Survey Finds Internet Explorer with Fewest Bugs
So, Internet Explorer 8 had 20% fewer identified bugs than Firefox 3.1, and 70% fewer 'show stoppers'. Based on the overall results, you would expect that Internet Explorer 8 woud be the clear winner. Based on total number of show stoppers, you would expect that Firefox would come in dead last. Yet, somehow when asked to choose the browser they preferred 55% of the testers selected Firefox, with only 30% choosing Internet Explorer 8.
It seems sort of masochistic to me to determine that one browser has the fewest bugs and the fewest show stoppers, but then to declare a preference for the browser with more bugs and the most show stoppers, but that is just me. I guess it would help if they provided some details on what the definition of 'show stopper' is.
Comments
How can you name three browsers to rate for the fewest bugs, without including the Safari browser — available on both the PC and the Mac, which would beat all three of the ones you did include. I use only Safari, after using every release of Internet Explorer beforehand. And Safari is by far the best browser of all, even including Chrome, which I am inclined to like since I am a strong Google supporter as well. But I somehow feel that Microsoft is somehow your favorite, which in my case it is the least favorite due to an incredible number of bugs.
To be clear- this isn’t *my* survey. So, I didn’t have any input into their browser options. I would say that perhaps Safari and Opera both should have been part of the survey. I think they both have more users than Chrome since Chrome is so new.
That said, A) I do prefer Microft Internet Explorer. I get to listen all day to my wife and kids tell me about how this site or that function don’t work properly in Firefox or Chrome and just keep telling them to just use IE then. I like IE 8 (and IE 7 for that matter). B) Had it been included in the survey, I am not sure that it would hold up that Safari has fewer bugs or fewer ’show stoppers’. I can’t really predict where it would have landed on the ladder, but Safari has quite a few bugs- many of them Critical Securiy issues (see blog post last month). C) The results of this survey show that IE has fewer bugs than both Firefox and Chrome, so it would seem to negate the argument that one would use Safari and Chrome (which had the most bugs) based on the rationale that IE has too many bugs.
I left IE years ago, but I hear it has improved, although Microsoft will never agree to follow web standards. I have been using Firefox and I love the plugins and security. The only problem I have had with it was a bug in the Flash v9, plugin which had memory leaks making some multimedia fail to load after a while. With Flash v10 out now, I have not had such problems. I am curious, netsec: what sites is your family visiting that don’t work with Firefox?
I have noticed a difference between how websites are displayed between Firefox and IE. (Over the last 5 years, pick any version.)
Here’s one answer: Web site builders need to check their sites on as many browsers as possible, to make sure their sites work properly.
To illustrate my point go to http://www.creationsbygitta.ca/. It doesn’t show up in Firefox very well but it works fine in IE7. I can say that in this case it’s the designer’s fault, not the browser and only because it’s happened to me.
(Yes, I noticed the disclaimer: “Optimized for IE…” Why would they limit themselves like that?)