Cloud computing brought the browser wars back: Microsoft, Google and Mozilla have been rewriting JavaScript engines, improving their support for web standards and improving their user interfaces.
The result is the big three's best browsers yet: IE9, Chrome 10 and Firefox 4 RC. So which one deserves a place on your desktop?
IE9 vs Firefox 4 vs Chrome 10: appearance
The trio keep on-screen "chrome" to a minimum and don't look bad at all. From a purely aesthetic point of view IE9 looks nicest, but having everything on one line quickly gets cluttered.
Chrome is stripped back to the point of near invisibility, and Firefox 4 is the prettiest Firefox yet. Yes, that's a bit like saying "the smartest thing Charlie Sheen has ever said" but after years of blocky ugliness the new UI is a vast improvement, and this refined version is starting to grow on us. At least, it is on the PC. The default Mac interface doesn't quite work.
PRETTIER: Firefox's new UI is a dramatic improvement. It doesn't take up much room and it's a nice place to spend time
IE9 vs Firefox 4 vs Chrome 10: speed
Chrome 10 was the slowest on our test PC, running through the SunSpider benchmarks in an average of 346.0ms, with Firefox 4 achieving an average of 308.5. IE9 had the edge, though, with an average of just 288.8ms.
Let's try another one: version 6 of V8, Google's own benchmarking suite. You'd expect Google to do well here, and it did. Bigger numbers are better, and Chrome achieved 7,101 compared to 3,269 for Firefox and 2,053 for IE9.
So far so meh - "Google browser does well in Google benchmark" isn't a surprise - but it does demonstrate how the gaps between browsers are disappearing: in 2008, Chrome would routinely score ten times more than Firefox and IE wouldn't even feature.
One more? Let's give Mozilla's Kraken, the hugely demanding set of web-app tasks based on SunSpider, a go. Firefox powered through the enormous testing suite in 9,224ms and IE9 19,136ms. Firefox in "Mozilla has the best browser on Mozilla benchmarks" shocker? Nope: Chrome was narrowly ahead, coming in at 8,794ms.
It's clear that the browsers have been optimised for their preferred benchmarks, but what about real-world stuff? From hitting enter to finishing loading the TechRadar home page on a 20MBps DSL connection, Chrome took four seconds, Firefox five and IE nine (no pages were cached and we didn't have extensions, add-ons or other goodies installed or blocking content).
Fark.com took four seconds in Firefox, four in Chrome and six in IE. Online banking's login page took two seconds in Chrome, two in Firefox and three in IE.
Let's try something more challenging. Loading and starting to play Radiohead's Lotus Flower video on YouTube was three seconds in Firefox, three in IE and four in Chrome. Opening an existing file and having it ready to edit in Google Docs took four seconds in Firefox, four in Chrome and six in IE9.
There's clearly a pattern here. Firefox and Chrome are generally neck and neck in everyday performance, and IE9 lags narrowly behind. However, there really isn't much in it - and in most cases the ads are the bits that take the time, with pages' text, navigation elements and form fields appearing almost instantly.
IE9 vs Firefox 4 vs Chrome 10: stability and standards
The Acid 3 test is the, er, acid test for standards compliance, and if you'd told us a few years ago we'd be seeing IE get 95/100 we'd have burned you as a witch. But there it is in black and white (and yellow and...).
Firefox is narrowly ahead with 97/100, and Chrome is giving the teacher an apple and getting a gold star for its perfect 100/100 score.
There's more to standards than the Acid test, however. Different browsers support different bits of the HTML5 standards, so for example when it comes to video Chrome doesn't like H.264 - it prefers its own WebM video or Ogg Theora, which are the favourite formats of Firefox, too - whereas IE9 likes H.264 very, very much.
VIDEO SUPPORT: All three browsers are HTML5 friendly, but they support different video formats: Chrome and Firefox are playing WebM here while IE9 gets H.264
Video, of course, is a notorious browser crasher, so it's nice to have Chrome and IE9's ability to split individual tabs into different processes. This prevents a malfunctioning plug-in from wrecking the whole browser session, and makes it easy to kill misbehaving tabs.
Firefox has crash protection but it's still a one-process browser, so something going wrong in one tab could still affect everything else.
BACK AGAIN: IE9 can recover from crashes and unexpected shutdowns just like Firefox, although we wish the notification was more prominent
IE9 vs Firefox 4 vs Chrome 10: features
Firefox has the edge here: its pinnable App Tabs tuck away opened tabs such as email and web apps, while Tab Groups make it easy to organise large collections of open pages.
