[Adam Silver]

Inernet Explorer 5 may be faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer but it is still far slower than Netscape Communicator. A page that renders almost instantly in Communicator takes forever to load in Internet Explorer 5.

IE developers: more than anything else, please increase the speed of your browser. I hate having to choose speed over superior features.

[Kon-El]

Adam, you must be talking about pages in your Netscape cache compared to pages NOT in your IE cache, as everyone else says that Netscape is slower than mollases in January compared to IE5!

------------------
Pax Christi,
-Nik!

[Adam Silver]

Netscape's browser is faster than Microsoft's except when it comes to cached pages.

Cached pages in Communicator take as long to load as new pages. Cached pages show up almost instantly in Inernet Explorer; it is new pages that take forever to show up.

To quote David Pogue, "Switching to Explorer does come at a steep price, however: speed. On its worst day, Netscape Navigator still feels twice as fast as Explorer 4.01" (Macworld, December 1998).

To be fair, the speed of Inernet Explorer has increased since then: first with the release of Outlook Express 5 and now with Internet Explorer 5 but it still isn't nearly as fast loading pages as Communicator.

Actually, different browser rendering engines excel at different types of pages (cache aside). It's a little like the the PPC vs. Intel debates where altivec or FP code will run way faster on PPC, but other things are only slightly faster.

Testing on a very wide range of pages and machines, our internal speed tests indicate that IE5 is at least 50% faster than IE 4.5 which was faster than IE 4. In many cases, the bottleneck in page rendering will still be the connection or the machine, not the browser -- for example we use temporary memory whereas other browsers may hit the file system so VM and bus speed become a variable.

------------------
--
Shan Vosseller
Program Manager -
Mac IE

Originally posted by Adam Silver:
Inernet Explorer 5 may be faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer but it is still far slower than Netscape Communicator. .

Interesting that you think it's faster. I installed IE5 on every machine in my iMac lab (running OS8.6), and EVERY kid who tried it during the past two days has complained about how SLOW it is. I have stopped using it and gone back to IE4.5. Netscape is too much of a RAM hog for my 32mb machines. And VERY unstable!

[TheAdmiral]

I have always been an ardent Netscape man, myself... at least up until I got my G4 in January. It came with IE 4.5 as the default browser, and I, having not tried IE since version 3.x (and promptly Trashed it, laughing) decided it was time to reacquaint myself with the enemy. I was pleasantly surprised to see that IE loaded pages faster than Netscapes 4.0, 4.5 and 4.7 that I had been using prior. I also admit suffering a bruised ego at this discovery, but I got over it. I just re-initialized my PowerBook 3400/200c yesterday and installed Netscape 4.5 (IMO the most stable version ever) and IE/OE 5. IE 5 is now my default browser, at least until Communicator 6 comes out and is all they claim it will be.

Argue what you will, it seems no different to me than Coke vs Pepsi, Mac vs Windows, or Bill Clinton vs anyone with a brain. Maybe the two browsers load at the same speed but one will display page elements more quickly (in my experience, Netscape seems to load and load and load and finally display page elements.). I don't know for sure. It's my opinion that Microsoft actually did something right for a change with IE 5.

------------------
-The Admiral

MIKE TYSON TRIED TO GRAB MY BUTT!

Netscrape 6.0 is gonna be the BEEZ KNEEZ baby... MacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMa cMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacM acMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMac MacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMac MacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMa cMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacM acMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMac