I have most browsers available to me.
I’ve been using Google Chrome as my default for quite some time.
Firefox has become my second choice simply because there isn’t any speed comparison between the 3.
Chrome wins hands down.
As I said I wouldn’t read too much into it, as it is to easy to take one section of a test and make almost any browser look good. Lies, damn Lies and Statistics as they say ;D
If they want to talk about security great, totally remove the integration of IE into the OS and perhaps then it may well be more secure, when exploiting the browser isn’t potentially exploiting the OS. Get rid of activeX and BHOs and really do a good job of it.
Until that happens IE will never be my default browser. I was living in hope that that had been done when MS said they would remove IE from European versions of Win7. Then they went back on that and went for a poll of which browser you want as the default; unfortunately IE is still embedded into the OS. I guess because it would take major reworking to totally remove it and find something else to do what IE does within the OS.
Well I tried a bit IE 8 tonight and guess what??? It’s no use, I 100% prefer my old one FIREFOX 3.5 with all the features. I also tried Google Chrome and Opera and didn’t find enough evidence to make me turn toward them for internet surfing
Microsoft paid for the research. Research that industry pays for tends to find what industry wants to be heard.
Report funded by wine industry says wine good for you.
Report funded by chocolate industry says chocolate doesn’t rot your teeth.
Report funded by oil industry says CO2 doesn’t cause global warming.
Report funded by Microsoft says Internet Explorer most secure browser.
Anyway, this report doesn’t say IE is the most secure browser- it says IE is the best at reporting malicious pages. It’s being spun to FUD.
Where does the set of malicious pages come from? The methodology needs looking into. If it was supplied by MS, then the study is bogus.
Chrome may be fast, but function wise, it’s totally useless. It only has the most basic features and no support for any kind of extensions what so ever. I just can’t use it, because it has no bookmarks sync, no mouse gestures, hel, they even don’t integrate their OWN GMail notifier. Lame.
Yesterday, however, I made up my mind to drop Firefox altogether. I wrote a chapter for my upcoming “Windows 7 Spotlight” book on Internet Explorer 8, and I was so impressed by the features that I decided Firefox was history. Yesterday morning, I found out that Firefox released the 3.5 beta (4), and many features are the same as in IE8. And so the personal war rages on.
Microsoft have a history of commissioning “independent” research which is nothing of the sort, so yes, their credibility is suspect.
I have a few doubts about the research.
Were any of the malware URL’s supplied by MS? NSS claim to have their own honeypots, but also to get malware samples from “networks”. MS must pick up a lot of malware in MSN, Hotmail and now Bing- if they are one of NSS’s sources, that would bias the result towards IE.
What is the result of NSS choosing URL’s that used only social engineering techniques? Most malware sites will use social engineering and a smorgasbord of exploits. In wanting test IE against social engineering alone, they have restricted themselves to a small subset of malware sites whose constituents may have unexpected consequences when it comes to detection. As none of the URL’s were disclosed, we can’t know the consequences of the selection made.
Why do NSS claim to have rejected many hundreds of URL’s from the test because browsers “Opera (in particular) kept being exploited and crashing”. As an Opera user, I know that an up to date version of the browser has never been open to exploits in this way. Do they mean that they eliminated 100’s of URL’s that were simply crashing browsers? What effect did this have on detection rates? Again, none of the URL’s are supplied so we can’t know the answer to the question.
Microsoft has an anti-virus business, a search engine combing the web, major email and IM services- they are going to be picking up and looking at a lot of malicious URL’s. It would surprise if IE8’s anti-malware blocker was highly effective, but this report just doesn’t convince me.
A final point (again), this is not about IE8 being “more secure”- it’s about its anti-malware download blocker (allegedly) being more effective- which is only one aspect of security.
As to the slipper analogy, IE6 was a pair of old, worn out and stinky slippers for me- and got thrown in the bin. I haven’t touched IE since. IE8 seems to be a great improvement in terms of security and web standards support (from what I hear)- I’d recommend IE8, Firefox and Opera to anybody.
Thank you FreewheelinFrank for arguments and sound reasoning and for passionate involment in the question. It simply took off any doubts about FIREFOX 3.5 being the fastest and most secure and universal browser for the moment and it is certainly the most adapted to my PC habits. Long live Firefox 8)
I have Opera 10 & Iron on my XP Sp3 machine. My tests show Opera is fastest.
On my new Vista 64bit laptop I have both IE 32bit & IE 64bit and Opera 10. IE 64bit launches & loads faster than IE 32bit, but Opera launches & loads faster than IE 64bit. (There is no 64bit Opera.)
Maybe not the time or place to say the finial of Opera 10 is pretty nice?
Not that I have given it default browser status over Firefox 3.5.2,
but I have downloaded it,and given it its own sandbox!
Just for info but there is Chrome Plus, a Chromium-based browser with 5 extra-features, which includes Mouse Gestures. Personally, I’ll stick to Iron Browser and Firefox, though.
PS I’ve been busy lately, which is not necessary a bad thing.