Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) vs. Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (Performance)

By Vygantas Lipskas | August 27, 2008 | 48 Comments

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) vs. Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (Performance)I’ve some great news for Internet Explorer users. While IE8 Beta 1 had some performance improvements over IE7, it was not enough and developers knew that. As a result, they’ve made Internet Explorer 8 even faster. As it says:

Some of the tests we have done show pure JScript performance improvements up to 2.5 times. We also measured the performance gains on common Gmail operations, like loading the inbox (34%), opening a conversation (45%) and opening a thread (27%) compared to IE7.

I think that it’s a great improvement and Internet Explorer 8 Final will probably be even faster.

Now here’s what else IE 8 is going to offer:

Scripting Improvements
Memory Management Improvements
Networking Improvements
Rendering Engine Improvements
New Developer Features
Data URI
Selectors API
JSON

and much more.

[digg-reddit-me]

For a more detailed list of IE8 improvements, check this blog post.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas Lipskas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • http://nocontinues.net Tiago Sá
  • viky

    also, it offers extendables search bar and search suggestions from search bar – these are super features i asked opera. Ie8 will rock. Inprivate feature is fantastic.

  • http://www.joshuaissac.co.nr/ Joshua Issac

    I’m definitely downloading Internet Explorer 8. I must admit that I am getting addicted to Google Chrome, but IE 8 should be able to change that.

  • Brian

    I’ll bet once it’s real version is out and when it’s up on windows update, it will get tons of downloads like FF3 and then hackers will put more attention on IE like they did with FF3. It’s worth it though, and so far IE8 sounds like its a big hit. Im going to wait untill the full version is out though.

  • Dave

    I downloaded IE8 a week ago; real fast – nice ! Something for the users – speed !! We love it !! HOWEVER….5-6 days later I am being overrun with adware infections !!!!! More than I have ever seen in such a short time period. 80+ in 2 days….surfing no funky web sites….performance going to the dogs…… Just a coincidence – right ? McAfee, AOL and Ad-Aware 2008; trying to keep up and losing ground….

    • Ron

      I am having the same problems, never had spyware or Virus issues with 7, but with 8 it is a minute by minute nightmare

  • Jody

    I downloaded and installed IE8 with a windows update earlier this evening and just finished uninstalling and going back to IE7! I was getting multiple horizontal scroll bars on the bottom of my screen and double vertical scrolls on the right.

    • john

      fuck u use only ie8 and MF

      THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

      • Angus

        fuck u and don’t talk to the lady like that!

  • Positive

    Dave – Do you think that your adware infections may be due to LSO’s allowed to operate thru Adobe? Here is a good link which explains the issues.

    http://tips.webdesign10.com/flash-cookies-privacy

    I disagree with the author’s statement that it is the browsers duty to block this spyware. It is the companies using and installing the tracking bugs and cookies who should be prevented from invading our privacy, and who should be strictly accountable for having done so.

  • visitor

    Jody, that’s due to the “compatible mode”. Some websites don’t render properly in this mode, so you have to switch.

    The funny thing is that some of the websites that I’ve developed in ASP.NET do not render properly in this mode, so I’m hoping that MS will soon bring all its apps into sync with the standards.

  • Thom

    I’m a baseball nut and with IE7 thru donbest.com/scores in favs always go to current days scores with IE8 goes to whatever date that IE8 was installed and you manually have to go to current day’s scores- so have gone back to IE7 and will wait a little longer for IE8 – also did not notice any more speed – have 64bit with vista prem

  • [TG] Halodude

    I must say that being an IE8 user I am quite happy with the performance that it gives: certainly fater than IE7, but for basic surfing I’ll just stick to gool ol’ Chromey!

  • tmcclune

    I am really satisfied with IE8, I used to use Chrome, but it started to give me problems, and that’s when I saw the ad for IE8 on Microsofts website.
    No problems with it yet… I’ve had it for about a week now

    • Arie Smallegange

      U work for Microsoft I guess… Never had any problems with Chrome. But nice that you wanna say something negative about Chrome and plug your own system. ;)

      • http://---------------------underconstruction--------------------- wellivea1

        NO Geez he must have chromium beta or he is using windows 7 or windows vista sp2 —— Tech-net Beta—— w7 has lots of errors with chrome but they have just fixed the problem —-cheers!—- :| and he could have linux or mac with Wine linux had problems so think before you write on the internet :)

  • peter wright

    I’ve just started using ie8 and find that with email the keyboard skips and misses letters. Will resetting ie8 fix this, I never had any trouble with ie7.

  • john

    IE8 better than fucking IE7

    U Can Download IE8 From This Link:

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

    • IE7 XP3 for Me

      Hey John,

      Are you from one of those “disenfranchised” minority groups?
      Certainly seems that way.
      Get an education mate!…and you may also want to consider a second brain cell, the one you have seems to be suffering from some sort of depression caused by loneliness!

      • bryan

        John may be from a disenfranchised MAJORITY group.

  • Joseph

    IE8 still lacks the security of IE7 so until this issue is fixed the speed of IE8 isnt enough to convince me to switch.

    • cousin333

      What are you talking about? IE8 is more advanced in every way than IE7.

  • john

    ie8 is good
    use MF too its cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

  • mike

    ie8 was the worst peice of garbage i ever had the disadvantage of downloading, i have a core2duo extreme edition @ 3.2ghz, ie7 was instant and i mean instant, i clicked it loaded zero hesitation, ok so now that i see ie8 on my pc (thank you windows update for screwing me again) “lets see why ms put so much emphasis into getting this onto my pc” so i click e and guess what doesnt happen, it now took a complete 30seconds everytime to open ie8, im thinking WTF HAS MS DONE THIS TIME!, and to top it all off i uninstalled ie8, and now my pc errors out alot, THANK YOU MS FOR SENDING ME USELESS JUNK TO CAUSE A REFORMAT! IMHO I SHOULD BE PAID FOR MY TIME WASTED

    oh and one more thing, you may thing its better, but check resources, ie7 uses less than half the resources ie8, and another thing for you, watch your task manager when you open ie8..it shows its open twice! (i think something screwey at ms)

    • cousin333

      “it now took a complete 30seconds everytime to open ie8,”

      I think something is wrong with your system. It never took me so much time to start IE8.

      “and to top it all off i uninstalled ie8, and now my pc errors out alot, THANK YOU MS FOR SENDING ME USELESS JUNK TO CAUSE A REFORMAT! IMHO I SHOULD BE PAID FOR MY TIME WASTED”

      Now you may have a clean and working install instead of the mess before… You should thank MS :D

      “when you open ie8..it shows its open twice!”

      IE8 runs every tab as a independent process. So when you start it, it starts IE8 and also a new tab. That’s two. If you open an other tab, there’ll be three of them. Amazing, isn’t it! This is also the case with Chrome, by the way. So it’s deliberate and nothing is wrong with it.

  • Eduardo

    crappiest ie ever.. avoid installing ie8.

  • Joe

    Just switched to IE 8. Really fast, no problems.

    MS has done a good job as usual, and people still blame them, solely because they cannot recognize that they are incompetent with computers.

    • http://dalelarsen.com Dale

      Speed is not Microsofts problem. Their problem (and the reason why so many people don’t like them) is their failure to adhere to the standards. It costs corporations millions of dollars to fix their websites (that already work with standard browsers) to work on internet explorer.

      The internet has pre-defined standards set forth by the W3 which indicates the way a browser must render code. Internet Explorer still does not adhere to many of these code specifications. We have had to hire programmers and pay them just to fix internet explorer bugs.

  • Linda

    Dale, this was a very informative post. It explains some of what’s going on behind the scenes. Thanks for sharing.

    • john

      FUCK U USE INTERNET EXPLORER 8 BITCH

      • Pb0071

        To John, “Fuck” seems to be your favorite word. You sound like an immature jerk. You been trying to promote IE8 but I’m sure IE8 would not want to associate their product or be their spokeperson to a person such as you.

        • sue

          Right on, Pb0071! John should be blocked for abusive messages.

  • Avinash

    IE 8 is way good than IE 7

  • Justin

    Um, Internet Explorer 8 is fast but somewhat I feel like Internet Explorer 7 looked better. Just a somewhat.

    Cause the tabs especially don’t have that glowing effect no more. But in the bright side it’s a bit faster.

  • me

    poo poo pee pee

  • Spinxx

    IE8 is crap. It crashes big time – all the time. I am experiencing this in Win7 and WinXP – 2 completely separate machines. Problem solved on the XP computer by getting RID of it and putting IE7 back on – no problems ever since. Now what to do with Win7. Agggh!!!!

    • advay pal rishi

      i agree with u my win7 pc is just 2 slow ………..n mf ie7 n chrome r all the better
      besides they have reliable security

  • franarchist

    I like IE 8 but have a problem I never had before….Every time I try to scroll down mail slowly it ends up jumping to the very bottom of the window. Weird. Anybody else find something like this?

  • Sergio Angeles

    hey guys… i just downloaded chrome in order to try another different browser… lately ie8 had been giving me some problems… some?? a mean a loooooot of problems… and i dunno why… but.. there was sometimes that i had to restart my laptop cause ie8 was just not working and get frozen

  • marou

    IE 8 is rubbish

  • advay pal rishi

    ie 8 sucks ………..it is more vulnerable 2 viruses n gives
    problems after installing …….ie 7 ‘s better

  • babyhead

    IE 8 is absolutely rubbish, Microsoft became a rubbish producer since Vista. Microsoft is going to die soon. Google will beat such a fucking company cause so much problem to web designers!

