Is Firefox slower that IE?

[Paladin2000]

IMO, Firefox is only slower compared to IE because of the memory management problem with the gecko engine. This was something I read from the mozilla forum, but I have no way of validating the accuracy of the information.

Even if the information is true, Firefox is much much safer than IE and the developers are constantly updating the browser, adding functionalities, patching up bugs and optimizing the codes.

I like Firefox because it is better than IE. The issue of it being not developed by M$ is another plus point.

The Developers of Firefox are dedicated people whom loves doing what they do best and they are very concerned about the quality of their products, an attitude which M$ is seriously lacking.

It has been months or years since M$ took the effort to update IE and it is hopelessly outdated by today's standard. Functions like tab browsing and mouse gesture and something innovative features that makes browsing easier with Firefox.

IE may be fast, but it is outdated and unsecure. IE is only useful for windows update, beyond that, I can't say I have much use for it.

[ 09-25-2004, 02:17 PM: Message edited by: Paladin2000 ]

[philip]

Firefox loads launches slower. After that I don't have much trouble. What's the difference in waiting 1 sec or 1.5 for example, I'd never let my security down. Like someone I know once said ""if you take your pants down someone's going to cut it for you"

I like the tabbed browsing, I think it just takes some time getting used to it. But well it's better to have one thing with a lot of opened tabs than a lot of opened programs that take a lot of space at the task bar and are hard to manage.

I don't know if someone mentioned this but it's likely that windows is made to actually load IE fastest that is possible. Like in linux there's barely a difference, especially not anymore after I've opened the program once. Relaunching is just as fast or faster than loading IE and the security is a lot better [img]smile.gif[/img]

[LennonCook]

Firefox seems slightly slower sometimes, but is infact faster. It waits for a few milliseconds (time is adjustable in about:config ) before it starts painting the page. This makes sure that it will have all of the information before it displays it, which makes it quite a bit faster because it's not trying to do too much at once.

Luke, the sites Firefox doesn't work on are sites which are poorly designed in the first place: they will work ONLY in IE, because they use functions that only IE supports, that Microsoft came up with, and often won't work with IE for other platforms (eg, IE Mac). Complain to the web masters, get them to fix their sites.
As for IE being a good enough browser, read this document - 22 pages of problems in IE. That's a lot.
And even with Service Pack 2, IE is NOT SECURE. Look at: http://secunia.com/product/11/ vs. http://secunia.com/product/3256/ . In case you don't know how to read what Secunia says, the most critical bug in a fully patched Internet Explorer, is alot worse than the most critical bug in fully patched Firefox.
And the popup blocker in SP2/third party popup blockers: why should you have to use them? Why should you have to use a third party program, or use a specific operating system and get a very big file, just to have functionality in IE that other browsers have had natively for years? Why should you need to run an anti virus program, numerous spyware stopping programs, and a firewall, just to protect yourself from one program?
IE is the only modern graphical browser which lacks native popup blocking, tabbed browsing, and standards compliance across all the platforms it runs on. There's only one other - Safari - which is so restrictive in the platforms it runs on (and I'm not sure if Safari works on non-Mac systems or not - it may well be less restrictive than IE). It is the only browser which is integrated so deeply into the operating system that it cannot be removed - meaning, any security holes in it are holes in Windows itself, because they are always there as long as Windows is on your computer. And there are alot of holes. It also doesn't help that IE has two functionalities - ActiveX and Active Scripting - which are there specifically to give a web page more control over your computer.
Why should we have to put up with all of these things? And why should anyone hang onto a dying product (stand alone IE is a thing of the past now: no more updates except in the form of operating system upgrades)? Get Firefox, or Safari, or Konquerer, or Nautipolis, or Opera, or Mozilla, or even Netscape. But don't hang onto IE, you'll only end up falling behind.

[Ronn_Bman]

My experience with FF has been that it is quicker than IE, but my experience is limited.

When I'm on the road using dial up, I exclusively use FF because it seems to load the text first and then the images. To me, on the road with dial up, the images are the least important, and I hate waiting for them in order to read the text further down the page.

I use IE at home with my broadband because it is faster(to me), and I'm more familiar with it...

...but on the road with dial up...

FF is the way to go.

[Bungleau]

Hmmm... will this thread get closed because of religious discussion? I mean, this is, after all, a holy war...

