• Supplement your argument with evidence, and indicate whether or not you changed your position based upon the discussion. Why or why not?
In today’s web browser market there are many options however, the three big name competitors are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. The debate over the best browser is on that has raged on for several years and the “Browser Wars” are beginning to rival the Cola Wars from years past. Looking at a few key elements such as speed, stability, and user features one can evaluate which software will fit their needs.
Speed
Speed tests are how browser load times are judged. With readily available broadband and faster PCs hitting the shelves every year, performance demands have become more sophisticated. Using hardware acceleration to improve browser performance was a concept introduced by Internet Explorer 9 (Muchmore, 2012). Firefox and Chrome have been quick to add acceleration to their feature list as well however the edge gained by IE leaves it marginally faster than the other browsers. Ultimately this difference in milliseconds is less than humans can perceive possibly leaving this point moot.
Stability
An important aspect of usability is how stable the software is. If the user is frequently interrupted by hangs or crashes they will quickly find an alternative product to use. The challenge software creators face is creating a browser that can respond to the many poorly coded websites that can cause buggy behavior. All three browsers have auto recover features to restore the tabs and websites the user had open before the crash occurred. To prevent complete loss of functionality in these situations, Microsoft has split processing for each browser tab so only individual tabs are affected when there is a problem with a website (Microsoft, 2012). Chrome has similar tab resiliency which prevents a full browser