give me what I was looking for. And after sometimes, I just stopped using Google and used Bing 95% of the time for the rest of the week. Bings algorithm is definitely ALOT better than live search algorithm. I remember when I tried Live Search, it was pretty much frustrating. Its just not easy to get the information that you want with live search. With Bing it’s so much better. It gives me better search result, and in the case where it fails me, Bing recommends me with some searches that’s related with my search. I find this feature to be pretty awesome, and helps me not going back to google to get what I’m searching for. I think Bing has what it takes to compete with Google. I had a great experience while using it, and I’m not going to stop using it. I believe that for a search engine to be successful, not only it needs good search algorithm, it needs support from a lot of users to use its service. The more users use the search engine, the more accurate the search engine will be. I’ll be supporting Bing for the time being, we’ll see how long will this last. RWendi
Few days ago I read a news in TomsHardware saying that most google chrome users are back to IE or Firefox. The article states that upon launching chrome, it scooped up a whooping 1.4% share market stealing users from IE and Firefox. It has been few weeks after the launch, and the new stats shows that chrome keeps on losing its user base back to IE and Firefox.
I had not had the time to try chrome. I had been wanting to try it, ever since I read that famous Chrome comic, but I had been so hooked up with the new IE that I completely forgot about it. After I read that news it made me wander, what made chrome to lose its user base? So I decided to close my IE, and install Chrome.
My first impression to chrome that its very simplistic and has somewhat outdated feeling to the design. With the first look, I had the feeling that there won't be much that chrome offers to its users. So I begin in checking what settings that it's got for me, and wow im completely shocked!! There're not much settings to tweak from the web browser. What shocked me even more, there are not much options shown in the security settings. It makes me doubt if this browser is really as safe as its advertised.
Performance wise, I must say it lives up to its expectations. It loads web pages preety darn fast. Tab performance was good as well. Didn't see any lag that IE has when opening a new tab. Having said that, it still has some problems with realibility. It crashed a couple of times for me, especially when I had many tabs opened. Moreover, as im writting this, it doesn't seem to support silverlight very well. Most silverlight websites that I've tried, It's either loads up very slow or it crashed on me.
In conclusion, I have to agree that the chrome performs preety well in most websites, despite its problem with silverlight websites. On average its more or less the same performance as Firefox, and a little bit faster than IE. But all that performance is probably because chrome is a very lightweight web-browser. It doesn't offer many features, and I'd say that the security of the web browser is questionable. In my opinion, it doesn't have the wow factor in it to make its users wants to stay. I can see now why it has lost its user base, there's just no good reason to stay. People go back to IE and Firefox because you get about the same performance, and getting all the other goody features that they offer.
RWendi
After some times, finally decide to install IE 8 Beta 2... Abit reluctant to install it at first, due to the fact that once you install it, you cant remove it under XP sp 3... Then I thought that I will always have my mozilla anyway,nd a so I installed it...
As a developer, a web browser is very important thing to have. With many browsers out there, including the recent release of google chrome, choosing the "best" browser can be a difficult task. No doubt that mozilla has been the standard browser for many people these days, and It's still my favourite browser. My biggest question everytime Im trying a new browser would be: "Will this browser be as good as mozilla?".
There are many new features added to IE8, which can be found here, but Im mainly interested with tab grouping feature. I usually have dozens of tabs open in my mozilla, and it gets very hard to find a specific tab. With tab grouping, you can group tabs into one logical unit, and those tabs will be coloured. When you open a link to a new tab, it will automatically group the new tab with the old one. I find this very usefull, because you'll be able to keep track of your tabs. Moreover, it gets easier to find a specific tab, because when you group a tab, it will create a seperator on your tab list. I honestly love this tab grouping feature.
Another enhancement on the tab control is now IE will create a new process per tab (similar feature as in google chorme). One big difference of this feature with google chrome is that, when a process crashes, rather than showing a sad face as in google chrome, IE will try to reload the tab few times, and ultimately shows an error page if its unable to reload it. Now it also offers the functionality to reload the tabs opened on the last session when you launch IE.
One of the best news of IE 8 is that IE finally decides to ditch its text searching mechanism (god, I hate that text search dialog box). In IE 8 it will have a similar search mechanism as Mozilla, with the toolbar and stuff. Not sure if it has "search as you type" feature though.
In terms of performance, im finding that it feels faster when rendering web pages. BUT its tab performance was VERY slugish. Everytime you open up a new tab, it takes IE a bit of time to fire up a new process for the tab. its not overly long, but its noticeable (like half a sec). I have to say in terms of stability, I don't think its stable yet. Well thats why its still in BETA.
All in all, I think that IE 8 is a very promising browser. If the release version doesnt have the stability issue and tab performance issue, I might just jump ship to IE 8... Of course that would depend on my impression of google chrome (haven't tried it yet).
|