Let the battle begin…

17Jun08

Just last week, we have Opera 9.5, the new chic and nicely-built (not to mention – fast) browser by Opera Inc. Added security, and faster speed.

Tomorrow, (Wednesday 1.00am), we gonna witness a remarkable release of a remarkable browser – Firefox 3. Lighter, more secured, and more features.

And what’s next?

Of course we can’t miss out Microsoft with its Internet Explorer. IE 8 will be the latest browser waiting in line of the browser war. Unknown of its release date, IE 8 is currently undergoing beta testing and beta version is available for download. IE Beta 2 is set to be released this coming August. (I’m no big fan of testing beta versions, so I’ll just wait for the final one)

Personally, I would say that IE evolves rather rapidly, thanks to Firefox and Opera. We witnessed the ‘ultra’ transition from the sluggish IE6 to the ”okay’, up-to-par, good looking IE7. Their next project, the IE8, will be greater.

Before I lay out facts and figures of professional review, let me start with my own review.

From my experience on these 3 browsers, Opera 9.25, Firefox 2 and IE 7, I would say Firefox 2 tops the chart (though I still have all of them). Opera 9.25 was a fast browser (Opera 9.5 is even faster) and it is the fastest among the three.

3 reasons I stick with Firefox 2 rather than Opera 9.25 :

The web-page-load-speed between the two browsers doesn’t differ much. Plus, I did not fancy the way Opera loads images.
Firefox 2 offers wide range of addon, extensions and plugins, whatever you name it. It is built by user for user and can be easily obtained from Firefox Addon site. Among my favourite addons are DownThemAll, Nuke Anything Enhanced, and Hide Menubar
More used to Firefox and nothing super-catchy in Opera that can lure me to change my mind.

IE7 is definitely out of the choice due to lack of features and security as compared to the other 2 browsers. Nevertheless it is a decent browser, compared to IE6, which is not even worth using.

In terms of ranking:

Firefox 2 > Opera 9.25 > IE7

How about ranking of the new browsers?

I haven’t really tried out all of them and is still waiting for 1.00am … !! for Firefox 3

The browser war can lead to many uncertainties. From professional testing, it is found out tat Firefox 3 handles java script the best, among the 3 new browsers. In terms of speed though, IE8 is 2x faster than Firefox 3, which pretty remarkable. All 3 new browsers has added security, improved ’smart’ location bar and Firefox 3 still tops in terms of user-friendly features. ( read below: Firefox 3 vs IE8 )

So, whats the ranking gonna be and who will win the browser war? I can give u an answer if it is 1 to 4 years back, but now…only time will tell…

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Okay now, for the professional review and as additional reading material for the ‘tech savvy’: