Microsoft at some point released a chart comprising of comparison between its Internet Explorer 8, Google’s Chrome and Firefox 3. This article aims to take an objective look into some of the features that were compared amongst the browsers.

Security – One of the key issues raised concerned security. Although, it is true that IE8 does have some security features integrated into it but they do not actually always work in the expected way. Some people actually feel the tools make the browser somewhat bloated. Using the AVG toolbar on Firefox offers better security and ease of use in comparison to the IE8 and its security tools.

Privacy – IE8 claims to offer enhanced privacy for internet surf, however it must be mentioned that Google’s Chrome was actually one of the first browsers to roll out the features of incognito or private browsing for users.

Ease of use – With its auto complete functions, automatic Google search directly from the address bar and features that enables users to quickly visit their most popular web sites, Google Chrome is far ahead of IE8 when it comes to ease of use.

Web standards – While many of the present CSS2.x standards are spin offs from IE8, there are some features which are largely still IE specific and would not work quite as well on other major browsers thus making it a little difficult for clearly web defined standards to emerge in concerning certain issues and elements.

Developer tools – IE8 indeed does come with a few tools which are great for developers, however a browser such as Firefox is still clearly ahead of it when it comes to developer tools. The inbuilt console for JavaScript in IE8 is definitely no match for the one that comes integrated into FireFox. In addition, there are so many other high quality third party add-ons readily available for FireFox which makes development easier unlike IE8 that has just a few add-ons that actually do work.

Reliability – Browsers such as Firefox and Chrome have been known to crash very often, hence this is one area where IE8 might actually come out on top in comparison to other browsers.

Customizability – In this area Firefox is clearly ahead of other browsers and users feel that IE8 is merely bloated in comparison. In addition, it is much easier to add and install newer features through add-ons to Firefox unlike IE8.

Compatibility – In terms of website’s compatibility, IE8 definitely comes out tops since a large volume of sites actually were designed for browsers such as IE6 leveraging on web language that was centered on technology from Microsoft. As such it is expected that most of these sites would still function very well on IE8 in comparison to other browsers from companies different to Microsoft. However, in the areas of browser compatibility with existing operating systems, Firefox comes out clearly ahead of other browsers.

Performance – With constant upgrades being done for other major browsers such as Chrome and Firefox, Internet Explorer with its late releases would find it pretty difficult to compete when overall efficiency in performance is mentioned.