Taking Microsoft to Task Over IE8 ‘Myths’
Microsoft recently launched a campaign promoting its Internet Explorer 8 browser, making some bold claims about IE8’s capabilities.
The campaign, called “Windows Internet Explorer 8: Get the Facts,” trumpets IE’s speed, stability, ease of use, safety and customizability. It also provides a chart and several data points intended to show how IE8 surpasses other browsers in these areas.
While IE8, which was released earlier this year, is certainly the best version of Internet Explorer yet, several of Microsoft’s claims lead us to more questions, overlook some obviously plain facts or simply leave us scratching our heads.
On the campaign website, you’ll see Microsoft listing eight reasons to install Internet Explorer 8 — it’s “faster than ever,” it’s more customizable, it recovers from crashes — all of which point out the enhancements over previous versions of IE. No harm there.
But in the next section, titled “Browser comparison,” things gets dodgy.
Here, Microsoft claims IE8 has better protection against malware and phishing scams than Firefox and Chrome, as well as better privacy features. The privacy and security claims are dubious, especially considering Firefox 3 has some equally robust privacy features. Chrome also has almost identical features, as well as an incognito mode that mirrors IE8’s InPrivate browsing mode.
More troubling are the claims that IE8 is on par with Firefox and Chrome when it comes to support for web standards and performance.
The fact that both Firefox 3 and Google Chrome are both leaps and bounds ahead of IE8 when it comes to support for both established and emerging web standards, like HTML 5 and CSS 3, is no mystery to anyone who’s developed websites using anything beyond CSS 2.1, the latest CSS standard Microsoft IE8 supports, or to those developing user experiences with open video players or offline data storage features. Furthermore, for users of Ajax-heavy websites like Gmail and Netflix, IE8 performs just fine, but it’s not nearly as fast as Google Chrome.
And how about Safari and Opera? How do they compare? A casual reader wouldn’t know, since Microsoft didn’t include them in this chart.
On to the third section — deliciously titled “Mythbusting.” It’s here that Microsoft calls out the competitors on four common arguments against IE8.
The four “myths”:
- 1: Internet Explorer is much slower than Firefox and Chrome.
- 2: Internet Explorer is less secure than Firefox.
- 3: Firefox is a richer, more adaptable browser than Internet Explorer.
- 4: Internet Explorer doesn’t play well with Web standards.
The site goes on to attempt to de-bunk these myths one by one, with varying levels of head-spinning pretzel logic.
On the speed issue, Microsoft says its navigation features make it easier to use, therefore making it faster to find what you’re looking for. This isn’t speed, this is spin. It then dismisses page rendering and JavaScript performance data supplied by Firefox and Chrome as “micro-benchmarking page load claims” that don’t extend to real-world use cases. Again, nobody who’s serious about measuring browser speed accurately is going to buy this. And where are Safari and Opera? Not mentioned here.
On security, Microsoft says IE8 is more secure than IE6 or IE7, which is true. But to back up its claim that IE8 is the most secure browser, Microsoft cites a self-sponsored study that Opera has since called out as manipulative and incorrect. The rest of the arguments supplied here — more advanced phishing and malware protection, better defense against cross-site scripting, better security out of the box — fall flat when you look at similar features in Firefox and Chrome.
It’s the last two that are the biggest head-scratchers.
IE8 is more adaptable than Firefox and Chrome, both of which are fully open-source? More customizable than Firefox, which has the richest, most vibrant add-on community among all the browsers, including the Two Browsers Not Appearing In This Comparison?
And IE8 plays well with web standards? Again, it’s a huge improvement over older versions of IE, but IE8 surpassing all other browsers, including the Two Browsers Not Appearing In This Comparison? Au contraire.
Additonal reading: Geek Technica’s breakdown, which goes into more technical detail that I’ve provided here.
Screenshot (with commentary) by robceemoz/Flickr
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