Using Internet Explorer? Time to switch to FireFox or upgrade to IE8
Update March 2010: Here are the new numbers for browser performance.
Google Chrome has been added to the list of supported browsers for Windows and Mac. From the chart above and below, it is clearly a fast browser. You can try it from http://www.google.com/chrome. To learn about some issues and quirks in using QuickBooks Online on Chrome, check out this community post.
Original post:
Recently, we launched a new feature called Customer Center that mostly received kudos except for one area – performance. After doing some investigation, we found that lots of our customers are using Internet Explorer.
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer is pretty slow in Javascript processing and Customer Center uses quite a bit of JavaScript to provide interactivity. The following graph shows benchmarks for JavaScript processing for different browsers.
You can see for yourself… Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is about 54% faster than Internet Explorer 7! Wait it gets more shocking! IE8 is 600% slower compared to Firefox 3.5.
In order to determine performance impact of different browsers on QuickBooks Online (QBO), I performed different actions on the same machine using different browsers. I used the same company to ensure that amount of data doesn’t impact any numbers. Here’s what I found:
As can be seen from the graph, Customer Center is almost 60% faster on Firefox! I also found that Safari 4 on Windows and Chrome 3 are significantly faster than Firefox and we’re working on supporting these soon. Till then, my recommendation is to use Firefox 3.5 on Windows and Safari 4 on Mac.
Try it out and tell me how much faster your new browser is or which browser you like. Let me know if you have any questions.
You can get Firefox 3.5 from here
You can get Internet Explorer 8 here
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About me: I’m a software engineer on Quickbooks Online team. I recently joined the team and excited to enhance QBO (we love acronyms) with new features. I’m thrilled to be working with customers and accountants to make QBO even more easier to use and add new features such as Inventory, Purchase Orders etc.
December 18, 2009 at 12:44 pm
It’s great to hear that you’re working on support for Safari (on Windows) and Chrome browsers — thank you!
December 21, 2009 at 1:41 pm
When trying to login using Firefox I get the following error message ‘Your browser is not supported at this time.’
December 21, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Nice last name Chris – I’m a fan! (Posted a tip for you below Chris’s comment)
December 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I’ve been using FireFox for months with QBO and love it. Not only is it faster, but I believe its far superior to Explorer in a lot of other ways too!
December 21, 2009 at 2:13 pm
neil, make sure you are using the newest firefox 3.5
December 21, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Thanks Chris for the tip. Niel – you can check what version you are running by clicking Help in the toolbar and then “about Mozilla”
December 21, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Sounds like Blackmail to me, to use another program…..
Taking Lessons from Bill Gates are we?
Alot of us are comfy right where we are… so changing your system, and forcing me to use an upgrade or another browser completely, is pretty upsetting. I prefer to spend time improving my business, not learning yet another software or system.
December 21, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Hey Robert – not trying to blackmail you at all. IE6 is an older browser that doesn’t always load pages as fast as other browsers. QuickBooks Online definitely supports our users with IE6, but we also acknowledge that by switching or upgradng you’ll get an improved experience. We know how important performance is to getting your job done. This is one way to help get your QuickBooks tasks finished a little quicker so you have more time to run your business.
December 22, 2009 at 9:06 am
I had a customer who thought along these same lines. Needless to say I no longer provide service to him.
If you want to hang on to old, outdated software then that’s your choice – just like it would be my or anyone else’s choice not to continue supporting your old, outdated software in favor it newer, better performing products. In the end the only who ends up suffering is you.
December 22, 2009 at 9:52 am
Agreed. As a web designer, I find the line “we found out some of our customers are using IE” to be preposterous. IE still has close to 80% web usage and QB already knows that. IE is not without its problems, but these are facts.
December 24, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Recent statistics have placed Firefox as the majority browser now… but you clearly know how statistics are
For sure, IE7 + 8 offer incrementally better internal and end-user security features.
The only IE6 users I know are corporations with legacy applications. No other users have a good reason to not be running the latest Microsoft browser.
December 22, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Mr. Kent,
As a web developer, I assure that there is no blackmail going on here. Simple fact is that IE is slower in processing javascript than other browsers.
There was nothing in the above article stating that QBO is not supporting IE. Feel free to use it, but it will not be as fast as other browsers. If you prefer to spend time improving your business, save that time by switching browsers & getting things done faster. There’s no other software or system to learn to do this, it’s just a different browser….& it’s free.
December 22, 2009 at 4:59 am
I am downloaded IE8. I am software engineer. So I found IE developer tools really exciting. Helps in debugging css a lot .
