By Robert Lockard

Imagine trying to beat Microsoft at its own game. Microsoft, the giant of software and Web browsers, seemed all but unstoppable in its dominance of the Internet with its Internet Explorer browser five years ago. However, a small browser, which was originally called Phoenix, debuted on November 9, 2004 and started giving Explorer a run for its money.

We now know this Web browser as Firefox. And it recently turned five years old. Happy birthday, Firefox!

I read about Firefox’s anniversary in the Webware article, “After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges.” I talked a little about Firefox in my Submit Solution blog entry, “Google Chrome is the best Web browser.” I mentioned that it’s my favorite browser, even if it’s not exactly as fast as Chrome.

Many factors led up to the swift success of the Firefox browser. Microsoft got a little lazy on creating new features for Explorer. Plus, viruses were specifically designed to target Explorer, giving Internet users a strong incentive to try something new. Right on cue, Firefox arrived with its innovative tabbed interface, customizability and popup ad blocker. It was an instant hit, receiving 10 million downloads in the first month alone.

Firefox 2.0 was an even bigger success, gaining support from Web designers who started to comply with the new browser’s design standards. Google also lent a hand by embedding its search engine into the Firefox browser and giving Firefox a portion of the advertising revenue it received from searches through Firefox.

Google has now entered the fray with its own browser, Chrome. Who knows if it will be able to enjoy the same success as Firefox, but it’s a healthy thing to have competition, as Microsoft has certainly learned by now. Firefox is still going strong, though. It estimated about 160 million people downloaded the Firefox 3.0 version and more than 300 million have downloaded its current 3.5 version so far. For a five-year-old, Firefox is looking exceptionally strong.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution Web Design Blog for great discussions on topics like this.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Happy birthday, Firefox.” The photo of the Firefox birthday cake is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Christopher Blizzard.

By the way, try saying the title of this blog entry three times fast. I’m no good at quickly repeating f sounds.

By Robert Lockard

That’s right. Google Chrome is the best Web browser by far, according to a study by Jacob Gube, the founder and chief editor of Six Revisions. Chrome v. 3 beat Firefox v. 3.5, Safari v. 4, Opera v.10 and Microsoft Explorer v. 8. Take a look at the results below.

You should definitely check out the whole chart by clicking on this link to the blog entry, “Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers.” Fascinating stuff. I’ll discuss some of the highlights and their impact on ecommerce and Internet marketing.

I’m a Firefox user, myself, so some of this study’s results came as a surprise to me. I’m not sure if they will change my mind about which browser I use right now, but it’s definitely helped me think more about why I prefer one over the others. Here are some of the highlights of the study’s findings:

JavaScript Speed

Chrome won this competition with an average download time of JavaScripts in just 542.3 milliseconds. Safari was No. 2 with 863.9 milliseconds and Firefox was No. 3 with 1,230.6 milliseconds. Explorer was last with a comparatively long download time of 6,305.5 milliseconds.

JavaScripts are important because they are heavily used on websites like Digg, as well as in Gmail. It’s no surprise Google is the leader in this category because it definitely wants people to be able to quickly use its own applications.

Page Load Time

This study measured how long it takes each Web browser to download Yahoo’s main page. The trouble with these results is that they might be affected by how many other people were using the site at the time the study was conducted. Bearing that in mind, it’s interesting to see how close all of the Web browsers are to each other.

Firefox was the fastest with a download time of 1.34 seconds. The slowest time was 1.61 seconds and it was shared by Explorer and Safari. The difference between those two times is so small that it hardly matters which browser you use to download a website like Yahoo.

Browser Cache Performance

The same is true for both Page Load Times and Browser Cache Performance. Browsers often save a cached version of a Web page you have already visited so it can quickly bring it up again when you return to it. The download times of a cached page ranged from 0.72 seconds to 0.89 seconds, which statisticians would say is probably not a “significant” difference. Chrome had the fastest speed, while Safari had the slowest.

Other categories in the study had a wider variety of results, but I thought these ones were the most interesting.

This is all fascinating information, but what does it all mean? Why are fast download times important? If online users have to wait several seconds for one of your Web pages to download, they might just give up after a while and decide your site isn’t worth the wait.

We want our ecommerce websites to be fast enough for people, no matter which browser they use. But we should definitely focus on the most popular ones. That’s the subject of a whole other blog entry, though.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog for great discussions on topics like this.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Which Web browser is the best?” The graph of the results of this study is the copyright of Jacob Gube and Six Revisions.