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March 28, 2009

Speed test: Internet Explorer 8 vs Firefox

We put the these browsers through their paces

Nick Mediati

Microsoft's newest browser promises faster page load speeds. Does Internet Explorer 8.0 deliver? We put it to the test against the latest version of Firefox - Mozilla Firefox 3.0.

Microsoft made the final version of its latest web browser, Internet Explorer 8, available this month. It's packed with a healthy number of new features and even makes security a top propriety.

But just as important as all that is browsing speed, is how quickly IE8 can render your favourite websites. To get an idea of how IE8 compares, we put it to the test.

Our speed-test methodology

In our browser speed comparison, we pitted a near-final build of Internet Explorer 8 against Firefox 3.0.7, the current non-beta version of Mozilla's browser. We used a set of nine popular websites in our testing including Amazon, MySpace, Yahoo, YouTube, eBay and Wikipedia. To ensure we could gather as accurate page-loading times as possible, we recorded our testing sessions for review later on.

We loaded each site 10 times in each of the browsers and repeated the process the following day to rule out any network traffic or server issues. Prior to each test run, we cleared the browsers' caches as well. We also repeated the load tests to ensure that we had sufficient data to identify loading speed trends.

To ensure consistent results, we performed testing on a fresh Windows Vista installation, and we reinstalled the operating system before each round of testing. Additionally, we removed the two best and two worst scores for each page load test to produce more consistent results.

Browser testing can be tricky, as different browsers measure page loading progress differently, so getting a read of page load times strictly by the browser's progress bar could result in inaccurate or inconsistent results. Have all the images appeared? Are there elements of the page that have yet to load even though the browser's status indicator suggests otherwise? These are questions we take into account when testing browsers.

Given this, we took into account visual indications of a page's loading progress, rather than relying on what the browser's progress bars told us.

Broadband speed tester

NEXT PAGE: The results

 

  1. We put these browsers through their paces
  2. Browser speed test results

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Comments received


me said on Saturday, 28 March 2009

ive always fount firefox to load pages faster.
it also runs much smoother and i never get any bugs or it never crashes on me

Skidz said on Sunday, 29 March 2009

I really like I.E 8. and if you read a lot of my little moans here and there youll know im not a huge Microsoft fan (at least with the latest two O.S offerings) But I.E 8 is very nice and runs sweetly, on Xp anyway

Jimmy said on Sunday, 29 March 2009

"ive always fount firefox to load pages faster."

Yes but do you not also find firefox initiallt taken longer to open and the whole firefox loads pages faster argument is inaccurate as a browser cannot improve download speeds. It could load pages you have already been on before but thats about it. Its the same as these bits of software that are meant to improve download speeds load of rubbish but for some reason people believe it.

Steve Ransome said on Monday, 30 March 2009

I have tried IE8 but found the adds annoying. Taken it off until IE8Pro comes out. (with it's add blocker)

Skidz said on Monday, 30 March 2009

Ads, what ads... ? Use Admuncher... No ads.

Lexton said on Monday, 30 March 2009

Hey, Skidz. Even better - no ads means no website in the first place. Problem sorted, eh!

Mister-Dee said on Monday, 30 March 2009

Is it just my Computer ?
I've just installed i.e.8 and within seconds - chaos ensued !
My Broadband connection went down ( BT)
I had no access to my Photo program (PSP 11)
No access to off-line emails.
I coould go on, but why bother, it's the same story every time with IE.
I'm back with Firefox, unistalled Ie 8 and everything is back to, my idea, of normal.
Thank goodness for System Restore !

Skidz said on Monday, 30 March 2009

@Mister-Dee
"Is it just my Computer ?"

Seems So. !

DieSse said on Monday, 30 March 2009

If you're going to test a beta of IE8 - then you really should test the beta of FireFox 3.5. And you should reallt test the current version of Chrome and Safari.

Otherwise your tests are pretty unprofessional.

DieSse said on Monday, 30 March 2009

"the whole firefox loads pages faster argument is inaccurate as a browser cannot improve download speeds."

Pages can't download bits faster than your connection runs - but they can make elapsed time and rendering (ie get onto the screen) much shorter - especially Javascript heavy pages - as there is a world of difference in JS speeds - and the "Just-In-Time" Javascript engines (such as in Chrome, FF3.5 and Safari) are measurably quite a lot faster. Try Chrome and you'll see that in action.

Jimmy said on Monday, 30 March 2009

Yes but why does it take longer to initially open than other browsers and why will it not play wmv files and why does it download files to a strange place with a weird download manager.

Sorry i just don't like it but that’s just my opinion. At the end of the day its just a browser and people should use whatever works best for them just stop boring everyone else with the preaching about firefox. (That's not directed at anyone I'm just talking about generally)

master x said on Thursday, 02 April 2009

The Only reason that i hate internet explorer that it loads when opened slowly ... Firefox faster . but I still using IE 8 because it Loads pages faster and it's more stable than firefox .

Jimmy said on Thursday, 02 April 2009

You will probably also find that firefox is faster for alot of people who have loaded their internet explorer with a lot of ad-ons Having 65 toolbars installed and all sorts of other wonderful guff will make it slower. You then install firefox which innitially will have none of this installed and wow it is faster.

Rocco said on Monday, 06 April 2009

@Jimmy

I agree with you. For lots of people, this is the problem.

kupito said on Friday, 10 April 2009

there's a new and faster browser called Pukuete!

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