December 22, 2009 at 9:12 am
I’ve tried them all – IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. I’ve always been a die-hard IE user, but a few months ago I switched to Chrome and I love it. There are only two things I still use IE for – Quickbooks Online for accounting, and the PayPal Plug-in for purchases. When you upgrade to Chrome, that will make it all much easier.
Speaking of PayPal, a little off topic, but any word on when you’ll support PayPal as a connection in the online banking center?
December 26, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Hey Al – we definitely see the need for that. Would you like Paypal integration to download your transactions and reconcile? Or to actually have your customers pay with Paypal? (and/or?) Thanks!
December 22, 2009 at 3:29 pm
will using Firefox improve the speed of the entire QBO site? it has been MUCH slower lately, especially on my laptop. both laptop and desktop are running on Windows XP, so I don’t have a lot of options for upgrading… not sure at all that I can use IE8 without getting a new computer (which is definitely NOT an option in the near future)… even less likely that I can use Chrome with current hardware.
December 23, 2009 at 9:48 am
Hi Helen,
If you upgrade, you will see better performance for all websites, including all of QBO. You can upgrade to IE8 even with Windows XP. In fact, I’m using Windows XP and IE8 right now to write this.
We are suggesting that our users upgrade because the newer browsers are faster & more secure. As a bonus, you can customize the newer browsers with plug-ins (more about this in a future blog entry).
Also, I’d like to learn more about your observations of our site getting slower. If you’d like to talk, please send me an email at john_ruberto@intuit.com.
Thanks!
John
December 23, 2009 at 9:41 am
I’ve been trying to login using Firefox for months, but can never get past the home page loadin – it crashes the browser???
December 23, 2009 at 9:41 am
I’m using version 3.5.6
paula
December 23, 2009 at 10:18 am
Hi Paula,
Sorry to hear that. The “standard” first thing to try is to clear your cache. In FF 3.5.6, you can do that from the tools menu -> Clear Recent History, then select cache.
If that doesn’t help, please contact our support team from the “help” link on the homepage.
Thanks,
John
December 23, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’ll give that a go – thanks John!
December 26, 2009 at 10:26 am
When will explorer v.7 no longer be supported?
December 26, 2009 at 6:02 pm
We will be supporting IE7 for a while. Our official recommendation is that you use Firefox or IE8 but, we are supporting our friends on IE6 and IE7 until the industry standard leads us in another direction. So, net/net you are good! Thanks Winnie.
January 7, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Industry standard have long moved away from IE6.
IE8 may have compatibility issues but IE7 is a NO BRAINER upgrade if you ask me. Its more secure, its faster and more compliant with standards than IE6.
So why will you ever want to stay with IE6 unless like someone mentioned above that your “company policy” mandated IE6
December 29, 2009 at 10:01 am
can you help me. like a tutor? or maybe go over some info with me. I know you dont know who i am, but its ok and exciting! thanks darrell
December 29, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hi Darrell,
Have you checked out our help system in QBO? Its pretty comprehensive, with multiple ways to get help depending on your needs & how you like to interact with us.
– Instant Answers: an easy to use search for our help pages & knowledge base articles.
– Ask Qubie: an interactive session that will guide you to your answer, using natural language questions.
– Online chat & telephone support are also available for those that need the human touch.
Check it out, just hit “Help” in the upper right corner of QBO (just look to where the snowman is pointing).
Thanks,
John
February 3, 2010 at 2:25 pm
We’ve been using QBO since 2004, and have unfortunately seen it go from fairly reliable to nearly unreachable: Ungodly slow Java loads, slow page loading, timeouts, invisible login page, empty frames if we can get logged on; this on both XP and Vista, using IE8 and FF. Settings are as noted in various guides, still no joy, and not much in the way of timely or useful CSR assistance.
After reading various web posts here and elsewhere, we’re not alone in this poor product experience.
Frankly, we’re now looking for another solution.
March 1, 2010 at 7:27 am
For QuickBooks Online… if we remain on IE6 after 3/31/10… what will happen?
Unfortunately, I can not move from IE6 because of the affects IE7/8 have on other programs on my system. As part of a large company… we can not simply move to different operating systems easily.
Please let me know what will happen after 3/31 (system slower, no access, etc)
Brandon
March 3, 2010 at 1:08 pm
I feel the same way as Brandon. What will happen, if we do not change
to the browser you would like us to? If it’s just a slower issue, then, so be it. We are all using IE6, and, would prefer to use the brower
that we choose, not, be forced into changing browsers just to accomadate
“one” specific software provider. We use several other providers for our
business. I can’t let one provider get in the way of the others, that, are
equally as important to running the business. Don’t you think, you should have warned your customers beforehand? So, back to my question..what if we
can’t change because of other providers? What will happen?
