By and large, we found that Internet Explorer 8 performed well, and beat out Firefox 3.0.7 in the majority of our time trials. Browser Showdown: Internet Explorer 8 vs. Firefox, PC World, 5/19/09
Browser comparison chart
Here are even more ways Internet Explorer 8 is taking the competition head-on:
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Security |  | Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats. | ||||||||||
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Privacy | | InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer 8 claim privacy victory. | ||||||||||
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Ease of Use | | Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make Internet Explorer 8 easiest to use. | ||||||||||
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Web Standards | | | | It's a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards. | ||||||||
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Developer Tools | | Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one. There's no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like JavaScript profiling. | ||||||||||
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Reliability | | Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other. | ||||||||||
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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. | ||||||||
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Compatibility | | Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser. | ||||||||||
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Manageability | | Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That's just not nice. | ||||||||||
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Performance | | | | Knowing the top speed of a car doesn't tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one’s also a tie. | ||||||||
