Why does Mozilla Firefox seem slower than Internet Explorer? It does not make enough difference to me because I have DSL, but for my girlfriend, it does. I helped her get Linux. She has dial up with an external usrobotics 56k modem. It even seems slower under Windows XP. She got it to block pop-ups. I took the service pack 2 virus off of her computer that was slowing down the internet.

Firefox is slow.
It's one of its downsides.

Internet Explorer loads up quickly (because it's always on, even when you think it's off), but it's not that quick in loading webpages. It's faster than Firefox, but it's much slower than Opera.

That said, there are a number of things you can do to tweak Firefox to be faster. One thing that I've found to be a big help is adding the "integer" nglayout.initialpaint.delay with the number 0 to about:config.

Just type about:config in a Firefox window and right-click anywhere to add that integer.

Here are some more tips, too.

User.js - Speed - The Extensions Mirror

Firefox extensions - Tweak Network Settings

I find that Firefox is faster than Opera or IE. Of course I am on a 5MB broadband so it is only a second or less difference anyway.

Check out the above links to tweak the settings.

IE is integrated into the OS and that makes it run pretty fast. That is also the big problem with it. Anything that IE comes in contact with can write itself to the registry, plant spyware, alter system files, etc., all without your consent or even notifying you. You know it when your home page has been hijacked and wont reset until you run a registry editor and remove the offending line that is calling on a executable that IE downloaded for you.

If IE crashes the whole GUI crashes. A Firefox crash effect nothing but Firefox. Outlook and O.E. use IE as their rendering engine so they suffer from the same unsecure problems. IE with Outlook/OE is responsible for spreading virii, worms, etc. across the internet. Run a firewall with an outbound port monitor and see how many times IE, Outlook, Win media player etc. try to access the internet for no reason. When you don't even have them launched.

The reason to get away from IE is not because Firefox is faster, although I think Firefox loads pages as fast as IE mostly. IE is too unsecure and archaic to use. I also dislike IE not conforming to open standards.

If you want a lightening fast little browser try Dillo. It does not render frames correctly though.

Perceived speed differences between 2 browsers could also be caused by purely external conditions, including the level of traffic on the site at the time you happen to be visiting, the number of other apps you might have running at the time, differences in the browser's cache settings, etc.

At least for me, I don't notice any particular performance difference between Firefox and IE, but even so, the security vulnerabilities inherent in IE are so severe that even if I did have to wait an extra two seconds for a page to render under Firefox, it would be a small price that I'd willingly pay to minimize my system's exposure. Just my 2 cents -- J.W.

Even if you believe the results of this comparison of browser speeds, the differences are neglible between browsers. Firefox is never so slow as to hamper my productivity. In fact, with tabbed browsing, I can be working on one page (like this one) while a whole bunch of other tabs are loading in the background. Try doing that in Internet Explorer...

What are the system's specs? IE may feel faster due to its integration, and if you have slightly higher requirements with her Linux, you may run into a resource problem rather than a browser one... It's been ages since I last used Windows, so I can't say for sure, but last time I did use it, Netscape and Mozilla (at the time) were just as fast (if not faster under certain circumstances) than IE.