Cathleen
March 11, 2010 at 2:47 pm
I am not very happy about this. My primary operating system is Llinux and since you guys refuse to support it I have to run IE6 under wine. IE6 is the only version of IE that will run correctly in wine, so now I won’t be able to do this…
I too don’t care if it runs slow, I just need it to work. If you guys would run a REAL web based software that would just run in a browser instead of requiring Windows that would be helpful as well.
March 11, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Will you use FF or Chrome on linux, if QBO was supported on that platform but only those specific browsers?
March 12, 2010 at 3:56 pm
I’m not sure I understand the question, any reasonable person would expect web based software to run in a standards compliant browser. FF, Chrome and Opera are the main ones other than IE (which is hard to consider standards compliant)… so, yes I would run a standards compliant browser on Linux, just as on Windows or OSX to have it work.
My understanding is they only support Firefox on Windows… which kinda begs the question of why bother? everyone on Windows has IE available, seems sorta silly…. unless the plan is to expand it out further to Firefox in general regardless of OS.
March 13, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I think thats the long term plan, to expand it out to FF and Chrome regardless of the OS. But so many times what works on these two standards compliant browsers, doesn’t end up working on IE. And then one has to work so much extra to get it working on IE (without breaking the other two) that eventually slows down achieving the goal of getting it on FF and Chrome for all OSes fast enough.
IE is far from standards compliance specially when so many people are still stuck on IE6 and IE7. Even IE8 is quirky but a step up from the prior versions. Google is itself dropping all IE6 support soon so anyone who uses google search or google products, will have to upgrade anyways. IE9 is looking a lot better, but then still a while before that comes out.
March 16, 2010 at 6:16 am
A link explaining how to do this upgrade, where to get firefox would be helpful….or could you just emailing the correct link to download
March 25, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Links are also in the 1st top blog post. Otherwise you can click ones below.
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html
Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome
Just install either (or both if you want to experiment which you like better) and once installed, just use it like IE. They are rather simple to use. Try other stuff on both browsers and see which feels better for you needs. Both are incredibly popular.
Chrome is faster/fastest browser but at the moment has some quirks with popup windows (incorrectly sized, not modal etc), so make sure to allow popups from qbo.intuit.com in google chrome preferences. If a popup is blocked, you will see notification either in the lower right corner of the browser as a blue bar or in the address bar on the right as a small window icon with an x.
March 23, 2010 at 7:29 am
I am getting a message that I am using IE6 and should upgrade. I am actually using IE8, on XP Pro 32 bit fully updated with all Microsoft updates.
They obviously cannot tell what version i am using. I also get the same response on a Vista machine Ultimate 64 bit that has NEVER had IE6 on it.
What is going to happen when they really do stop support, are the going to kill my access too?
March 25, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Can you list what your browser user agent string reports?
You can do it by going to http://whatsmyuseragent.com/
It will on top of the page say “Your user agent is: …. “
March 25, 2010 at 7:22 am
I have downloaded the program and it is still telling me to do it.
What is wrong?
March 25, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Can you also list what your browser user agent string reports?
You can do it by going to http://whatsmyuseragent.com/
It will on top of the page say “Your user agent is: …. ”
My guess is the browser user agent has MSIE 6 in it also besides MSIE 8, causing QBooks to think its IE6.
March 31, 2010 at 8:22 am
My user agent is Mozilla Firefox 4.0 which I recently downloaded after receiving the messages that QBOE would no longer support MSIE 6. I am still getting the alert message every time I log on.
April 7, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Can you copy paste the full line this website lists on the top (right after “Your User Agent is:”)
http://whatsmyuseragent.com/
March 31, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I’m confused. I use QBO for a small business. I was told by my accountant to ONLY use it in IE for security reasons. Is that no longer an issue if I use FF? FF is my preferred browser but I don’t want to compromise the security of our financial information.
April 7, 2010 at 1:23 pm
That is incorrect if a person is saying IE is more secure than Firefox. There are many factors to a browsers security. Factors like plugins, anti virus and anti malware protection all contribute to a browsers security than just browser itself. So yeah, firefox is pretty secure.
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/features/article.php/3829396/Firefox-35-vs-Internet-Explorer-8-Which-is-Safer.htm
Google Chrome is a step further
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/03/chrome-is-the-only-browser-left-standing-in-pwn2own-contest.ars