Is Internet Explore 9 better than Chrome and Fire Fox

Introduction

From the facts it shows that the answer for above question is “Slightly Yes”. More correct answer will be “Now it is in the race”. As lot of you know, for past few years IE has been out of this race between web browsers(I don’t know about other countries, but in Sri Lanka almost all users are divided between Chrome and Firefox). Now after so much of investment IE is now up and running. But it will take some time to recover from that major drawback.

Microsoft has obviously invested a lot of effort in getting IE up to scratch, and assuming it can get a reasonable proportion of the users of older versions of the browser to upgrade, IE9 should greatly accelerate the development of more powerful, feature-packed web apps. That’s because developers will be much more likely to develop sites that rely on complex JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3 if they know those features are broadly supported in the browser market. I’d hope that Microsoft would consider releasing IE9 for older versions of Windows, too, as that will help to ensure that a greater percentage of users upgrade.

Tests

Below tests are done by one call Simon Mackie and according to him IE hold a strong position. These tests are done using some popular benchmark test software.

As you can see, while the IE9 beta is not quite as good as its main competitors in terms of standards compliance, its score of 95 is streets ahead of the old IE8, which only scored a lowly 20.

To test the speed of the browsers I used Kraken, Mozilla’s new JavaScript benchmarking tool, which attempts to test JavaScript performance using a series of tests that attempt to replicate realistic workloads. While benchmark tests results should always be taken with a pinch of salt as they can never exactly match real world conditions, they do at least provide an indicator of browser performance. The score returned by Kraken is the time it takes the browser to complete the tests, with a lower figure being better.

As you can see, IE9 is still lagging behind its competitors a little. However, it’s a vast improvement on the previous version. Even though the XP machine is slower than my test machine, that’s an order of magnitude worse than the new version, and shows just how much better IE9 is at handling complex JavaScript.

What Microsoft says about IE9

Performance	FF	Ch	IE9
Fast startup and shutdown
Fast JavaScript engine for better performance
Popular websites load quickly
Full hardware acceleration for text, graphics, and video provided by default
Notification when add-ons slow browser performance

Ease of Use
Simple browsing controls for a better browsing experience
One-click navigation to websites pinned to the taskbar
Change and add search providers within the search box
Search provider suggestions as you type in the search box
Tear-off tabs with Windows 7‌ Aero Snap
Reopen accidentally closed tabs
Combined search and address bar
Visual search suggestions shown as you type
Jump Lists and thumbnail preview controls for pinned sites
Accelerators for quick access to web services without leaving the page

Security
Best protection against phishing attacks
Protection from malicious cross-site scripting attacks
Domain name highlighting in the address bar to alert you to deceptive websites
Most protection against socially engineered malware
Protection against clickjacking attacks

Reliability
Crashed tabs stay isolated from all other tabs
Automatic recovery of crashed tabs
Tab hang recovery with messaging and prompting when websites time out

Privacy
Prevent others from seeing what sites you have visited on your PC
Control whether certain third parties can track your browsing activity

Web Standards and Compatibility
Supports standards both commonly used today and for building tomorrow’s websites, including HTML5
H.264-encoded HTML5 video support
Compatibility mode to view websites designed for older browsers

Developer Tools
Comprehensive tool set (HTML, CSS, JavaScript editing, profiling, network inspection)
Developer tools built into the browser
Tools that show pages in different rendering engines to let developers understand and debug browser differences

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So give it a try (at least a chance). Let me know how it feels comment below.

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Reference:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/home

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/internet-explorer-9-a-more-beautiful-web/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368987,00.asp

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Benchmarks/

http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/