When using the internet choosing a web browser is important, which make us compare the differences between Internet Explorer 11 and Google Chrome 39, the latest versions of the two popular web browsers. Internet Explorer is a proprietary web browser by Microsoft, that has a very long history dating back to 1995. However, Chrome by Google was released just a few years ago in 2008. Despite the history now, Chrome has captured the first place in popularity of browsers while Internet Explorer has dropped to the third place. The main drawback of Internet Explorer is its bad performance. An advantage of chrome is that it is available across many operating systems while Internet Explorer is limited to Windows only.
Features of Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer is a web browser developed by Microsoft and is bundled with its Windows operating system. It has a very old history where the first version was released in 1995 with Windows 95. Currently, the latest release is Internet Explorer 11 which was released a couple of months ago in September 2014. While Internet Explorer is targeted only for Windows operating system, Microsoft does not provide setups for Linux and Unix operating systems. The product is available in about 95 different languages. The product is proprietary to Microsoft and hence is not open source. Internet Explorer supports many standards including HTML 4, HTML 5, CSS, XML and DOM. In the past, like in 2003, Internet Explorer was the world’s most widely used web browser where the percentage was even over 80%. By today with the advent of many browsers such as Chrome now it has dropped to the third place of about just 10% usage according statistics from W3counter.
The user interface on Internet Explorer is much simpler and cleaner and tallies with the interface of the Windows operating system. It not only acts as a browser but also provides the user interface to FTP giving the user with operations similar to Windows Explorer. Also, Internet Explorer provides certain features in the Windows operating system such as Windows update. Currently features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, private browsing, synchronization and download manager are available even though it was a bit late to introduce them when compared to Chrome. The settings on Internet Explorer are fully configurable via group policy and this is a unique feature. Add-ons such as Flash Player, Microsoft silver light which are also known as ActiveX can be installed to give more capabilities to the browser.
Though Internet Explorer is a web browser with all up to date features, the greatest issue is the performance. For example according to Six Revision’s performance tests, in all aspects the performance of Internet Explorer is worse than other browsers such as Chrome.
Features of Google Chrome 39
Google Chrome is a free web browser that is developed by Google. Though this is not fully open source still Google exposes majority of its code via a project called Chromium. Google chrome is new when compared with Internet Explorer as it was released just in September 2008, but still according to StatCounter now Chrome is the most widely used browser in the world. Google chrome also supports a variety of platforms including Windows, Linux, OS X and Android.
Google chrome has a very simple but innovative user interface while features such as tabbed browsing, bookmarks and a download manager are included. A specialty in Chrome is that the address bar and the search bar is integrated into one. Chrome also provides easy and simple mechanism to synchronize data such as bookmarks, settings, history, themes and saved passwords just by signing in. Also, Google Chrome obviously provides a lot of unique support for Google services such Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube and maps. Google Chrome also supports extensions that add extra functionality to the browser. Plugins such as Adobe Flash is bundled into the browser itself where the user does not have to install it manually. A private browsing method called incognito window prevents saving of information hence it is like an isolated browser that deletes everything after closed.
A very special implementation fact to mention in Google Chrome is the use of multiple processes that separates each site instant. Hence crashing of one tab does not crash the whole browser. Because of this feature chrome is more stable and secure. Google chrome also provide easy to use element inspector for web developers. Via the online store called Chrome web store various web applications can be inserted into the chrome browser.
What is the difference between Internet Explorer 11 and Google Chrome 39?
• Internet Explorer is developed by Microsoft while Chrome is developed by Google.
• Internet Explorer is a proprietary software, but majority of the code of Chrome is exposed via an open source project known as chromium.
• Internet Explorer has a long history starting from 1995 while Google Chrome just started in 2008.
• Despite the history now the most popular web browser is Google Chrome while Internet Explorer is third according to W3counter.
• Internet Explorer is only available on Windows operating system while Chrome is available on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OS and even FreeBSD.
• According to many sources, the performance of Internet Explorer is very much worse than Chrome. According to Six Revision’s Performance Comparisons of Web Browsers, in all aspects such as page loading time, CSS rendering, cache performance, JavaScript as well as DOM selection Internet explorer takes a huge time when compared to Chrome.
• Synchronization of settings, bookmarks and history on Internet Explorer happens via Microsoft Live accounts while in Chrome it happens with the Google Account. Due to availability of Chrome on multiple platforms the synchronization in Google Chrome is much effective in providing synchronization across various devices.
• Adobe Flash plugin is bundled within Chrome but on Internet Explorer this is not so. Hence the user has to install it manually.
• Internet Explorer can be configured via Group Policy in Windows, but Chrome does not have this advantage.
• Internet Explorer has Windows Explorer like controls and operations for FTP, but Chrome FTP interface is not as nice as that on Internet Explorer.
• Internet Explorer integrates much better with Windows features such as Windows update, Desktop controls than Chrome, but both has Windows 8 mode metro interface as well.
• In windows operating systems, Internet Explorer is bundled with the operating system, but Chrome has to be separately installed.
• The default search engine in Chrome is Google, but it is Bing on Internet Explorer.
Summary:
Internet Explorer 11 vs Google Chrome 39
Both are up to date browsers with many modern features, but there are few differences. Internet Explorer is limited only to Windows platform while Chrome is available across many including Windows, Linux, Android, FreeBSD and Android. Another main difference when you compare both browsers, IE 11 and Chrome 39, is the performance, where different tests show that performance and CPU usage of Google Chrome is far better than Internet Explorer. Chrome being developed by Google is very much compatible with Google Services while Internet Explorer being developed by Microsoft is much compatible with Windows live services and also acts as a platform that provides certain windows functions.