Microsoft has a history of false advertising. With their new browser, IE9 , this behavior continues.
Microsoft is keeping the tradition of releasing a comparison chart, glorifying their newest browser, and we wanted to shed some light on what's really going on.
This isn't our own browser comparison chart, it's a replica of lies and half truth microsoft has posted on their site, and our comments to them
From : Front End Developers who had enough
| Performance | Firefox | Chrome | IE9 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast startup and shutdown | check | check | check |
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This section is misleading, fast startup is a very relative term, and is not giving any indication to
an actual start up time for each browser
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| Fast JavaScript engine for better performance | check | check | check |
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While true that in ie9, the javascript engine is much faster then previous versions, this gives no
indication to how IE9 compares to other browsers in terms of javascript perfomance
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| Popular websites load quickly | check | check | check |
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This has got to be the weirdest comparison criteria on this site. Do unpopular sites load slowly?
Isn't loading speed affected by user's bandwidth also?
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| Full hardware acceleration for text, graphics, and video provided by default | check | ||
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This section is misleading, both chrome and firefox 4 provide hardware acceleration , maybe not by
default, and not for the three mentioned aspects, but it's there nonetheless.
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| Notification when add-ons slow browser performance | check | ||
| Ease of Use | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple browsing controls for a better browsing experience | check | check | check |
| Change and add search providers within the search box | check | check | check |
| Search provider suggestions as you type in the search box | check | check | check |
| New Tab page includes quick access to common tasks and your favorite sites | check | check | |
| Websites can be pinned to the taskbar in Windows 7 | check | check | check |
| Tear-off tabs with Windows 7 Aero Snap | check | check | check |
| Reopen accidentally closed tabs | check | check | |
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Firefox has this feature implemented since 2008.
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| Combined search and Address bar | check | check | |
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Firefox was one of the first browsers to implement this, it's called
"AwesomeBar",
this section is simply useless.
One can remove the searchbar from firefox very easily and use only the "awesomebar" |
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| Visual search suggestions shown as you type | check | ||
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Both Firefox and Chrome provide visual suggestions while you type both in the address bar, and in the
search in page feature
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| Jump Lists and thumbnail preview controls for pinned sites | check | ||
| Accelerators for quick access to web services without leaving the page | check | ||
| Security | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Protection from malicious cross-site scripting attacks | check | check | check |
| Best protection against phishing attacks | check | check | |
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This section is a lie. Both Chrome and Firefox implement the
Google Safebrowsing
protocol. Which is to say their protection is quite similar.
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| Domain name highlighting in the Address bar to alert you to deceptive websites | check | check | |
| Most protection against socially engineered malware | check | ||
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This section seems like something microsoft just made up to give itself the lead. Either remove the
"most" part, and give all three browsers a checkmark, or remove this section entirely.
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| Privacy | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Prevent others from seeing what sites you have visited on your PC | check | check | check |
| Control whether certain third parties can track your browsing activity | check | check | check |
| Web Standards and Compatibility | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Supports standards both commonly used today and for building tomorrow’s websites, including HTML5 | check | check | check |
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This is very misleading. Microsoft brags about standards they support, but fail to mention
those they don't :
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| WebM-encoded HTML5 video supported when a VP8 codec is installed on Windows | check | check | check |
| H.264-encoded HTML5 video support | check | ||
| Compatibility mode to view websites designed for older browsers | check | ||
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While true that IE9 has compatibility mode, it's not really a point in IE9 advantage.
Most of the websites built to date, have support for all browsers, and then special support for IE browsers. With compatibility mode, the user is turning on that special support. Instead of focusing on rendering the sites correctly, microsoft introduces the magic button to make sites work. |
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| Developer Tools | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive tool set (HTML, CSS, JavaScript editing, profiling, network inspection) | check | check | check |
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This section is confusing, while ie9 provides some support for network inspection,it's not robust
enough, and web developers prefer to use tools like fiddler in IE.
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| Developer tools built-in to the browser | check | check | |
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While true that firebug doesn't come built in with Firefox, it is provided as an
extension, and is much better tool for the web developer then built in IE9 tools.
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| Tools that show pages in different rendering engines to let developers understand and debug browser differences | check | ||
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This is relevant only to IE.
Other browsers have an built-in update notification mechanism, which updates the rendering engine. Making this section not-relevant. |
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