Internet Explorer 11 vs Firefox 33
This article attempts to compare Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) and Mozilla Firefox 33 in order to identify the differences between the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox. Internet Explorer 11 is the latest proprietary web browser by Microsoft designed for Windows operating systems. On the other hand, Firefox, which is by Mozilla Foundation, is open source and is available across multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS and even Free BSD. The performance of Internet Explorer is the greatest problem as according to many sources Firefox is much faster in every aspect including JavaScript, CSS rendering, Page loading, CPU usage and startup time. In the past, Internet Explorer was the world’s most used web browser but today it has fallen to the third place while Firefox has caught up the second position.
Features of Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer is a web browser developed by Microsoft and is bundled with its Windows operating system. It has a very old history where the first version was released in 1995 with Windows 95. Currently, the latest release is Internet Explorer 11 which was released a couple of months ago in September 2014. While Internet Explorer is targeted only for Windows operating system, Microsoft does not provide setups for Linux and Unix operating systems. The product is available in about 95 different languages. The product is proprietary to Microsoft and hence is not open source. Internet Explorer supports many standards including HTML 4, HTML 5, CSS, XML and DOM. In the past, like in 2003, Internet Explorer was the world’s most widely used web browser where the percentage was even over 80%. By today with the advent of many browsers such as Firefox and Chrome now it has dropped to the third place of about just 10% usage according statistics from W3counter.
The user interface on Internet Explorer is much simpler and cleaner and tallies with the interface of the Windows operating system. It not only acts as the browser but also provides the user interface to FTP giving the user with operations similar to Windows Explorer. Also, Internet Explorer provides certain features in the Windows operating system such as Windows update. Currently features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking , private browsing, synchronization and download manager are available even though it was a bit late to introduce them when compared to Firefox.
The settings on Internet Explorer are fully configurable via group policy and this is a unique feature. Add-ons such as Flash Player, Microsoft silver light which are also known as ActiveX can be installed to give more capabilities to the browser. Though Internet Explorer is a web browser with all up to date features, the greatest issue is the performance. For example according to Six Revision’s performance tests, in all aspects, the performance of Internet Explorer is worse than other browsers such as Firefox and Chrome.
Features of Firefox 33
Firefox is a free and open source web browser which is developed by Mozilla foundation with contributions from the community. It has a history of about 12 years where the initial release was done in September 2002. The most recent version is Firefox 33. Currently, Firefox can run in a variety of different platforms including Windows, Linux, OS X, Android, Firefox OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. An important feature in Firefox is tabbed browsing where the user can visit multiple websites at the same time and navigate them via tabs. The latest Firefox versions support a feature called tabbed grouping where custom grouping of opened tabs is possible to identify them easily. Also related to bookmarks are two features as live bookmarks and smart bookmarks. A download manager is inbuilt where multiple downloads are possible with the facility to pause and continue stopped downloads. A powerful inbuilt PDF viewer that provides features such as thumbnails, page navigation is also available. The feature called private browsing lets users browse without saving information about pages visited and queries searched.
One of the most powerful features in Firefox is the support given to integrate third-party extensions. By installing appropriate third-party extensions, Firefox gets more functions and capabilities and there are thousands of extensions available for free. Firefox provides not only browsing capabilities but also the support for developers by built-in tools under the menu, web development. Moreover, third party extensions such as firebug provides more enhanced functions for developers. Firefox supports many of the web standards such as HTML4, HTML5, XML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM and many more. Secure web browsing over HTTPS is provided using SSL/TSL that works on powerful encryption and endpoint authentication mechanisms.
Firefox is hugely localized where currently it is available in about 80 different languages. Another advantage of Firefox is the ability to customize it as necessary as the user wishes.
What is the difference between Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox 33?
• Internet explorer is developed by Microsoft while Firefox is developed by Mozilla with the support from the community.
• Internet Explorer is a proprietary software but Firefox is an open source software.
• Internet Explorer has a very long history where the first version was released in 1995 while Firefox is not that much old where it was released in 2002.
• According to many sources, the performance of Internet Explorer is very much worse than Firefox. According to Six Revision’s Performance Comparisons of Web Browsers, in all aspects such as page loading time, CSS rendering, cache performance, JavaScript as well as DOM selection Internet explorer takes a huge time when compared to Firefox.
• Internet Explorer is only available for Windows operating system. However, Firefox can be installed on a variety of platforms including windows, Linux, Unix, Free BSD and Mac OS.
• Synchronization of settings, bookmarks and history on Internet Explorer happens via Microsoft Live accounts while in Firefox it happens with an account created especially for Firefox. However, the issue is due to the limitation of Internet Explorer to Windows one cannot synchronize between multiple devices under multiple platforms.
• Since Firefox extensions can be designed by the community it has a wide range of extensions, but for Internet Explorer that much amount of extensions is not available.
• Firefox being an open source software is much more customizable than Internet Explorer.
• Internet Explorer can be configured via Group Policy in Windows, but Firefox does not have this advantage.
• Firefox has an inbuilt pdf viewer that has a lot of capabilities, but on Internet Explorer a pdf viewer is not built in.
• Firefox allows multiple user logins via a technique called profiles to maintain different histories, bookmarks and settings. On Internet Explorer, this is not possible but can be achieved by creating a different windows user account.
• Internet Explorer has Windows Explorer like controls and operations for FTP, but Firefox FTP interface is not as nice as that on Internet Explorer.
• Internet Explorer integrates much better with Windows features such as Windows update, Desktop controls than Firefox.
• In windows operating systems, Internet Explorer is bundled with the operating system, but Firefox has to be separately installed.
• Firefox has a separate bar for search queries while Internet Explorer now has one bar that is used for both searches as well as the web address. However, the address bar in Firefox as well can be used for search queries.
• The default search engine in Firefox is Google, but it is Bing on Internet Explorer.
• In Firefox, a capability called tabbed browsing is available, but this is not there yet on Internet Explorer.
Summary:
Internet Explorer 11 vs Firefox 33
Internet Explorer is a proprietary software while Firefox is a free and open source software hence Firefox provides lots of customization capabilities and extensions. Another important advantage in Firefox when compared to Internet Explorer is its performance where in many aspects Firefox has better performance and CPU usage than Internet Explorer. Also, Internet Explorer is only available for Windows where Firefox is available across many platforms. However, Internet Explorer integrates better with Windows features than Firefox.