Performance
These days, browsers have to run more and more applications based on AJAX, which means that JavaScript performance has become a critical factor. Our tests show that Internet Explorer 8 performs far worse in this area than Safari 4, Opera 10, Firefox 3.1 and Chrome 1 and 2. The only test where IE8 comes out on top is the iBench XML benchmark.
Windows 7, 3.2GHz Core i7 965, 6GB DDR3/1600; millseconds (shorter bars are better)
Windows 7, 3.2GHz Core i7 965, 6GB DDR3/1600; points (longer bars are better)
Windows 7, 3.2GHz Core i7 965, 6GB DDR3/1600; points (longer bars are better)
Windows 7, 3.2GHz Core i7 965, 6GB DDR3/1600; seconds (shorter bars are better)
But what do these results mean in practice? Many web sites now use images with JavaScript Lightbox animation. IE8 takes more time to display these images than competing browsers, even using a 3.2GHz Core i7 processor. Other AJAX applications, including Google Maps, respond worse in IE8. This slower performance extends across the other tests, including the pure JavaScript Sunspider, Google V8 and Futuremark Peacekeeper benchmarks.
IE8’s performance shortcomings may not be much of an issue on the fastest desktop systems, but they translate into a real problem on, say, an Atom-based netbook. For systems based on less powerful processors the only real option is to choose a different browser.
Talkback
IE8 Address bar, the features mentioned regarding web site history are only fully implemented if MS Windows Search has been installed. The 'basic' address bar has a constant 'Nag' in bold blue (which changes to bold blue underlined (as a link) when your mouse hovers over it.
This nag appears every time you type in the address bar and is very distracting, unless of course - you take the advice of MS and install Search V4.
That is the problem with IE8, compared to firefox. Its like been in a room with pushy MS Salesmen hovering over you and its a big turn-off. Be it the install process or using the product - one slip and you have defaulted to another MS Product, be it Live Search, Search V4, Live Blog, Office LIve. The sheer desperation of MS Bid to win against Google is very apparent, but then Chrome 2.0 is probably the same but with Googe Salesmen, looking slightly more hip, but recording everything you say,do, eat - toilet breaks etc, and comparing your tastes against the curtains you have chosen from the newly acquired front view of your house - street view.
Its clever really, and pretty simple, and why another lawsuit looks likely.
* Netscape come up with a new type of program, a browser. MS ties Internet Explorer (for free) into Windows 95 (Windows Desktop Update), IE becomes part of the standard interface as part of Windows 98. Netscape disappears into a cloud of dust.
Realplayer has a pretty good media player. MS ties Windows Media Player (for free) into Windows. Realplayer (pretty much) disappears into a cloud of dust.
Europe Union force MS to release a Version of XP known as Version N, without the Windows Media 'tie-in'. No one buys it.
With the EU watching them closely - No longer able to 'tie-in' programs into Windows, instead MS seem to use the step in stone put in place several years before (see * above) and now a rock solid part of Windows - Internet Explorer, 80% of users use this on their Windows Systems. 100% have it installed.
Google release Desktop Search - MS unable to compete on search- MS ties MS Search V4 into IE8. This next bit is now in progress...
(Thats why the 'nag' I mentioned above is so important)
Its whether having Internet Explorer now a ubiquitous part of Windows, means that any tie-ins into IE8 are in effect tie-ins into Windows, and therefore this sorry mess continues.