Comments on: Internet Explorer: Fewer Bugs Than Firefox?

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 01:07:57 +0000

Unfortunately, I rarely keep up with the bugs or even notice them, without regard to how they each handle CSS differently. At work, I use Google Chrome mostly with a little Firefox 3 on the side. I almost never use IE except to test how a site’s CSS might render.

In terms of usability, I find them all fairly usable with Google Chrome being a bit too unincumbered by toolbars. I’m a toolbar junky and if you saw my FF, you’d agree!

To the credit of Kelly Bundy, I thoroughly enjoy using Opera. It seems to be the most stable (in terms of not crashing out on me) of any of the other top 3. Plus, it was MUCH easier to install on Debian – Etch than was Firefox 3. Another story – another time.

Great commentary!

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:08:42 +0000

KellyBundy: The VAR Guy has sung Opera’s praises from time to time. But uTest’s bug chase didn’t focus on that browser. Our resident blogger therefore didn’t mention Opera in the post above.

By: kellybundy

kellybundy — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:39:11 +0000

It always amazes me how “in the know” IT people can be so clueless and leave out Opera. I use all of the browsers on Mac and Windows. Each has a few things they do a little better. But Opera is hands down the very best browser made, no others come close. Firefox and IE are inferior and IE is used by me only for ActiveX and Microsoft forced uses. Opera has all platforms covered, it’s fast and flexible and tight. Get a clue.

By: RudieD

RudieD — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:53:49 +0000

Apart from the fact that they were testing the FF beta against the rest (not beta) is that the FF bugs will be fixed faster then the few IE bugs. Hahahaha !!!!

By: Jobin

Jobin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 04:46:50 +0000

I too aggree with Cappella
Less number of features means less number of bugs. +
See the acid test marks : http://acid3.acidtests.org/

firefox : 71 out of 100
IE 7 : 12 out of 100
Opera : 85 out of 100

So Rendering capablity of IE is only 1/6 th of Firefox.
how these products can be compared?

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:10:21 +0000

John Orr: Undocumented Microsoft APIs? Say it ain’t so

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:52:06 +0000

Aikiwolfie: You’ve caught The VAR Guy’s attention again. Yes, flawed Microsoft software has created thousands of IT jobs. Think about it: There are actually IT managers who specialize in patch management for Windows servers and desktops. That’s all they do all day is test the latest patches. And when their work is done, along comes a new patch.

By: aikiwolfie

aikiwolfie — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:29:21 +0000

Microsoft are a lovely company. They go out of their way to give IT folks ample chance to prove their worth by constantly breaking compatibility between the Windows API and applications and all people do is complain.

It’s fair to say the IT support sector would be much smaller without Microsoft. Some companies might not even exist!

But back to the topic. How do we measure the amount of effort bug hunters are putting in to finding bugs? One of the problems I see with this browser bug hunt battler is that the sort of people involved in bug hunting for open source projects put in huge efforts to find bugs. So open source users might just be much better at finding bugs.

By: John Orr

John Orr — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:28:50 +0000

How about bugs per platform? I know that IE only runs on Windows but what is the bug count for FireFox on OS X and Linux?

Is it possible that some of the FireFox bugs on Windows are introduced by undocumented APIs?

I’m going way back but does anyone remember WordPerfect for Windows 1.0?…or Netscape in the early days?

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:25:55 +0000

Greg: How do you really feel about Microsoft?

By: Greg Strockbine

Greg Strockbine — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:08:40 +0000

who cares if IE has less bugs. MS is a despicable company whose sole purpose is to make Gates and Balmer rich.

By: Cappella

Cappella — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 03:35:03 +0000

ObiWanKenobi:

Nope. I don’t agree that disregarding features is relevant.

More features lead to potential for more bugs. Besides, if you want to compare *YOUR* experience and *MY* experience, it is again subjective. To my knowledge, IE is slow, hangs often when visiting web pages with large number of table cells. So your poison and my poison are different, and that makes it all equal. Let’s come back to the actual parameters: Number of features, availability of source code, dependencies to other modules, etc. All these are measurable, and should be used as a basis to determine whether number of bugs found is relatively high or low. Also, Scott raised another important point, how many eyes are looking at the browser.

The point here is this, if you want to conduct a study, you conduct it scientifically where the methodology is fair and right, taking deviations into account. No point you have 1,000 people looking at Firefox and 5 people looking at IE. At the same time, the same 1,000 people looking at Firefox must be looking at IE to be fair. If not, be prepared to be bashed by reviewers.