[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]

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?

I never said that we shouldn't trust larger companies...

Besides, you don't just trust blindly. You make the choice for yourself. This chart is utter rubbish, fact. We've proved this more than once, with the same facts. Accept them.

But Vista isn't that bad, it's only real flaw is that it uses a lot of resources, and that's not much of a problem on half decent machines (and if you don't clutter up your machine with rubbish like Windows Blinds, Windows Standard is just fine for me).

[Day]

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

Hopefully this will be the last time I will have to repost this to explain to people why I say that all the points on the chart are true to a point.

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?

Hey! That wasn't a crash recovery! Not a successful one, anyways. So therefore, everything on this chart is true to a point, seeing as you don't want to post any other examples on how this chart 'lies' and keep on complaining that you have to repost ONE example.

This post has been edited by Day: Jun 23 2009, 06:10 PM

[redmonke]

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

Hopefully this will be the last time I will have to repost this to explain to people why I say that all the points on the chart are true to a point.

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?

Hey! That wasn't a crash recovery! Not a successful one, anyways. So therefore, everything on this chart is true to a point, seeing as you don't want to post any other examples on how this chart 'lies' and keep on complaining that you have to repost ONE example.

That's how websites work. In input boxes ANYWHERE they won't be saved unless the site itself does the saving. That's all temporary information you're typing.

It's like me having google.com typed in my browser, then when it crashes I complain about it not having google.com typed in still.

[Day]

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

Hopefully this will be the last time I will have to repost this to explain to people why I say that all the points on the chart are true to a point.

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?

Hey! That wasn't a crash recovery! Not a successful one, anyways. So therefore, everything on this chart is true to a point, seeing as you don't want to post any other examples on how this chart 'lies' and keep on complaining that you have to repost ONE example.

That's how websites work. In input boxes ANYWHERE they won't be saved unless the site itself does the saving. That's all temporary information you're typing.

It's like me having google.com typed in my browser, then when it crashes I complain about it not having google.com typed in still.

Oh. Alright. But still, we have this to deal with:

The two other windows were gone

And it always does that, when that never happens in Mozilla Firefox or IE8.

[redmonke]

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

Hopefully this will be the last time I will have to repost this to explain to people why I say that all the points on the chart are true to a point.

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?

Hey! That wasn't a crash recovery! Not a successful one, anyways. So therefore, everything on this chart is true to a point, seeing as you don't want to post any other examples on how this chart 'lies' and keep on complaining that you have to repost ONE example.

That's how websites work. In input boxes ANYWHERE they won't be saved unless the site itself does the saving. That's all temporary information you're typing.

It's like me having google.com typed in my browser, then when it crashes I complain about it not having google.com typed in still.

Oh. Alright. But still, we have this to deal with:

The two other windows were gone

And it always does that, when that never happens in Mozilla Firefox or IE8.

If you have multiple firefox windows open and it crashes, they all close, too.

[Cattius]

Hey! That wasn't a crash recovery! Not a successful one, anyways. So therefore, everything on this chart is true to a point, seeing as you don't want to post any other examples on how this chart 'lies' and keep on complaining that you have to repost ONE example.

Please stop judging a browser's features based on ONE thing that happened to you ONCE. You cannot say that Chrome doesn't have crash recovery features, just because they didn't work for you ONCE.

And fyi, the only reason I didn't find you another example was because I was on my iPod Touch, and the Microsoft chart doesn't format properly on it.

Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats.

Before I acknowledge this as truth, I would like to see the malware and phishing protection results that Microsoft used to make this statement. Until I see evidence that it provides better protection, this is, in my opinion, a lie.

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.

I'd also like to point out the above (which Caboose has already been posting for ages, and like he's said - everything being there 'out of the box' does not represent customizability. Can you EASILY change the interface on IE? No. Can you on Firefox? Yes. Customization is all about CHANGING the defaults, not keeping them).

Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser.

I would also like to see the data they used to make this statement, as in my experience this isn't the case.

[Day]

Hey! That wasn't a crash recovery! Not a successful one, anyways. So therefore, everything on this chart is true to a point, seeing as you don't want to post any other examples on how this chart 'lies' and keep on complaining that you have to repost ONE example.

Please stop judging a browser's features based on ONE thing that happened to you ONCE. You cannot say that Chrome doesn't have crash recovery features, just because they didn't work for you ONCE.

And fyi, the only reason I didn't find you another example was because I was on my iPod Touch, and the Microsoft chart doesn't format properly on it.

Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats.

Before I acknowledge this as truth, I would like to see the malware and phishing protection results that Microsoft used to make this statement. Until I see evidence that it provides better protection, this is, in my opinion, a lie.

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.

I'd also like to point out the above (which Caboose has already been posting for ages, and like he's said - everything being there 'out of the box' does not represent customizability. Can you EASILY change the interface on IE? No. Can you on Firefox? Yes. Customization is all about CHANGING the defaults, not keeping them).

Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser.

I would also like to see the data they used to make this statement, as in my experience this isn't the case.

Most of the things you have posted down are judged by the user. If the user thinks that it's better on the site, then I guess it's better on the site. I personally cannot tell the difference between them (except on Chrome, which has difficulty loading Adobe Shockwave applications) so I would check all/none. They checked one. I guess they must personally think that IE8 is better, huh?

But seriously, it's all business. They want people to download their product, so they make a chart over-exaggerating the 'greatness' of IE8. I could walk through any street in Washington DC and make twenty topics exactly like this.

[Cattius]

Most of the things you have posted down are judged by the user. If the user thinks that it's better on the site, then I guess it's better on the site. I personally cannot tell the difference between them (except on Chrome, which has difficulty loading Adobe Shockwave applications) so I would check all/none. They checked one. I guess they must personally think that IE8 is better, huh?

But seriously, it's all business. They want people to download their product, so they make a chart over-exaggerating the 'greatness' of IE8. I could walk through any street in Washington DC and make twenty topics exactly like this.

I appreciate that the point of advertising is to persuade a potential customer to buy/download/whatever a product, and I have no problem with that. But I felt that this Microsoft chart went too far: in my opinion it over-exaggerates the facts, and does not provide evidence to support its claims. I posted it because I was angry, as I knew this chart would take advantage of those who knew little about computers, and I wanted to know what other people thought about it. That was all.

[Emo_Nemo]

Most of the things you have posted down are judged by the user. If the user thinks that it's better on the site, then I guess it's better on the site. I personally cannot tell the difference between them (except on Chrome, which has difficulty loading Adobe Shockwave applications) so I would check all/none. They checked one. I guess they must personally think that IE8 is better, huh?

But seriously, it's all business. They want people to download their product, so they make a chart over-exaggerating the 'greatness' of IE8. I could walk through any street in Washington DC and make twenty topics exactly like this.

I appreciate that the point of advertising is to persuade a potential customer to buy/download/whatever a product, and I have no problem with that. But I felt that this Microsoft chart went too far: in my opinion it over-exaggerates the facts, and does not provide evidence to support its claims. I posted it because I was angry, as I knew this chart would take advantage of those who knew little about computers, and I wanted to know what other people thought about it. That was all.

Everyone overexaggerates though Apple makers of Linux distros etc.

Apple has made claims of OSX just working like it never has any problems but at the same time has a whole active forum dedicated to troubleshooting daily problems.

Linux distros have made claims of ease of use but at the same time confusing even advanced pc users.

I fail to see how what they are doing is any different then the latter.

[Day]

Most of the things you have posted down are judged by the user. If the user thinks that it's better on the site, then I guess it's better on the site. I personally cannot tell the difference between them (except on Chrome, which has difficulty loading Adobe Shockwave applications) so I would check all/none. They checked one. I guess they must personally think that IE8 is better, huh?

But seriously, it's all business. They want people to download their product, so they make a chart over-exaggerating the 'greatness' of IE8. I could walk through any street in Washington DC and make twenty topics exactly like this.

I appreciate that the point of advertising is to persuade a potential customer to buy/download/whatever a product, and I have no problem with that. But I felt that this Microsoft chart went too far: in my opinion it over-exaggerates the facts, and does not provide evidence to support its claims. I posted it because I was angry, as I knew this chart would take advantage of those who knew little about computers, and I wanted to know what other people thought about it. That was all.

Everyone overexaggerates though Apple makers of Linux distros etc.

Apple has made claims of OSX just working like it never has any problems but at the same time has a whole active forum dedicated to troubleshooting daily problems.

Linux distros have made claims of ease of use but at the same time confusing even advanced pc users.

I fail to see how what they are doing is any different then the latter.

My point exactly

This has always been going on, with multiple companies. This always will.

So many things 'work like a charm'. Yet, why should there be troubleshooting manuals for them?

[Cattius]

@Day: Nothing is foolproof. Everything goes wrong eventually. So they have troubleshooting manuals for when it goes wrong.

I simply stated my opinions on the chart and explained why I created this topic. If you don't share my opinions, that's fine, let's stop arguing about it. All I wanted was people's opinions, and I'm sorry that I turned this into a debate.

This post has been edited by Cattius: Jun 24 2009, 03:32 PM

[Day]

@Day: Nothing is foolproof. Everything goes wrong eventually. So they have troubleshooting manuals for when it goes wrong.

I simply stated my opinions on the chart and explained why I created this topic. If you don't share my opinions, that's fine, let's stop arguing about it. All I wanted was people's opinions, and I'm sorry that I turned this into a debate.

As do I.

So I think I have stated my opinion clearly.

[Cattius]

Incidentally, someone has now redesigned the chart to show their own opinions

http://kilianvalkhof.com/ie8fun/

This post has been edited by Cattius: Jun 28 2009, 05:09 AM