[Cattius]

Okay, I decided I would post this because it made me so angry when I saw it

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Internet Explorer 8 is by far the best browser Microsoft's ever released, but most of our readers are happily using a better alternative like Firefox or Chrome. Microsoft's not happy about this, so they've created an absurd piece of propaganda to win you back.

This browser comparison chart pits IE8 against Firefox and Chrome and puts IE8 on top time after time, but in very dubious categories. Each row comes with its own ridiculous set of comments justifying the seemingly meaningless checkmarks, like this note on customizability:

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you'd want to download for Firefox are already a part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box.

Interesting, since none of the Firefox extensions I install add any IE8 functionality. We've given Microsoft props for significantly improving Internet Explorer in the latest release, but this chart feels like dirty pool to us. Let's hear what you think of this insane (to us, at least) chart in the comments.

Article

So, discuss. Do you think Microsoft were right to make this comparison chart?

My personal opinion is that, as Lifehacker says, this comparison chart of Microsoft's is absurd. It's so biased it's sickening, and most of it is either blatant lies or a twisted version of the truth.

This post has been edited by Cattius: Jun 19 2009, 01:19 PM

[Caboose]

But even by their reasoning (which is wrong) Firefox should win customization.

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you'd want to download for Firefox are already a part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box.

Many? But not all. So there are more on Firefox. Firefox has more add ons. And it works right out of the box? How is that customization? It's not, you don't get to choose.

[Cattius]

But even by their reasoning (which is wrong) Firefox should win customization.

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you'd want to download for Firefox are already a part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box.

Many? But not all. So there are more on Firefox. Firefox has more add ons. And it works right out of the box? How is that customization? It's not, you don't get to choose.

I completely agree, almost all of the parts that aren't lies have crazy reasoning behind them.

I think we should lobby Microsoft until they remove this chart

This post has been edited by Cattius: Jun 20 2009, 02:33 PM

[Day]

You guys are over-reacting. "Absurd Chart"? It's not like they are going to put up a chart showing how much FireFox is better than IE. They want downloads.

And it is definitely not biased. No way. NO advertisements are biased at all. NONE! The truth is this- if you see an advertisement that says "CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME OUT THERE!", how would you know that is was the best game for you? Like this chart- "IE8 IS THE BEST BROWSER FOR YOU!" but that may not be true. It's all advertising and promoting, guys. Get over it.

Although, personally, I prefer Chrome and Firefox a lot over IE8.

[redmonke]

You guys are over-reacting. "Absurd Chart"? It's not like they are going to put up a chart showing how much FireFox is better than IE. They want downloads.

And it is definitely not biased. No way. NO advertisements are biased at all. NONE! The truth is this- if you see an advertisement that says "CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME OUT THERE!", how would you know that is was the best game for you? Like this chart- "IE8 IS THE BEST BROWSER FOR YOU!" but that may not be true. It's all advertising and promoting, guys. Get over it.

Although, personally, I prefer Chrome and Firefox a lot over IE8.

On the CoD games they usually have quotes from IGN, GameInformer, and all the big magazines that say "AMAZING" or "GAME OF THE YEAR".

It's like making a fake video game review then quoting it on the game.

[Emo_Nemo]

You guys are over-reacting. "Absurd Chart"? It's not like they are going to put up a chart showing how much FireFox is better than IE. They want downloads.

And it is definitely not biased. No way. NO advertisements are biased at all. NONE! The truth is this- if you see an advertisement that says "CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME OUT THERE!", how would you know that is was the best game for you? Like this chart- "IE8 IS THE BEST BROWSER FOR YOU!" but that may not be true. It's all advertising and promoting, guys. Get over it.

Although, personally, I prefer Chrome and Firefox a lot over IE8.

On the CoD games they usually have quotes from IGN, GameInformer, and all the big magazines that say "AMAZING" or "GAME OF THE YEAR".

