Microsoft released the public beta of IE9 and I installed it straight away. I had heard good things about it. I wanted IE to succeed this time. IE8 was crap. Interface was shabby. Interface was lagging. Not supporting a lot of sites natively. (had to go into compatibility mode often) It was not a good browser at all. The JS performance was worst among the browsers, and not by a little. However, the browsing speed was sometimes faster that all the other browsers. But it was not a usable browser for everyday tasks. Too slow for us geeks.
But IE9 is not like that. The interface is very responsive. The browser starts within a few milliseconds. (faster than Chrome too) JS performance has been improved, but I can’t notice that except in benchmarks. The interface is simple. However there are few issues. Of course this is still a beta release. But, the biggest issue I have is with the addons. In Firefox and Chrome, when you add an addon, it doesn’t usually add a new toolbar. I need to use lastpass online password manager, and when I add it to Firefox and Chrome, it would look like in the following images.
However, when I add it to IE9 beta, it would add a whole new toolbar, with just one button. That sucks. It even kills the good looks of the IE9 UI.
Sucks, right?
There are issues once in a while such as crashing and some random website not displaying properly. But all in all, it is a much better experience than the IE8 final build.
Anyways, this is not a post about just IE9. It is about browsers in general. Currently I use Firefox for most of the times. But sometimes, it too crashes. Sometimes it would take a long time to load a page. But addons are still best in Firefox. Chrome is catching up, but the addons platform in Firefox seems to be much powerful. It integrates well with the browser. Chrome is only a little big behind, but is catching up fast. Other browsers simply suck!
There is not perfect browser. Some pages would load fast on one browser. Others would take forever. Some would eat up more memory. Some would not support adds at all, such as Opera, which I would be using extensively if it had addons like in Firefox. Chrome is good, but still, it doesn’t support IDM as much as Firefox and IE do. Basically, I have to keep using all these browsers because there is no perfect browser.
Firefox 4 beta sucks more than everything. Pages don’t render correctly sometimes. Most addons still don’t work properly. Random crashes. etc. etc.
So for the time being, I have to use Firefox 3.6.10 as the main browser, IE9 beta, Chrome 7 beta etc. etc. all are installed at the same time, in case there is the need.
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