  • sue

    I am so relieved to see many others agree with my (negative) opinion of IE8. I unsuspectingly downloaded it to my laptop last fall with MS updates. Opened my browser and “whoa! WTH happened?” Did NOT like the way favorites were no longer on the same toolbar with tabs, and NO “Add to favorites” meaning more clicks to save a page. I found the MS support page on how to uninstall IE8 and did. Ever since, as Mike says above, I am also experiencing my pc erroring a lot. Many times when I turn it on, all I get is a black screen, so I have to turn it back off, on again, and get the “windows was shut down incorrectly” (paraphrasing) screen. It also locks up occasionally. What a pain! My husband bought a new desktop last November, which came with Vista and IE8, and he has had to take it in twice to get adware viruses scrubbed. Every time I download updates, I make sure I unselect IE8.

  • http://www.bpkcse.wetpaint.com praveen

    MS spoils all its user’s expectations due to its release of vista and ie8…ie8 has no advantages than chrome nor firefox nor even its older ie7 ..ie7 is more reliable..ie8 is often stucking and not responding..so i’ve switched back to ie7

  • jobardu

    Internet Explorer 8 is the worst dog in the history of Internet Browsers. It is so slow that nothing will speed it up. I spoke with an executive of a major ISP who told me that they ended up getting rid of IE 8 because it was so slow and unresponsive. My own internet connection clocked at over 15mbs but loading a web page often takes a minute of more. Transitions within a web page take half a minute, and freezes are common. Basically Internet Explorer moves at slow dial up connections.
    I’ve tried about a dozen speed up procedures, registry hacks and stripped down all add ons, plug ins, accelerators and tool bars. It still sucks. Some people have said that the problem is that IE8 doesn’t work well with security software or other programs on the net like Adobe software. I’ve tried to work with it by changing firewall and anti-virus, but here’s the thing, I don’t know what will work. Microsoft should put out a list of what software won’t kill IE 8, or even better, patch it so it enables browsing at 1998 speeds.

    I hear the security is much better in IE8 than in IE 7. But what good is it if the door to your house is so locked down that you can’t get in or out. I’ve also heard that Microsoft’s worship of the media companies puts substantial DRM functionality in IE8 that slows down the browser.

    My guess is that this zombie will be put to rest very soon and that IE9 will be out well before the end of the year in the hope that IE8 will be quickly forgotten.

    • MARY

      When I downloaded IE 8 it screwed my computer up, so I reformatted, and put IE 7 back on.  This also happened to other people’s computers that I work on.  So if you haven’t reinstalled IE 7, that’s your best bet. 

      It appears something is conflicting with IE 8.  There are other things to beef-up your security, and Microsoft supplies many of them, FOR FREE.
      Whenever something new comes out, I don’t download it right away.  They still have to iron out the kinks.  True, the only way they can find problems is by the errors that come up, but I don’t want to be the one that gets the problem.

      GeekSquad.com is great with info, and doing searches getting statistics tells you alot. 

      Hopefully IE 9 works!!!

      Take Care!

  • Philbo

         Google Chrome is without hesitation faster at rendering websites compared to Internet Explorer 8 for multiple reasons as well as being more secure. I do not work with either Microsoft or Google but I am on Google’s side when it comes to Internet Browsers, although Google is less trustworthy in the long run.
         Google uses the fastest javascript rendering engine known at the moment and also has the fastest startup time due to its low-memory usage advantage and individual tab proccess feature (also used in Internet Explorer 8).
         Internet Explorer is commonly-used because of Microsoft integrating it with its Operating System (Windows Vista, Windows 7, Etc).

    - For security and speed combined, I would trust Google Chrome
    - For reliability I trust Internet Explorer 7 (Although Internet Explorer 8 is said to e more reliable by Micorsoft)

    And John, you should be banned from this forum because your disgraceful to ven live on the same planets as us. I think you need to stop talking trash on the internet because your not man enough to take any of us in real life. Stop cyber-bullying, it doesnt make you cool to bully in the privacy of your own house (or your moms condo, in your case) because you cant say it to our faces. Thanks,

    • jobardu

      Philbo:
      Do you think Chrome is faster than Maxthon.  I was starting to gain weight waiting for IE8 to load a web page and tried Maxthon, the lighter version, since it was supposed to be fast. It beats IE8 and Firefox into the dust on Vista (but is still slow compared to browsing on XP). Do you think Maxthon competes with Chrome?

      Finally, do  you think upgrading to Windows 7 will significantly speed up internet browsing. I’ve heard that Vista is slow due to massive loading of RAM by Aero and other Vista “stuff”, poor memory management and DRM  security checks that slow down surfing while it  checks  if you are downloading media. What is your thought on this.

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