IE7 Rant

[Josh]

The reason why IE opens so fast is because explorer.exe is always running in the background. It's also the reason why all IE based browsers open fast.

-app103 (November 06, 2006, 04:12 AM)

Not true, this myth has been disproven time and time again. Opera starts up JUST AS QUICK as IE and uses its own dll's which are preloaded. Explorer.exe, as stated above, is part of the Windows shell, and not IE.

[urlwolf]

People, give opera a good try. My guess is that you'll like it.

[Josh]

People, give opera a good try. My guess is that you'll like it.

-urlwolf (November 06, 2006, 05:22 AM)

Actually, I did. I was the biggest opera advocate for about a year. However, due to minor annoyances and the lack of Roboform support, I have had to switch. The wand is nice, but it provides no interface for editing passwords (To edit one, you must delete an existing wand entry and relogin to the site). Other annoyances have plagued me too, such as the fact that opera takes about 5-10 seconds to shutdown (which is annoying when installing an application which requires a browser be closed, or shutting down the system for restart).

Anyways, on that note, as of 2 weeks ago, I've moved to Maxthon (waiting for 2.0, which will be what 1.x should have been). Much nicer and I get back roboform.

[johnk]

However, due to minor annoyances and the lack of Roboform support, I have had to switch.

-Josh (November 06, 2006, 06:04 AM)

I also gave up on Opera solely because of the lack of Roboform support, as have countless thousands of potential users, judging by the number of forum threads you come across pleading for Roboform support in Opera. On the one hand I can understand why the Opera people don't want to allow extension support. On the other hand, it severely limits their market. Last time I tried Wand, it came a very poor second to Roboform.

[Carol Haynes]

However, due to minor annoyances and the lack of Roboform support, I have had to switch.

-Josh (November 06, 2006, 06:04 AM)

I also gave up on Opera solely becuase of the lack of Roboform support, as have countless thousands of potential users, judging by the number of forum threads you come across pleading for Roboform support in Opera. On the one hand I can understand why the Opera people don't want to allow extension support. On the other hand, it severely limits their market. Last time I tried Wand, it came a very poor second to Roboform.

-johnk (November 06, 2006, 07:57 AM)

Ditto - and is a major reason why Firefox has jumped to the front of the queue as an alternative to IE.

[tomos]

Could never understand why people wouldn't use Opera instead of IE
(reading the first half of this page I kept thinking "WHY NOT OPERA???")

but
now i understand
shame really, cause Opera is such nice software to use 

Off topic=Other Opera Annoyances

I have my own dislikes/annoyances with Opera - cant create profiles, cant save single window sessions (I mean if you've 2 windows open, you cant save ONE window as a single session) - again Opera forums clogged with people looking for both, but nothing doing this version. (In fact i think things got worse if i recall correctly). Now I have Surfulater - no plugin for it ... I keep on using it (Opera) though

[dk70]

To f0dder, just so you dont think Firefox developers are fat and lazy check this http://weblogs.mozil...archives/009620.html From one of those who push buttons when it comes to decision making. Look at it this way, you are witness to an evolution Usually those who complain about slow startup have real problem delaying process so I doubt improving startup is high on their agenda. They probably count on new bookmarks/history handling to cut some 0.xs

Not closing Firefox is best solution, use Strokeit or something.

[Renegade]

While Opera is fast to display HTML, and quick loading, the way it handles javascript is very slow. This is a common criticism of Opera, and probably the major reason why I don't use it more than I do. (I use Opera for some things - not many though.)

[nontroppo]

IE7 has certainly not placated a huge swathe of web developers. Fixes for bugs that took 6 years to fix were touted as substantial improvements. Javascript manipulation of the DOM is still a horrendous mess. Performance on the Acid2 test (advanced style features) looks like opera 4's rendering from the year 2000! Developers were still happy to have crumbs thrown at them, but there are still very good grounds to be upset with it for its pathetic support for modern standards.

If you care about elegant, semantically transparent and interoperable code/information, that is a good enough reason to avoid IE7 for the much better alternative browsers.


Offtopic comments/corrections   

I have my own dislikes/annoyances with Opera - cant create profiles, cant save single window sessions

-tomos (November 06, 2006, 11:45 AM)

for profiles: http://operawiki.info/operaprofiles

to get single window sessions, one would need to manually edit your session file - thus it is possible but not easy (and would be nice feature for the future...) It would be possible for someone to write a third-party "extension" for this though in the meantime...

While Opera is fast to display HTML, and quick loading, the way it handles javascript is very slow. This is a common criticism of Opera, and probably the major reason why I don't use it more than I do.

-Renegade (November 06, 2006, 11:21 PM)

This is absolutely untrue since about V6. For most of ECMAScript and DHTML, opera's current engine is lightning fast. Benchmarks are always incomplete, but here are a quite comprehensive sample of tests that check a whole variety of areas of javascript (opera version is latest weekly, Firefox is the latest trunk build aka FF3):

http://andrew.hedges...eed_test/index3.html

Opera: 0.7s IE7: 3.1s FFTrunk: 3.6s


http://celtickane.co...projects/jsspeed.php

Opera: 0.98s IE7: 6.1s FFtrunk: 3.2s


http://www.24fun.com...benchjs/benchjs.html

Opera: 8.4s IE7: 17.5s FFtrunk: 21.1s (due to popup test mostly)


http://www.speich.ne...er/moztesting/3d.htm - large box

Opera: 5.2s  IE7: 7.2s  FFTrunk: 12.5s

DOM performance can be staggeringly faster than IE or FF - which is very important for well written modern JS:

http://amix.dk/blog/viewEntry/?id=161 - http://nontroppo.org...mer/DOM-compare.html

Basic DOM - opera: 1.1s  IE7: 7.2s  FFtrunk:2.6s


http://www.quirksmod...g/dom/innerhtml.html :

DOM1 - opera: 0.2s IE7: 3.2s FFTrunk: 0.95s
DOM2 - opera: 0.1s IE7: 3.0s FFTrunk: 0.70s

Even IE's very own innerHTML maipulation is faster in opera: 31ms vs. 170ms for IE7


http://www.quirksmod...dom/classchange.html -

class: opera: 62ms IE7: 844ms FFTrunk: 479ms
style: opera: 484ms IE7: 1043ms FFTrunk: 879ms


Opera may perform slower in some places - one of its string concatenation functions is slightly slower (~1.2) than IE and Firefox - this is because opera is optimised for low memory use and deliberately trades that against speed in this specific case (confirmed directly with the developer of the JS engine). Nevertheless, with corner cases aside, opera's javascript performance is very fast; Opera needs to run in devices such as PDAs and even mobile phones after all...

[dk70]

Well benchmarks for browsers is like 3Dmark when both ATI and Nvidia were "creative". Not necessarily relate much to how real life browsing works. You run X process 1 time only, not 1000 so difference in "speed" are obvious

24fun give 21 secs to a clean Firefox? I dont think so, try may be 8 secs if I remember correctly. Opera like 5.x secs on my computer last I tried. Opening of new windows is not fun for Firefox but say how much about speed? Is important - under benchmark conditions. Try add some extensions to Firefox, possible also gadgets on Opera, and see what happens. May be just change theme. Result can change dramatically, however browsing experience does not Good one is Adblock Plus, clearly a hit but also what makes many pages load faster. So slower benchmark means faster in real life, heh. Im sure all developers use these and more but not for popular consumption I think.

Strange with how "speed" is experienced. Opera scrolls pages like it was made for that purpose only, Firefox look like crap in comparison. Give bad impression, may be depends on mouse driver/features but certainly Opera seems much faster. Well then try add smoothwheel extension, set it up properly which is to your liking and then re-evaluate. Way better, way smoother of course - feels faster to me as well. I like it more than Operas "speed", almost too fast! A few extra cpu cycles is needed to make Firefox scroll pretty that is true.

Nice with so many benchmarks  Good for testing before/after adding whatever. I dont know about Opera but Firefox can certainly be "slowed down" by not so optimal add-ons.

IE7 rules and will decide what you see when browsing through Opera/Firefox - most of the world wont avoid it. So be happy for progress and may be also they declare addicted to standards and browser upgrades. That is new statements from Microsoft. Matters to Firefox/Opera users as well. Both Firefox and IE devs have said they are not that occupied by Acid2 for now - I assume they mean it is of little importance. Will be later, Firefox 3 pass it already as does Opera. IE7 will catch up if they live up to promises. IE7 is probably tied more to Vista than genuine desire to meet standards (MS could have made that years ago easy if they bothered) but still... No development was huge mistake by MS but IE7 is progress for world browsing no matter you dont like it too much.

[tomos]

Offtopic comments/corrections   

Quote from: tomos on 06-11-2006, 18:45:12
I have my own dislikes/annoyances with Opera - cant create profiles, cant save single window sessions

for profiles: http://operawiki.info/operaprofiles

-nontroppo

[Unless theres been new developments since September-] after spending a lot of time trying to implement this & (other solutions) a couple of months ago, I was told at the opera forums that at the moment (Opera 9) the only solution is to install a second copy of opera (ie seperate installs required for each profile)

Only bothered me that theres loads of directions out there that arent valid anymore & a body can waste alot of time & get very stressed out ... a lesson in patience the whole experience was 

[nontroppo]

tomos: that bug is fixed   - the only existing issue is that the ad-block filter is shared among profiles by default - you need to manually edit the path until that is fixed...