April 2, 2008 by
ryan
After reading Steve Souders' article on IE8 speed enhancements, I became curious about how page download times in IE8 stacked up against the latest beta of Firefox (3.0b5). I realize that both of these browsers are in beta so the release product may be signficantly different. Also, please keep in mind these results are not very scientific (obviously). To obtain download times, I used Fiddler for Internet Explorer and Firebug for Firefox.
First off, I loaded a several higher volume websites to compare page download times. Each page was loaded three times (for extreme statistical accuracy :P) and the average load time was calculated.
Google News
http://news.google.com
0 Javascript Requests - 0 CSS Requests - 32 Images
| Firefox: |
1.08 Seconds |
| IE8: |
2.43 Seconds |
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com
12 Javascript Requests - 2 CSS Requests - 96 Images
| Firefox: |
5.59 Seconds |
| IE8: |
4.86 Seconds |
Mac.com
http://www.mac.com
15 Javascript Requests - 6 CSS Requests - 44 Images
| Firefox: |
5.74 Seconds |
| IE8: |
4.52 Seconds |
Finally, I ran Steve Souders' Parellel downloads test; the results were almost identical.
| Firefox |
 |
| Internet Explorer |
 |
It was really odd to me that Google News loaded almost two times as fast on Firefox while all the other sites loaded close to the same speed or slightly faster on Internet Explorer. The only difference I notice off the bat is the number of JS/CSS files; maybe its something to do with that? It would be very interesting to see how the browsers compare when rendering pages. Have you found results similar to this or know of a good way to test render time? Let me know what you think.
March 8, 2008 by
ryan
Here we go again...
As the beta test of IE8 recently became available we are quickly
approaching the release of another version of Internet Explorer. To the
millions of web designers / developers out there, this can be a
troubling time. Much frustration has been expressed about some of the issues (or supposed issues )
in this beta. Some of this concern is definitely understandable -- I
mean, IE6 has been the bane of most web developers lives since it was
released in 2001. However, I think some of the negativity is present
just because it's a Microsoft product.
The Fanboy
The attitude of hating every Microsoft product just because it's Microsoft is something I would call reverse fanboyism.
"Fanboy (sometimes spelt fanboi)
is a term used to describe an individual who is devoted to a single
fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject,
often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession." wiki
A reverse fanboy, is well, obviously the opposite -- someone who
obsessively remains disloyal or passionately against a product.. no
matter the circumstances. This mindset
is just getting kind of old. I would completely agree about IE6 and IE7
showing little regard for web standards and being an overall headache
to develop with, HOWEVER, Microsoft seems to be on a different path this time.
Your Perspective
When I was in elementary school, we would grade each other's
writing assignments. The teacher would always tell us to give each
other constructive criticism because an outside influence can give
additional perspective or show errors that we previously didn't know
existed. I hope we can take that same approach here. IE8 is still in
beta test -- It is far from being a release ready product and there are
still a number of issues. That being said, there are ways that those in the web development community can voice those concerns.
It is important to make the IE8 developers aware of the issues as they
come up so we don't have to live with the problems when IE8 is released.
How's it going to turn out?
Although it has a long way to go, IE8 is leaps and bounds better than
its predecessors. I don't know that I will switch from Firefox but from
a development standpoint, a standards compliant Internet Explorer seems
like a dream come true (although we will probably need to support IE6
for who knows how long). I say we give the IE8 team a chance to fix the
bugs (and voice issues as they become apparent) and see what comes out of it. What are your thoughts?
