Like many websites, Envision (our online micromarketing tool) relies heavily on Javascript. Javascript is a programming language that runs in your browser, not on our server. We use it to draw menus, show or hide features based on your data licences, apply your custom terminology, fill lists of geography, attributes and profiles, and to reduce the amount of traffic going back and forth between your browser and the server.
All modern browsers, from smartphones to tablets to laptop and desktop computers implement Javascript, but not equally well. Internet Explorer version 7 (IE7), the corporate standard in many organizations, is the slowest at executing Javascript code. This situation did not improve with the release of Internet Explorer version 8 (IE8), and reports suggest that the forthcoming version 9 is no better.
Our tests running the same Javascript code on the same computer show that Firefox 3.6, a popular alternative on Windows PCs is about 8 times faster than IE8. Google Chrome and Apple Safari are about 10 times faster! (Mobile Safari, which runs on iPads and iPhones, has the same speed advantages.)
This means that users of Firefox, Chrome or Safari will spend much less time waiting for Envision page loads. They will spend much less time waiting for Bing maps to render, and much less time waiting for lists and treeviews of geographies or attributes to be filled. They will be able to set up and submit report requests much more quickly. In some extreme cases, these browsers will be able to generate complex requests where IE8 would simply time out.
Similar considerations apply to the emerging web standards, HTML5 and CSS3. These new standards offer better input validation and improved cosmetic appearance. Support of the new features varies from many (Chrome and Safari) to some (Firefox) to none (IE7 and IE8).
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