It's like making a fake video game review then quoting it on the game.

The thing is that everything on this chart is true to a point.

Everyone overexadderates in marketing.

[redmonke]

You guys are over-reacting. "Absurd Chart"? It's not like they are going to put up a chart showing how much FireFox is better than IE. They want downloads.

And it is definitely not biased. No way. NO advertisements are biased at all. NONE! The truth is this- if you see an advertisement that says "CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME OUT THERE!", how would you know that is was the best game for you? Like this chart- "IE8 IS THE BEST BROWSER FOR YOU!" but that may not be true. It's all advertising and promoting, guys. Get over it.

Although, personally, I prefer Chrome and Firefox a lot over IE8.

On the CoD games they usually have quotes from IGN, GameInformer, and all the big magazines that say "AMAZING" or "GAME OF THE YEAR".

It's like making a fake video game review then quoting it on the game.

The thing is that everything on this chart is true to a point.

Everyone overexadderates in marketing.

A phony review of a game is true to a point, too. They are actually quoting directly from the review.

But it's the validity that counts.

[Day]

You guys are over-reacting. "Absurd Chart"? It's not like they are going to put up a chart showing how much FireFox is better than IE. They want downloads.

And it is definitely not biased. No way. NO advertisements are biased at all. NONE! The truth is this- if you see an advertisement that says "CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME OUT THERE!", how would you know that is was the best game for you? Like this chart- "IE8 IS THE BEST BROWSER FOR YOU!" but that may not be true. It's all advertising and promoting, guys. Get over it.

Although, personally, I prefer Chrome and Firefox a lot over IE8.

On the CoD games they usually have quotes from IGN, GameInformer, and all the big magazines that say "AMAZING" or "GAME OF THE YEAR".

It's like making a fake video game review then quoting it on the game.

The thing is that everything on this chart is true to a point.

Everyone overexadderates in marketing.

A phony review of a game is true to a point, too. They are actually quoting directly from the review.

But it's the validity that counts.

No... Red... I wasn't talking directly about CoD... I was just throwing an example out there. I could have said the Linux operating system, and I would have gotten the same point across.

@Emo_Nemo

Exactly. But you spelled exaggerate wrong

[Cattius]

The thing is that everything on this chart is true to a point.

Everyone overexadderates in marketing.

Did you not read my previous post?

There are sections that aren't true though. For example:

Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

This is wrong as Chrome has both tab isolation and crash recovery, so they should have at least let it tie with IE.

[Caboose]

Or indeed mine:

But even by their reasoning (which is wrong) Firefox should win customization.

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you'd want to download for Firefox are already a part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box.

Many? But not all. So there are more on Firefox. Firefox has more add ons. And it works right out of the box? How is that customization? It's not, you don't get to choose.

[redmonke]

You guys are over-reacting. "Absurd Chart"? It's not like they are going to put up a chart showing how much FireFox is better than IE. They want downloads.

And it is definitely not biased. No way. NO advertisements are biased at all. NONE! The truth is this- if you see an advertisement that says "CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME OUT THERE!", how would you know that is was the best game for you? Like this chart- "IE8 IS THE BEST BROWSER FOR YOU!" but that may not be true. It's all advertising and promoting, guys. Get over it.

Although, personally, I prefer Chrome and Firefox a lot over IE8.

On the CoD games they usually have quotes from IGN, GameInformer, and all the big magazines that say "AMAZING" or "GAME OF THE YEAR".

It's like making a fake video game review then quoting it on the game.

The thing is that everything on this chart is true to a point.

Everyone overexadderates in marketing.

A phony review of a game is true to a point, too. They are actually quoting directly from the review.

But it's the validity that counts.

No... Red... I wasn't talking directly about CoD... I was just throwing an example out there. I could have said the Linux operating system, and I would have gotten the same point across.

