Browser comparison: IE7 vs FF vs Opera
Unscramble the word: llan mi eous sce As a follow up to my previous post I have decided to do a comprehensive comparison of the main browsers today. Before the arrival of IE7 this was hardly worth doing as the answer was relatively obvious. The three browsers I have chosen are IE7, Firefox 1.5.0.5 (with reference to FF2) and Opera 9.
Comparison table:
| Internet Explorer 7 | Firefox 1.5.0.5 | Opera 9 | |
| Website support (not really a fair test, but an important consideration nonetheless) | (3) Full, with IE's high market share webmasters cannot afford to ignore this browser | (2) Good. Most sites will function perfectly, although occasionally certain websites will not work e.g. zone.com or royalmail.com | (2) In joint second with Firefox. |
| Standards support (This category is a far more accurate reflection of the browsers performance) | (1) Still poor. As with IE6 Microsoft has cut corners and this in many regards is limiting the development of the internet. | (3) Although it does not fully pass the Acid 2 Test, Mozilla is a great advocate for standards and makes great contributions towards them. | (3) Despite being closed-source, Opera also advocates standards and is the first of these browsers to pass the Acid 2 Test fully. |
| Add-ons | (1) Very limited. Although Microsoft claims to have achieved this it hasn't! The addon site is very weak and mostly lists plugins and full programs. | (3) First place for Firefox. Its open source and has a full system developed for extending the browser. Extensions are created by the community and provide truly useful extras such as Adblocking and Feed reading. | (2) Opera has Widgets which are somewhere in between. They can't do everything Extensions can, but they are certainly better than Microsoft's offering. |
| Ablocking | (1) Nonexistent | (2) Automatic pop-up blocking. However the extension "Adblock" allows all adverts to be blocked. Because this functionality is not built Firefox only gets second place. | (2) Opera also has popup blocking and a built in facility to remove content, however this is not always effective at removing all adverts and is not as good as Adblock or Remove It Permanently for Firefox. |
| User interface (Unfortunately I have given all the browsers second place here. Read why.) | (2) IE7 looks quite good out of the box but that is really it. IE7 has little else to give. I also feel they may have sacrificed functionality in their quest to maximise the webpage viewing area. | (2) Firefox comes looking grey and boring and somewhat outdated, although it is more practicle. Luckily its possible to customise most aspects of the interface and download additional themes. When I tried this at the main firefox add-on site however most themes would not install and I'm using 1.5.0.5, the current stable release. Perhaps there is a hack to get the themes working, but an average user would not know about that. | (2) Opera has a (reasonably) customisable interface and several themes. Yet when you first install Opera the interface is incredibly cluttered and it took me about ten minutes to get it looking how I wanted it. |
| Privacy and Security | (1) Microsoft's big failing. IE always gets targetted by hackers and this will probably occur again. Their new phising site detection is quite a weak offering. Will the list be maintained? Based on IE6 levels of unpatched security holes I'd be a little cautious about trusting microsoft entirely. At least they are providing an open beta this time however. | (3) Firefox's security is excellent and the available extensions make it even better. The best part is the options are useful and easy to adjust such as the options to handle cookies: Accept? Original site only? Unless previously removed? How long do I keep them? Very good. Only 3 unpatched vulnerabilities and these aren't critical | (3) Opera also is fantastic at keeping its users secure. 0 unpatched security problems. Like Firefox, Opera does a good job at keeping you secure and deservedly gets joint first place. |
There are several other criteria I could have used to compare the browsers and the ones you assign greatest weight to will depend on your needs. My final tally is:
-Last Place: Internet Explorer: 9
-Second Place: Opera: 14
-First Place: Firefox: 15
As you can see the scores are rather close and I think if Opera keeps on innovating it may soon overtake Firefox. Deciding which one is my favourite may take a long time...
Answer: Miscellaneous Labels: Technology
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