Firefox 4 also boasts some excellent synchronisation features. It doesn't just sync your bookmarks across devices; it takes your history and even your currently open tabs. If you're constantly moving from machine to machine you'll love this feature. Chrome has synchronisation too, but it doesn't extend to open tabs.
IN SYNC: Firefox and Chrome both have excellent browser synchronisation systems. To do it in IE9 you need a third-party extension
IE9 doesn't have syncing at all, but it does enable you to pin sites to the Windows 7 taskbar as if they were applications and drag a tab out to Snap it for viewing side by side with another. You also get a proper download manager, which Firefox has had since about 1957.
There's also a Chrome-style new tab page and Chrome-style searching in the address bar. Firefox retains the two-box approach, with the Awesome Bar for URLs and history and a separate search box - although confusingly, the Awesome Bar does search too.
EXTEND IE: It doesn't have the sheer range of Firefox's add-ons, but IE has enough available extensions to cover the essentials
Firefox is the most expandable here but Chrome is catching up fast, its Chrome Extensions and web apps becoming increasingly impressive. All three browsers' add-on galleries cover the basics - ad blocking, Flash blocking, Twitter clients and so on - but Internet Explorer's is the most limited. Firefox and Chrome are also skinnable, enabling you to change their default appearance.
IE9 vs Firefox 4 vs Chrome 10: verdict
You can prove pretty much anything with benchmarks, and while Internet Explorer did best in SunSpider it felt the slowest in real-word use. It's a really nice browser, though, and if you're the kind of user who doesn't really bother with extensions or fiddling around, you'll be perfectly happy with it. It does lag slightly behind its rivals in real world speed, but on a decent PC there's not much in it.
Firefox and Chrome were neck and neck in the performance stakes: on paper Chrome bests Mozilla's browser, but in practice the differences are insignificant. However, Chrome's ability to split tabs into individual processes should make it the more stable - although at the time of writing there seems to be a horrible bug in its handling of Flash.
KEEP APART: Tab Groups in Firefox make it easy to separate business and pleasure, or to keep different tasks separate
Do we have a winner? Firefox's Tab Groups and App Tabs are brilliant, and the browser's Swiss Army Knife reputation remains intact. If you use a lot of tabs and need lots of extensions then Firefox is the browser for you; if you're spending all day in a few web apps and your need for add-ons begins and ends with ad-blocking, then Google is your friend - or at least it will be once the Flash problem is fixed.
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Your comments (28) Click to add a new comment
skypix
December 31st 2011
28. A perfect example of why I am leaving IE9 64 bit on my new Win 7 Pro system (Asus p8z68 v pro/gen3, Intel i7 2600k, 16GB Crucial memory (2x8GB)) is this comment. I wrote a fairly long and detailed comment, then hit some weird key combo by mistake and my comment - not the page, just the comment - completely disappeared.
Other reasons I don'lt like IE9: it won't let me select the search engine I want (Google). It hangs up, says the add on gallery page isn't functioning, then when I finally do get the page, won't let me confirm Google, though it shows it in the choices!
Also tried the add button in the search bar at the top...it either takes 2-3 minutes to bring up the gallery, says "not available", "not functioning...or won't let me choose Google.
So I'm done with IE9, which I was only trying because Chrome kept crashing my system! Like, 26 BSODs (Blue Screens of Death) in 10 days. If I don't use Chrome, solid as a rock. Use Chrome, within 30 minutes to an hour, crash to blue screen.
Many, many others online report similar programs.
I have a nominal setup, it's a new system for pete sake.
So I'm going to try Opera and see, otherwise back to Firefox, which I used to love and used for years, but just got so bandwidth greedy it was slowing my system down.
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rezanaghibi
November 1st 2011
27. A few paragraphs a sentence starts with "The trio keep on-screen "chrome" to a minimum and don't look bad at all."
My question: what is this sentence saying?
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lovlid
March 28th 2011
26. @ wrongasusuald0g.
Daren't you use your real name anymore? Or is it that you've used so many, you don't know what it is now?
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wrongd0g
March 28th 2011
25. Meh, Opera 11 beats ALL of these by a long margin,
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nottrendy
March 24th 2011
24. It's too bad IE9 is faster and far more secure than the bloated FF and the overrated Chrome. I'm pretty sure the people who wrote this article are shills.
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tomankcorn
March 18th 2011
23. @u3z05en
im currently doing one and by doing one i mean internet explorer is taking 1/0 seconds to load up a page on ubuntu. firefox and chrome have kicked its **** :)
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lovlid
March 18th 2011
22. @ u3z05en.