@Emo_Nemo

Exactly. But you spelled exaggerate wrong

No... Day... I wasn't talking directly about CoD... I was just throwing an example out there. I could have said anything that's been reviewed, and I would have gotten the same point across.

This post has been edited by redmonke: Jun 22 2009, 01:12 PM

[Day]

Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

This is wrong as Chrome has both tab isolation and crash recovery, so they should have at least let it tie with IE.

Everything in this chart is true to a point.

I am an example. I installed Chrome. I still have it installed now. I used it for around... four days. Since then, there have been multiple crashes, and many 'low spots' in Chrome's performance. For example, one time, I had 3 windows open. The first one was the main window I was using, with 3 tabs open, and one of them I was typing a very long e-mail. The two other windows were other stuff. As I was typing, I went into another tab... Google Chrome crashed. I then restarted it, and it said something like "Google Chrome has not been shut down properly. Do you wish to recover your data?" or something like that... I said yes. It then recovered my three tabs... and only my three tabs. The two other windows were gone. I went to my e-mail document, and it was not there. Bummer, huh? Not exactly what I would call a successful crash recovery, wouldn't you say?

Anyways, this is just another one of those charts showing how you should seriously download IE8. The only thing is, it is made by Microsoft. Therefore, it should be way more important than all those other charts out there that give you false information about other social communities or other hosting companies etc.

[Caboose]

I like how you think you can trust Microsoft over smaller companies. Ignorance is bliss. Really though, you don't need to know many facts to know that the chart is complete rubbish.

[Cattius]

Everything in this chart is true to a point.

I am an example. I installed Chrome. I still have it installed now. I used it for around... four days. Since then, there have been multiple crashes, and many 'low spots' in Chrome's performance. For example, one time, I had 3 windows open. The first one was the main window I was using, with 3 tabs open, and one of them I was typing a very long e-mail. The two other windows were other stuff. As I was typing, I went into another tab... Google Chrome crashed. I then restarted it, and it said something like "Google Chrome has not been shut down properly. Do you wish to recover your data?" or something like that... I said yes. It then recovered my three tabs... and only my three tabs. The two other windows were gone. I went to my e-mail document, and it was not there. Bummer, huh? Not exactly what I would call a successful crash recovery, wouldn't you say?

Anyways, this is just another one of those charts showing how you should seriously download IE8. The only thing is, it is made by Microsoft. Therefore, it should be way more important than all those other charts out there that give you false information about other social communities or other hosting companies etc.

Firstly, I would like to say that I hope your last paragraph was sarcastic. If it wasn't...frankly I'm worried about you

You mention Chrome's crash recovery features. Whether or not you were satisfied with them, the fact remains that they do exist. Chrome has both crash recovery and tab isolation. Microsoft says Chrome does not. Therefore Microsoft is lying. Simple.

Can I just ask what version of Chrome you were using, and what operating system you were using it on? I find Chrome 2 to be very stable on Windows 7, and I found that it was stable on Vista as well when I used to use that. If you were using an early release of Chrome (i.e. the first few months after it was released), or a beta, then that could be the cause of your stability issues.

This post has been edited by Cattius: Jun 22 2009, 03:28 PM

[The Dragoon]

the bigist reasen that firefox is better,safer ect. is that hackers,virsus ect do not target firefox as much as Internet explorer.because internet explorer is used my about everyone

[Emo_Nemo]

I like how you think you can trust Microsoft over smaller companies. Ignorance is bliss. Really though, you don't need to know many facts to know that the chart is complete rubbish.

Why shouldn't we trust larger companies?
Larger companies have alot more to lose then a small start up.
The chart is not complete rubbish to be honest with you because every single claim can be backed up they've even mentioned that some may not be better than others for example the customization.

The whole Microsoft can't be trusted thing really needs to die down they haven't done anything wrong since the early 90's its going on 2010 isn't it time to let that go?

