Browser Wars, is it ever going to stop?

By Johan Douma

The new Internet Explorer was released in April, and even if it’s still far behind the other browsers out there, it is a big improvement over Internet Explorer 6 and 7. It is finally bringing us closer to having some semblance of a unified web platform.

Or is it really?

From the Opera Blog: Opera's birthday was last week, 15 years old! Click on image for more details.

Let’s go back in time… 10 to 15 years ago

The Internet was young, there wasn’t any standard format, or unified platform. The browsers at the time, Netscape and Internet Explorer (Opera didn’t have a big market share) were adding feature after feature, copying each other continuously, without making sure their software was stable enough, wondering if the features would make it in the other browsers.

Essentially, because of the different features, websites were built for one browser specificaly. Alternative versions of the site, limited most of the time, were built for the other browsers.

The browser wars were a time of unstable browsers, shaky Web-standards compliance, frequent crashes, and many security holes.

Netscape was the king of all browsers but Microsoft ruined Netscape using it’s Windows monopoly and various other bad practices, cutting off Netscape’s air supply. It went to court for abusive monopoly/antitrust position. Together with several bad business decisions on Netscape’s part, it was enough for Netscape to go bankrupt at the end of 1998.

There wasn’t any decent alternative to Internet Explorer left, meaning that 99% of the Internet surfers were using it. That was the end of the browser wars… But Internet Explorer was still not that stable.

In the mean time, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) was created. The W3C is a consortium where member organizations work together to develop standards for the World Wide Web. The HTML, CSS, DOM, SVG were standards created during that time, but these standards weren’t really followed until years later. Sadly they still aren’t by some.

After the Browser Wars

Because of the big market share of Internet Explorer 6 (~2002), Microsoft didn’t really have the incentive to work on its milk cow, and IE didn’t get much attention anymore. But other companies started improving their own browsers, Firefox was released in 2003, and Safari appeared a little after that.

Browser Market Share Graph from Asa Dotzler. Click on image for more details

The main difference between Internet Explorer and the other browsers is the respect towards standards. To put it simply, Firefox, Safari and Opera do whatever the code tells them what to do.
On Internet Explorer 6 & 7, different spacing, crashes, random behaviour and unexpected results are to be expected. It was made before the iPod, years before Facebook and YouTube. It hasn’t been made for today’s Internet.

Why should you update?

If you are still using Internet Explorer 6 or 7, do yourself a favour and update to a modern browser! There are a lot out there: Firefox, Safari, Chrome…

Due to the combination of ActiveX, scripting, and its integration with the Windows operating system, Internet Explorer is more vulnerable to attack than many other browsers.

As modern browsers support a lot more standard features than Internet Explorer, many sites might actually look a lot better in these modern browsers. Sites will load faster, and your computer is less likely to crash.

See details below.

Regular Security Updates

Average number of days before vulnerabilities were fixed in Internet Explorer and Firefox. Click for detailed report.

Bugs are fixed a lot of quicker on Firefox than Internet Explorer.

In the detailled report, it is mentioned that Firefox has had 3 times as many vulnerabilities then Internet Explorer. What’s not mentioned is that Mozilla Corp releases all the details of every vulnerability to the public. Microsoft, Opera and Safari do not publish information about vulnerabilities found during in-house development, where most bugs would be found.

Improved Memory Usage

Memory Usage, Internet Explorer vs. Firefox. Lower is better. Click on image for more details.

Even though Inernet Explorer only uses a few Mb of ram at launch it will use more and more in the long run. Firefox 3.1 is the most memory efficient browser available.

Memory Usage of the major browsers. Click on image for more details

Improved javascript performance

Javascript is used for animation, and dynamic pages such as Gmail, Hotmail, and all other Web Applications.

Javascript execution times, smaller means faster. Click on image for more details

Save bandwidth

Caching techniques used by the major browsers

Browsers support a lot of different caching techniques, above are all these techniques and which browsers support them.

Not mentioned on the table above is the fact that Internet Explorer 6 does not cache background images. Everytime you load a website page it will redownload all the images again and again.

Basically the higher the score, the faster pages will load, and the more bandwidth you will save.

Acid 3 Score

Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows certain web standards, it does not represent an exact percentage of conformity as it performs 100 various sub tests but gets close.

Higher is better.

Acid 3 Test (more is better, max is 100). Click image for more details

Overall Performance

Web Browsers' performance, relative to Internet Explorer 7

Updating to a modern browser will make your computer safer againsts attacks (viruses, adware…), and updating will improve your web experience by loading pages faster, and by saving you bandwidth. Improved speed means better productivity and less time wasted…

Development Costs

Not only is updating better for you, the more people use modern browsers, the easier it is for us develop websites. Websites would be cheaper if Internet Explorer 6 and 7 weren’t used that much.

On average, 5% of the development time of a website is spent on making a website work on Internet Explorer 7. 10% of the time is used up to make websites work on Internet Explorer 6. Basically, about 10 to 20 % of a website cost is usually spent on testing and making sure the site works on the major browsers. Sometimes it takes as much as the time spent on the design of the site.

Because the other browsers are standard compliant, they behave as expected and that makes it a lot easier to develop for.

Browser Development Cost/Benefit Graph from John Resig. Is it worth developing for IE6? Click on the image for more details.

If everyone could update their browser, then website development costs would go down by 10 to 15%. Website development would be cheaper if not so many people were using Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

State of the web at the beginning of 2009

Browser Market Share Nov '08 - Apr '09, Click for more details

Change the web - use a modern browser! There are a lot out there: Firefox, Safari, Chrome

Category Tech Talks
2009, browsers, firefox, Internet Explorer, opera, performance, safari, security, web