Scoble (hmm ?) introduces new Firefox 0.9 release. So I decided to test it against IE 6.0. It was my first Mozilla product testing since Mozilla 1.6 release. So I went through the old test plan.
I just had that 1Mb html file with thousand links. As I expected IE 6.0 loaded it 2.5 times faster than Firefox 0.9. #2 is View Page Source - Firefox crashes. Ok, I don't care. So what ? It crashed. Memory amount, taken by the browser instances looks rather similar though. I remember Mozilla 1.6 took a lot more than IE 6.0.
What I don't like again and again: very short address box. And it is slow - I mean address box, when you type in it. Try Basic and Digest authentication in some sample app. The modal window looks ugly vs. the one of Internet Explorer. BTW, just noticed some ugly issues with image rendering. I think that images that are usually rendered from the third site. I have now site rendered up to 1/2 and waiting... for what ? In IE the same site renders well.
Another thing - after all these testings I can not connect to Microsoft any more. I can connect to MSDN though. I was planning to test some cool rendering html features, but I already don't want to. I've got enough. I'm stopping here. May be next time. It is definitely "next generation" browser. It will always be :)
This is helpful news. I'll stick with .8 for now. No trouble connecting to Microsoft. In fact, from my connection, it loads www.microsoft.com in 1 second vs. about 3 for IE6.
Hmm.. can you post a link to the test file? I've been using .9 fine for a few days now and don't notice the slow address bar. Microsoft.com works fine, sites and images seem to render OK.
Not trying to be defensive at all, I'm just puzzled as I don't see issues with 0.9 at all.
OWA on Exchange 2K and 2K3 has explicit support for IE 5.0+ DHTML. It detects the browser and uses a different UI (the "Basic" experience) for those browsers it doesn't support (on Exchange 2K3 you can use the Basic experience on IE as well -- it's less bandwidth intensive). Call it lock-in if you want... I call it supporting the top browser in the market.
For what it's worth, and when Exchange 2K was in development, IE 5 was the only major browser around that could do what the Exchange team wanted to do with OWA (XSLT-based client-side rendering, for instance). Maybe other browsers can do it now, but it was a multi-year development effort to get OWA to look the way it does on IE 5 and I can't see anyone being able to justify doing that level of development work for browsers with less than 1% of the market.
Hmm... I tried Microsoft.com in Firefox 0.9 and it loaded w/o any prob. I also opened up the old version of OWA (my company is too behind the times to be on the latest) and it worked like a champ with the fox. As for the "typing url's is slow in the address bar", either I don't understand what they mean or I don't see the problem.
firefox is much better than IE... but FF0.9 has too many bugs. the 0.8 version is more stable, I think.
some bugs:
- option -remote on command line
- FF0.9 crashes with no reason
- there is some problems with security certificates that crashes the browser
FF0.8 works without the problems listed here. and both can open Microsoft.com without problems
As per speed issues: Firefox 0.9 still runs on the Mozilla 1.4 code base. Mozilla 1.7 was recently released and one of the targets of this release was speed improvements. Firefox 1.0 will be based off the 1.7 code so don't give up yet!
I have run 0.9 on three different computers this week and not had a single problem. It has just been just as rock-solid stable as every other version. Of course, I rarely have trouble with IE either. I just like the pages I visit to look somewhat like they are supposed to.
Firefox 0.9 is based off Moz 1.7 (well, 1.7r2, see http://mozilla.org/roadmap.html#milestone-schedule)
IMHO, 0.9 was pushed out the door a bit too quickly, and people wanting stability should stay with 0.8, or wait for 1.0. This is because 0.9->1.0 will be a pure bugfix release, no new features, and so they had to push all the functionality wanted for 1.0 into 0.9, rather then when it was ready. So 0.9 users are much more beta testers than is usual for a firefox (or mozilla) release.
Yeah, but when FireFox crashed, it didn't take the Desktop/Explorer with it like IE does all the time.
Try opening My Computer and navigating through your folders when IE is hung on a web paqe somewhere. Or when a server behind a mapped drive falls off the network and My Computer and IE hang all over the place trying to update the address bar drop down.
Sure, there's an out-of-process option in the folder options, but it's not default. So when IE goes flakey, so does the rest of your machine.
Is this an independent point of view? Mozilla Firefox is just better then IE, and the download may be slow, but the program is good! Free, without the risk of getting adware and pop-ups. And it shows pages the right way! IE is good to update Windows, that's all. Just try it!
Firefox is fantastic, but has 1 showstopper for me - it runs out of GDI resources on Win2K3 when it's loaded a number of images.
There are several Bugzilla entries for this bug and these bugs have been open for over a year so I'm not hopeful they will be fixed for the 1.0 release. It's a showstopper because I'd also like to use Thunderbird and Chatzilla too - but since they're all based off the same rendering engine the menus and toolbars fail to paint when this bug presents itself - hence a showstopper.
(I've personally witnessed this bug on every Win2K3 box I've ever used on a daily basis - 3 boxes)
who the hell uses windows as a desktop os anyways :)
why are you concerned about the security of IE if you are running windows. It's the os you should replace, not the browser... :p