I've used both. I generally prefer FF to IE for a couple of reasons.

1. Most people developing nastiness (viruses and the like) are developing them to attack IE, and not FF. So by using FF, I'm using something they're not trying to attack. That's just safer, period.

2. I've not noticed a speed difference between them. The only thing I've noticed are a few graphics differences in how they display info. They display it at the end, but FF gives me a little more flicker (for example, in the "Hop To" box at the bottom of this page).

3. I've used other open-source initiatives, and while they can suffer from bloatware (the addition of thousands of useful and useless things), it's not a major concern with FF. Yet... [img]smile.gif[/img]

That being said, there are a couple of things I can't access with FF. Some sites require your browser to be at least IE 5.5, and based on the checks they do, FF doesn't match up. You can argue for a poorly designed site (and probably win), but I'd also look to the browser for an easy way to pretend to be IE 5.5 and higher.

[Stormymystic]

I tried firefox once, and for some reason it would not work on my system properly, so I gave up.

[Hivetyrant]

Originally posted by Intrepid: i have an overclocked AMD 2800+ with a gig of dual channel ddr 400 and firefox as a program actually runs slowly, it takes AGES to load, and is slow at browsing, it selectively works on some pages and not others, and is genrally unreliable. I also dislike tabed browsing immensley. IE is faster and more efficent, i'd take speed over security in a heartbeat, besides it isn't that unsecure especially with win xp sp2 installed. Don't choose firefox just because it's not made by microsoft, choose it for other reasons, IE's a good enough browser, don't change if you don't have to.

Also, you had/have an ancient version dont you?

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Bungleau: 1. Most people developing nastiness (viruses and the like) are developing them to attack IE, and not FF. So by using FF, I'm using something they're not trying to attack. That's just safer, period.

It also helps that Firefox's vulnerabilities are generally NOT linked straight to the Operating System. There has been one that was, ofcourse, (the Shell vulnerability that led to 0.9.2) and it's turnover time was under 24 hours, and it was only a problem on certain systems: WinNT, Win2k, WinXP...

2. I've not noticed a speed difference between them. The only thing I've noticed are a few graphics differences in how they display info. They display it at the end, but FF gives me a little more flicker (for example, in the "Hop To" box at the bottom of this page).

You might also notice that some animated GIFs play faster in Firefox. This is because IE sets any GIF with a delay less than 100 milliseconds between frames to that (or is it 50? These things change without notice, and aren't even consistant between different MS Apps: in Word, it's reported to be 10), while Firefox (and Opera, and Mozilla, and Konquerer, and Nautipolis, and Safari) does exactly what the GIF tells it to do. And alot are set to 0 delay between frames...

3. I've used other open-source initiatives, and while they can suffer from bloatware (the addition of thousands of useful and useless things), it's not a major concern with FF. Yet... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Not a matter of "yet", realy. Firerox is designed to be a small, standalone, browser. Just like they've built the Mozilla Suite's browsing and email components into new standalone apps (Firefox and Thunderbird), other things are being done too. The calandar from the suite is being developed now as Sunbird, Composer is NVu. Chatzilla is available as an extension to Firefox, and unfortunately I haven't seen any attempts to convert it to standalone yet.
But with the poer of extensions letting you add functionality you need rather than remove functions you don't, I think we're safe from bloatware for a good while yet. [img]smile.gif[/img]

That being said, there are a couple of things I can't access with FF. Some sites require your browser to be at least IE 5.5, and based on the checks they do, FF doesn't match up. You can argue for a poorly designed site (and probably win), but I'd also look to the browser for an easy way to pretend to be IE 5.5 and higher.

Get a user agent spoofer. I know there's plenty of extensions that can do it, but I can't think of any specific ones off the to of my head. ActiveX will never be implemented into Firefox, though, because it's non-portable, and has security problems. This will stop things like Windows Update, the MSN Zone, and some online stores with 'shopping carts'.

[ 09-27-2004, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

[Rokc Cadarn]

I switched to FF a couple of months ago and love it. Anything to stick it to MS :]. Besides the warm feeling I get in my stomach whenever I use it, it has saved me from some major frustration as well. We recently bought a wireless card for my gf's laptop and even though everything was installed correctly, IE couldn't detect a connection. I convinced her to switch FF and bam! instant internet. I don't know what the hell was wrong and I don't care. It works now.