John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Tim Cook wrote:
> > Basically, it grudgingly admits that IE8 is a little bit better in a 
> > particular aspect, then dismissing it as irrelevant, where with any 
> > other browser, any speed increase would be trumpeted as the greatest 
> > thing since sliced breat (especially if it were for a Mac).

> Now you know how Amiga users feel.  When and where the Amiga did things 
> better or faster, it somehow wasn't important... until the Wintel 
> platform caught up.

  I *honestly* think the speed issue *is* mostly irrelevant in this case.

  As I already commented, safety, stability and implementation of standards
vastly overwhelm it in importance. IE has a sad history in this area, and
it's not going to redeem itself overnight. Especially not with something
as irrelevant as being some fractions faster.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Especially not with something
> as irrelevant as being some fractions faster.

I think IE8 has many improvements over earlier IEs. The washington post was 
just evaluating the speed. Otherwise, yah, it doesn't seem to be important 
once you get faster than you can easily measure.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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Darren New wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> IE8 trying to claim superiority because it's faster than the competition 
> 
> IE8 is a browser. It doesn't claim anything. It's the washington post 
> making claims.
> 

Another article on this said, "Rather than optimizing script execution, 
which is now used a lot of sites, like Chrome and Firefox, Microsoft 
picked out the top 20 sites on the web, then 'optimized' their browser 
to show those pages faster." This of course means they might be 
optimizing it to show IE friendly pages, that use really crappy code, 
better (instead of IE hating pages with really good coding, but since I 
have no idea which pages where used, I couldn't say one way or the 
other), but... since when have they cared what was on the pages, as long 
as their browser worked better with the "major" ones, even if it was an 
accident of those pages being written for the browser in the first place. :p

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Warp wrote:
> John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Tim Cook wrote:
>>> Basically, it grudgingly admits that IE8 is a little bit better in a 
>>> particular aspect, then dismissing it as irrelevant, where with any 
>>> other browser, any speed increase would be trumpeted as the greatest 
>>> thing since sliced breat (especially if it were for a Mac).
> 
>> Now you know how Amiga users feel.  When and where the Amiga did things 
>> better or faster, it somehow wasn't important... until the Wintel 
>> platform caught up.
> 
>   I *honestly* think the speed issue *is* mostly irrelevant in this case.
> 
>   As I already commented, safety, stability and implementation of standards
> vastly overwhelm it in importance. IE has a sad history in this area, and
> it's not going to redeem itself overnight. Especially not with something
> as irrelevant as being some fractions faster.

And they're certainly not going to make any friends with the FireFox 
plug-in mentioned in the thread "Warning: Microsoft silently installing 
firefox extension" above...

I wonder how difficult it would be to whip together some HTML that only 
displays on non-compliant browsers, saying that something awful is going 
to happen unless the user installs some non-IE product...

Regards,
John

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On 3/21/2009 6:54 PM, John VanSickle wrote:
> I wonder how difficult it would be to whip together some HTML that only
> displays on non-compliant browsers, saying that something awful is going
> to happen unless the user installs some non-IE product...

Ridiculously easy.  Check the agent string, and you'll catch 99% of the 
users.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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> MS just can't win, can it...

Maybe MS can't win me back to IE.
 
They lost me when IE 7 crashed on a majority of
pages, and uninstalling and reinstalling didn't fix it.

Sure, IE 8 is a new version, it probably works great
99.9% of the time. What happens when it fails?

When Firefox fails it pops up a dialog asking if you
want to restore your last session... I can live with that
easier than a total FUBAR.

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Tim Attwood <tim### [at] anti-spamcomcastnet> wrote:
> When Firefox fails it pops up a dialog asking if you
> want to restore your last session... I can live with that
> easier than a total FUBAR.

  Another advantage of Firefox is that there are tons of plugins for it
to do handy things. For example after having used Tab Mix Plus, it feels
irritating using any other browser where it's not available (including
a firefox in another machine, without the plugin).

  And of course NoScript is simply a must. (It sometimes causes hassle,
but most of the time it's useful to strengthen safety and avoid annoyances.)

  Other plugins I find useful are PrefBar, Menu Editor and RefControl.

  One plugin which I would want is something to make it easier to edit
cookie settings. Maybe I should search for one.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> "Blarrrrrgh, MS sucks!  IE sucks and all improvements are just playing 
> catch-up to other browsers!"
> "Uh, IE8 loads pages faster than Firefox."
> "It doesn't matter, it's not *that* much faster, and besides, everyone has 
> broadband now so nobody cares!  Rewrrrrr."

I don't understand why or how a web browser could significantly add any time 
to how long it takes to show a web page.  Surely, 99% of the time is spend 
waiting for the content, and 1% spent arranging the page and rendering it? 
If pages loaded with FF repeatedly take 0.5 seconds longer to load than IE8, 
then it seems like there are some serious bottlenecks in the FF engine...

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scott wrote:
> I don't understand why or how a web browser could significantly add any 
> time to how long it takes to show a web page.  Surely, 99% of the time 
> is spend waiting for the content, and 1% spent arranging the page and 
> rendering it? 

Unless it's heavy in Javascript or CSS or something that's going to make it 
take a long time. Or unless the browser tries to refresh the 
partially-loaded page too often.

Look at the sort of things gmail or facebook does in the browser and you'll 
get an idea.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:49c7b866$1@news.povray.org...
> scott wrote:
>> I don't understand why or how a web browser could significantly add any 
>> time to how long it takes to show a web page.  Surely, 99% of the time is 
>> spend waiting for the content, and 1% spent arranging the page and 
>> rendering it?
>
> Unless it's heavy in Javascript or CSS or something that's going to make 
> it take a long time. Or unless the browser tries to refresh the 
> partially-loaded page too often.

I must say that if a page takes a long time to load due to heavy Javascript 
I often end up closing the browser because it makes me nervous. Especially 
if it looks like a simple page but I can hear my computer grinding away at 
it, makes me wonder what exactly is going on in the background.

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