Firefox vs Internet Explorer

One of my good friends (I won't name names!) recently told me the site was running a little slow, so I decided to do a little testing. This was very informal and non-technical, of course, but I did a quick time test for refreshing the front page via Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7. (I know, I know, there are Chrome, Safari, Opera, and other users out there, but right now I just wanted to test these two.)

From reports that I had read, Firefox was significantly faster than IE, but I was actually shocked at the results on the site. So while I was at home this evening, I tested using both cable internet and DSL (lowest AT&T package available), and it turns out reload times (in seconds) were 8 to 9 seconds for IE compared to 4 to 5 seconds using Firefox. In other words, Firefox was twice as fast than IE for our particular site.

Granted, there are other factors that could come into play, but considering this was just a quick and dirty test, the results were pretty amazing. What is scary, however, is that almost exactly 75% of our members use Internet Explorer - Is it possible to convince them to switch to get a better experience on the site? I don't know, but I have to try!

DOWNLOAD FIREFOX NOW!

So what do you all think? Any proud IE users want to state their case?

IE still exists? Ha!

I love Firefox - switch about three years ago and have never looked back. That said, I still have to use the dreaded IE on my work computer.

I use Firefox as my primary Internet Browser. It has numerous features and add-ons that make it superior to IE (IMO). However, there are sites that will not fully function with Firefox so I do have to drag out IE from time to time.

I have also tried Chrome and Opera, but Firefox is, by far, my preferred browser. If you haven't tried Firefox you should! As Brent points out it is faster. It is easy to install and simple to use.

Love the FF. I also use Flock to manage my RSS subscriptions. Unfortunately, until Realpage makes some changes I have to use IE to access our OneSite software.

It is unlikely RealPage will support any browser other than IE. They are very tied into the Microsoft products. Users should always have IE as some sites will not work well with any other browser. That being said, most sites do work better with Firefox!

I LOVE firefox! Google Chrome is good too, but I'm really attached to FF. IE also has bigger security holes, so I'm told. @30lines, you wanna get in on this one?

Going back to your original issue Brent, I have run into the same issue with close to 80% of my site's users running IE7. The good news is that IE8 has released it's RC1 (Release Candidate 1) version and is close to an official release. I haven't done any tests on this site, but benchmark tests on our site have shown IE8 to load with the same load times as FF. We can hope that folks upgrade when it hits RTM.

I have seen more intrusive methods of getting people to switch browsers. Apple's "My" sites pop up a message saying something along the lines of "This site works better with FF, download here" when visited from and IE browser. I personally find this a turn off.