Consider the comments Microsoft usually get from Mac users and the incredibly boring linux ladies, why don't you shove your sarcasm somewhere the sun doesn't shine :)
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u3z05en
March 17th 2011
21. Ooo IE9 looks fun! Anybody done performance comparisons on Ubuntu?
No?
Not available?
How bout MAC?
No?
So it's only available for Windows then? But FF and Chrome do all the same stuff at exactly the same speed on all 3 platforms?
Psh! Forgive my sarcasm, but the promo add for IE9 set me so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cVNQa5qEXVM
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ninjawarrior
March 17th 2011
20. The verdict summed it up nicely..if you're not bothered by browsers then IE does the job. If you're more picky then FF and Chrome pretty much on a par (FF edge on add ons)
Chrome however is evolving in a different way with the introduction of widgets etc, which will smooth the way to any google OS (for the masses).
Personally, i'll give ff4 a try, having switched to chrome due to FF3 becoming very clunky and memory intensive on my XP machine.
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bradavon
March 16th 2011
19. Incidentally I didn't have Windows Explorer running, meaning it must mean the Explorer shell. I cannot exactly go closing that.
Just ignore it and restart the PC. Both IE7 and IE8 require a restart at the end, so nothing new.
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bradavon
March 16th 2011
18. @ lovlid/phibo78: Thanks guys.
@ kjharve: I got that message too and choice the "ignore them and I'll restart my PC" option. I was doing other stuff at the same time. It doesn't update of them. I'm not sure why non-MS software could affect the installation (probably for the reason you say) but don't worry just ignore it.
It seems to list all software you've got running. Some software I even have in the system tray was mentioned.
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kjharve
March 16th 2011
17. I've just tried to install IE9 and got a message that some applications that needed to be updated had to be closed.
The list of applications was as follows; Catalyst Control Center, Firefox, iTunesHelper, Java Update Scheduler, Microsoft Outlook and Windows Explorer.
I promptly cancelled the installation - Microsoft has had problems in the past with updating its own software, there's no way I'm letting it update others.
It's more likely that this message was badly worded and it might have needed some resources in use by those applications. Either way, this sort of thing won't fill people with confidence. We want browsers to be lightweight, efficient and hassle-free - Microsoft don't seem to have fully grasped this yet.
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phibo78
March 16th 2011
16. @lovlid & @ bradavon.
Who else could it be, Pro-ps3, pro-andriod & pro opera? Anti-the rest of the world - all other reports/stats are WRONG in his mind.
As for the browsers, most say very impressed with IE9, their is a number of things I still have to use IE for that other browsers don't support and it is a big improvement,
Still prefer firefox though, Chrome does have some good points though.
Opera was installed and removed in less than a hour.
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sabret00the
March 16th 2011
15. @jorjitop: You can arrange your tabs on the side in Opera without an extension.
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lovlid
March 16th 2011
14. @ bradavon.
You do know wrongd0g is si_smith, don't you?
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jorjitop
March 16th 2011
13. A couple of points you neglect to mention.
I don't know about the others, but Firefox has add-ons that permit "Tree-style tabs", ie, tabs stacked vertically on the side. Given the lack of height in current computer screens, this is much more practical giving you more vertical height for the image and saves you scrolling.
Chrome is the only browser that has integrated Google spyware so they can continue to build their database on you as you use it.
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sabret00the
March 16th 2011
12. @bradavon: It's pointless isolating tabs. Chrome does so and it consumes more resources than Firefox as a result, but because it's distributed, no one notices or apparently cares. If a tab crashed, it's not like you can kill the process in the Task Manager as no one knows which tab has crashed. Separating UI, content and plugins is enough. Sadly the UI and content still run in the same process in Firefox, so that's a fail. But ultimately separating tabs is lazy, misleading and pointless.
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bradavon
March 16th 2011
11. @ stromos: Fair point but it's not enough. Tabs should be isolated too.
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bradavon
March 16th 2011
10. @wrongd0g: Please. You reckon Mozilla have as much money as Google or Microsoft? Apple have stacks of money, yet Safari's worldwide usage is still low (only bumped by Apple MAC).
Who said popularity and quality were linked? My point was this article details the browsers most people use and as much as you like to winge, Opera isn't it.
Opera is an excellent browser but Opera have still failed to tell enough people it exists. Firefox largely got it's user base on word of mouth, yet Opera was released first.
It's pretty clear Chrome will overtake Firefox as the second most popular browser sooner or later. Mozilla take far too long to get new versions out there.
Follow the crowd? What like IE users who've chosen to switch to Firefox or Chrome you mean? Yep because that's following the crowd.
Not enough (by far) people don't know Opera exists. Why do you fail to understand this basic concept? They may use it if Opera actually did something to tell people their browser exists.
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