[Cattius]

Why shouldn't we trust larger companies?
Larger companies have alot more to lose then a small start up.
The chart is not complete rubbish to be honest with you because every single claim can be backed up they've even mentioned that some may not be better than others for example the customization.

The whole Microsoft can't be trusted thing really needs to die down they haven't done anything wrong since the early 90's its going on 2010 isn't it time to let that go?

They haven't done anything wrong since the 90s? Where have you been living, Mars? Windows Vista is one of their most obvious recent failures (and Microsoft recognise this; they barely ever mention Vista anymore now they have 7 to talk about). I mean even XP was a mistake before SP1 - the security flaws in it were apalling.

And you mustn't have been reading me and Caboose's posts, because we've already established that certain parts are lies. Please stop this 'everything is true to a point' thing because it isn't.

[Easl]

I might downlaod IE8, but firefox does everything I want it to and i only use 2 ad ons

[Day]

Firstly, I would like to say that I hope your last paragraph was sarcastic. If it wasn't...frankly I'm worried about you

You mention Chrome's crash recovery features. Whether or not you were satisfied with them, the fact remains that they do exist. Chrome has both crash recovery and tab isolation. Microsoft says Chrome does not. Therefore Microsoft is lying. Simple.

Can I just ask what version of Chrome you were using, and what operating system you were using it on? I find Chrome 2 to be very stable on Windows 7, and I found that it was stable on Vista as well when I used to use that. If you were using an early release of Chrome (i.e. the first few months after it was released), or a beta, then that could be the cause of your stability issues.

First off, of course I was sarcastic. I'm not sure why you would even ask that question. I'm just saying that this particular chart should be 'so popular' because it is made by Microsoft, when this is happening all over the web. Seriously. Oh, and in case you didn't catch it... I was being sarcastic there too... (not the 'this is happening all over the web part'. I was dead serious about that).

Second, I use Google Chrome 2 on Vista. It's fast, I'll admit. It crashes far too much, and doesn't load many shockwave sites well, unless I refresh the page a couple times.

I like how you think you can trust Microsoft over smaller companies. Ignorance is bliss. Really though, you don't need to know many facts to know that the chart is complete rubbish.

So, you can base that off of a couple paragraphs that I typed? Seriously, get to know somebody before you call them ignorant.

I personally prefer FireFox over all browsers. IE8 may come last. Although I do not like IE8, the facts on that chart are...

And you mustn't have been reading me and Caboose's posts, because we've already established that certain parts are lies. Please stop this 'everything is true to a point' thing because it isn't.

...True to a point.

Do your research before coming up with arguments like these.

This post has been edited by Day: Jun 23 2009, 05:14 AM

[Arianna]

Why shouldn't we trust larger companies?
Larger companies have alot more to lose then a small start up.

Google is a small startup?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Please tell me you're joking.

[Cattius]

First off, of course I was sarcastic. I'm not sure why you would even ask that question. I'm just saying that this particular chart should be 'so popular' because it is made by Microsoft, when this is happening all over the web. Seriously. Oh, and in case you didn't catch it... I was being sarcastic there too... (not the 'this is happening all over the web part'. I was dead serious about that).

Second, I use Google Chrome 2 on Vista. It's fast, I'll admit. It crashes far too much, and doesn't load many shockwave sites well, unless I refresh the page a couple times.

So, you can base that off of a couple paragraphs that I typed? Seriously, get to know somebody before you call them ignorant.

I personally prefer FireFox over all browsers. IE8 may come last. Although I do not like IE8, the facts on that chart are...
...True to a point.

Do your research before coming up with arguments like these.

Hopefully this is the last time I will have to repost this to explain to people why I say that not all the points on the chart are truthful

There are sections that aren't true though. For example:

Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

This is wrong as Chrome has both tab isolation and crash recovery, so they should have at least let it tie with IE.

And I'm sorry, but your sarcasm wasn't exactly obvious, at least to me anyway.

@Arianna: Well...I suppose they were a small start-up back in 1996