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As far as I'm concerned FF isn't all its cracked up to be .... I downloaded it and had nothing but problems... and when I inadvertantly clicked make default browser(on the pop up that would never stop) I couldn't get it off.... I had to uninstall and delete everything related to it.
As far as speed and resources.... it was no better or worse then any other browser I used ... Now I just use Maxthon.... works great for me. ;)
Bis, don't go back to plain IE, try Maxthon or Avant. You'll be better protected against malware than vanilla IE. I haven't had a thing on any pc I own since I started using it 3 or 4 yrs ago. It also has an activeX blocker that tells you when sites attempt to load one onto your system. You might never view Yahoo the same way again (they try every time).
You can also blend SP2's protection with it, although I'm not sure that it's needed (I did it anyway).
Using that test page:
Firefox: 4.0779
Internet Explorer: 2.6570
Hel-loooooooo?
That's what I've been saying. The "faster" bit is a myth. What gives the illusion is the WAY that FF loads pages as opposed to IE. IE runs right down the page, loading things in order, while gecko loads all the smaller elements first, and images and larger elements last. So it LOOKS done sooner, but in fact, it's not.
Here at work
Fx 9.099, 9.199, 19.891
IE 10.625, 8.375, 32.063
Which is pretty bloody poor for both given we're probably using some mega throughput capability.
I'll have to try it at home although so far for me Fx comes out faster on average.
I spend money on faster CPU's, Video cards, RAM, Motherboard chipsets .....
So what's all this talk about faster? Faster what? ... Browsers? Oh crikey(small trib to Steve), are we still playing "faster browser"???
When it comes to faster ... it's hardware! Software is a personal choice, browsers be software. And to be certain some browsers are "quicker" than others... depends upon what you load them up with, extentions, themes etc. etc. .... bare bones software will win every time.
Really depends upon the hardware though ... the fat pipe, the router that really allows everything to flow sweetly. And the lack of spyware, malware and other nasty items on your system! ;-) What advert? IBM, who 'dat?
I've been using Opera for 5 or 6 years now. It's gone through some growing pains but is a great browser.
Would it be overly pedantic to point out that the rendering test page isn't actually valid XHTML? :) If you fix up the code by adding the missing stuff, the rendering time in both browsers drops by more than half.
There's an old adage in network protocol implementation -- be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you receive. Firefox and the ad developers are both equally at fault here.
The ad developers are at fault for making resource greedy ads, yes. But a browser shouldn't be made to crash from less than stellar coding, if there's proper error handling in the program. The worst it should do is display the page improperly or not at all. But a crash means the error wasn't handled.
And frankly, it makes sense. Think about it; if you're a top programmer, where are you going to look to work? With an open source program or for some lucrative company making expensive software? Those high paying jobs with commercial software companies are taken by the finest programmers.