IE10: How does it really stack up? • Hacker News Board

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#31

Post by ZoFreX » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

olliesaunders wrote: post #19

Opera used to market itself almost exclusively on how it was faster than any other comparable browser. I just had a look on the Opera website and now it says "Faster & Safer internet" yet it performed worst on this test. As the underdog in the browser market, despite being what has always seemed to me as a pretty nice piece of software, I feel a bit sorry for them. I hope they can do whatever it takes to catch up wit…

I use Opera on my netbook (Atom 1.6Ghz, very slow). Chrome is actually faster at rendering or interacting with pages - which is what benchmarks generally measure. What they don't measure is how responsive the browser is. For me, Opera is far faster than Chrome at switching tabs, opening new tabs, having lots of tabs open in the background, having more than one tab loading at once, and eats less of my system resources than Chrome to achieve them.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#32

Post by Spearchucker » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 4:58 PM UTC

eliza1wright wrote: post #24

monsterix wrote: post #6

Well, let's agree that IE10 does well whatever it is designed to do well. Cool. Now what? We have an IE10 browser that compares well with Google Chrome, Opera and perhaps Firefox too (I don't know the exact details about your tests that were making Firefox crash as often as you've claimed in your article). So is this the point where Microsoft takes on the real challenge? Will it go beyond its typical high-speed sales…

I think part of the problem is that IE is the browser of choice for the Dept. of Defense. If you've ever worked for the DoD, you know that updates, etc. take forever because of security concerns. I wonder if that relationship informs IE's decision to hold back on their browser capabilities.

I'm very familiar with the DoD's byzantine and prehistoric policies. You're absolutely right. And it's ironic, because changing their patch management strategy would provide better security. The DoD is stuck in a compliance world, rather that one in which they manage risk.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#33

Post by eliza1wright » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #32

eliza1wright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is that IE is the browser of choice for the Dept. of Defense. If you've ever worked for the DoD, you know that updates, etc. take forever because of security concerns. I wonder if that relationship informs IE's decision to hold back on their browser capabilities.

I'm very familiar with the DoD's byzantine and prehistoric policies. You're absolutely right. And it's ironic, because changing their patch management strategy would provide better security. The DoD is stuck in a compliance world, rather that one in which they manage risk.

Yep. They're getting left behind when they should be on the cutting edge. It's sad, really.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#34

Post by WiseWeasel » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 5:06 PM UTC

bornhuetter wrote: post #21

monsterix wrote: post #6

Well, let's agree that IE10 does well whatever it is designed to do well. Cool. Now what? We have an IE10 browser that compares well with Google Chrome, Opera and perhaps Firefox too (I don't know the exact details about your tests that were making Firefox crash as often as you've claimed in your article). So is this the point where Microsoft takes on the real challenge? Will it go beyond its typical high-speed sales…

How do you suggest Microsoft goes about convincing the millions of East Asian users running IE6 on a pirated version of XP to upgrade to IE10?

Release IE10 for WinXP, and don't check authentication.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#35

Post by ygra » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

WiseWeasel wrote: post #34

bornhuetter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you suggest Microsoft goes about convincing the millions of East Asian users running IE6 on a pirated version of XP to upgrade to IE10?

Release IE10 for WinXP, and don't check authentication.

Given that IE 10 (and 9 before it) builds on core Windows APIs only introduced in Windows 7 I'd consider that unlikely. And they definitely won't invest the time and effort of backporting DirectWrite, Direct2D and whatnot to XP (this might even include DirectX 10 and/or 11 along with WARP) which is already out of mainstream support and only get security patches.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#36

Post by Jabbles » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #13

The real problem is that while there will be a new and better Chrome and in a month and a half, and similar for Firefox, we'll have this build of IE10 for 2 years or maybe more. How they compare at the start of the cycle is not typical, how they compare at the midpoint will be more average, how they compare at the end (where IE7 or IE8 is now) is the worst case.

Internet Explorer will start automatically updating.

http://blogs.windows.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie-to-st...

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#37

Post by polshaw » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

Jabbles wrote: post #36

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #13

The real problem is that while there will be a new and better Chrome and in a month and a half, and similar for Firefox, we'll have this build of IE10 for 2 years or maybe more. How they compare at the start of the cycle is not typical, how they compare at the midpoint will be more average, how they compare at the end (where IE7 or IE8 is now) is the worst case.

Internet Explorer will start automatically updating. http://blogs.windows.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie-to-st...

The question is how often. Adopting the firefox 2/3 model (albeit less nagging a-la-chrome) is a great step forward from the IE6 one we have had up to now, but they really need to match the rapid release schedules of mozilla and google today. At a minimum quarterly updates (features/engine updates, not just security fixes) to stop hindering the web.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#38

Post by 0xABADC0DA » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 5:55 PM UTC

striderxiii wrote: post #5

IE10 had to skip a bunch of frames and use half a core to not quite keep up with chrome and roughly match Firefox... Well, I suppose its an improvement still, but they had a pretty low bar to begin with.

In IE10 the JavaScript is multithreaded... there's a separate thread for JS parsing, compiling, and garbage collection. As far as I know this is the only browser with a threaded JavaScript VM. So the skipping frames is probably because the rendering can be done independently from running JavaScript, and the core in use is probably some quirk like the benchmark creating a few objects on a timer, causing the GC to run on another thread -- that kind of thing can be fixed pretty easily, either by tweaking the benchmark (if it were publicly available) or by Microsoft fixing IE.

I haven't actually used IE10 yet, but I think you'll find this new architecture makes overall browsing more responsive and smoother than Chrome.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#39

Post by ladzoppelin » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

eliza1wright wrote: post #33

Spearchucker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very familiar with the DoD's byzantine and prehistoric policies. You're absolutely right. And it's ironic, because changing their patch management strategy would provide better security. The DoD is stuck in a compliance world, rather that one in which they manage risk.

Yep. They're getting left behind when they should be on the cutting edge. It's sad, really.

Yea but IE9/IE10 are number one at stopping malicious downloads which happens to be the easiest/most prevalent way to take over a computer. Plus IE 8+ is the only browser that has TLS 1.2.

Re: IE10: How does it really stack up?

#40

Post by yuhong » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 6:18 PM UTC

ladzoppelin wrote: post #39

eliza1wright wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. They're getting left behind when they should be on the cutting edge. It's sad, really.

Yea but IE9/IE10 are number one at stopping malicious downloads which happens to be the easiest/most prevalent way to take over a computer. Plus IE 8+ is the only browser that has TLS 1.2.

Only on Win7 (since IE depends on SChannel), and Opera has TLS 1.2 too.