Browser Wars
The Impact of Browser Diversity on Web Application
Performance and End User Experience
Jeff Loeb – VP Product and Solutions Marketing, Gomez
Imad Mouline - CTO, Gomez

Gomez Profile
▪ First SaaS Web Experience
▪ Headquarters
Management Platform
▪ Lexington, MA
▪ Web Experience Delivery Assurance across the
▪ Global Offices application lifecycle
▪ UK ▪ ExperienceFirst (XF) Network
▪ Germany ▪ 80,000+ internet experience measurement
points
▪ Switzerland
▪ China ▪ Over 2,000 Customers Worldwide
▪ 13 out of 20 most visited US Websites utilize
Gomez
▪ 250+ Employees
Imad Mouline
2
CTO

Web Application Management
Is Becoming More Complex
3

Browsers Are
Multiplying
Global Browser Market Share, February 2009
Chrome 1.0; 1.11% Opera 9.x; Netscape 6.0;
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0
0.59%
0.67%
Microsoft Internet
Safari 3.0;
Explorer 8.0; 1.17% Firefox 3.0
0.51%
Firefox 2.0; 2.27%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
Safari 3.1; 2.47%
Safari 3.2; 4.29%
Safari 3.2
Safari 3.1
Firefox 2.0
Microsoft Internet
Microsoft Internet
Explorer 7.0; 47.32%
Explorer 6.0; 18.85%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0
Chrome 1.0
Firefox 3.0; 19.11%
Opera 9.x
Netscape 6.0
Safari 3.0 4
Source: Market Share - http://marketshare.hitslink.com

Browser Market Share
Changing Over Time
Global Browser Market Share, March 2007 to February 2009
60
50 IE 7
40
% 30
IE 6
20
FF 3
10
FF 2
0
Internet Explorer 7.0 Internet Explorer 6.0 Firefox 3.0 Safari 3.2 Firefox 2.0 Safari 3.1 Other
5
Source: Market Share - http://marketshare.hitslink.com

Different Audiences
Use Different Browsers
▪ Your Audience has unique browser usage
patterns
▪ 51.06% of Ars Technica (technology focused news site)
readers favor Firefox
6
Source: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/february-2009-third-party-browsers-steal-from-ie-and-safari.ars

Web 2.0 Features
Are Taking Off
93% plan to
deploy Web 2.0
rich internet
experiences
within next 12
months
▪ Web 2.0 implementations use a wide
variety of advanced technologies
▪ Current Web applications have increased
their use of client-side JavaScript by a
factor of 10
7
Source: Scene7 OnDemand Survey: Web 2.0 Experience 2008 And Beyond; Gartener: Google Seeks to Control Its Browser Destiny With Chrome, David Mitchell Smith, Ray Valdes, 2008

New Browsers Have
New Features
▪ HTML 5 support Upcoming Browsers
▪ New JavaScript engines - Internet Explorer 8
▪ Nifty new features that previously - Firefox 3.5
required lots of JS coding
- Safari 4
▪ Resource pre-fetching
- Opera 10
▪ Transforms and animations
- Chrome 2
▪ Structured client-side storage!
▪ Performance
▪ Faster JavaScript processing \"The explosion in browser
▪ Parallel download of JS scripts platforms can be directly
▪ More parallel connections tied to higher
▪ Multi-threading in JS development costs.”
Dan Golding,
Key Trend: more and more Tier 1 Research
client-side processing 8

Internet Explorer 8
Technology Refresh
▪ Internet Explorer 8 scheduled for Q1 2009
release
▪ Complete overhaul of Internet Explorer 7 rendering
and JavaScript engine
▪ Strictly operates in web standards-compliant mode by
default
- Recent Opera report found only 4.13% of 3.5 million
Web pages fully W3C web standards-compliant
\"This means viewing pages in IE8 Standards Mode isn’t
opt-in, it’s the way the product works out of the box.”
Scott Dickens, Program Manager, IE8 on IEBlog Feb.16, 2009
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Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2072; http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1262

Internet Explorer 8
Technology Refresh
▪ Developers and website owners need to make decision
▪ Internet Explorer 8 supports different compatibility
modes which enable different features and affect
content rendering
▪ “IE5 mode renders content as if it were displayed by Windows
Internet Explorer 7's Quirks mode…”
▪ “IE7 mode renders content as if it were displayed by Windows
Internet Explorer 7's Standards mode...”
▪ “EmulateIE7 mode tells Windows Internet Explorer to use the
<!DOCTYPE> directive to determine how to render content...”
▪ “IE8 mode provides the highest support available for industry
standards...”
▪ “Edge mode tells Windows Internet Explorer to display content
in the highest mode available…”
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Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc817574.aspx

New Browsers And
Parallel Connections
▪ Parallel Connections
▪ Older browsers like IE6, IE7
and Firefox 2 make 2 host
connections at a time
▪ Newer Browsers like
IE8, Firefox 3.5, and
Google’s Chrome make 6
host connections at a time
▪ More Parallel
Connections = Better
Performance? Not
Always
▪ More parallel connections
can have a nefarious effect
on performance under load
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Network View - Non-
Persistent Connections
▪ All images served
from 1 domain
▪ Persistent
connections off = Bad
▪ IE 7 connection
behavior
12

Network View -
Persistent Connections
▪ All images served
from 1 domain
▪ Persistent
connections on –
should be default =
Good
▪ IE 7 connection
behavior
13

Network View -
Parallelized Connections
▪ Images appear to
be served from 3
distinct domains
▪ However, the 3
domains point to
same IP
address, same
server!
▪ No infrastructure
change
▪ Forced increased
parallelism = Better
(sometimes)
▪ IE 7 connection
behavior
14

Persistent Vs Non-Persistent
Vs Parallelized Connections
Non-Persistent IE7
Persistent IE7
Parallelized IE7
15

Internet Explorer 8 Default
▪ All images served
from 1 domain
▪ Persistent
connections on
▪ IE 8 connection
behavior
16

Internet Explorer 7 Vs.
Internet Explorer 8
Persistent IE7
IE8 Default
Parallelized IE7
17

Internet Explorer 8 Default Vs
Internet Explorer 8 Parallelized
Parallelized IE8
IE8 Default
18

Internet Explorer 8 Parallelized
▪ Images appear to
be served from 3
distinct domains
▪ However, the 3
domains point to
same IP
address, same
server.
▪ Increased forced
parallel connections
▪ IE 8 connection
behavior
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Ensure Web Experiences
Scale Under Load
▪ Deploy applications and
infrastructure with confidence
▪ Combine high volume
application load testing with
broad geographic experience
testing
▪ Ensure on-demand testing
flexibility
▪ Detect failures in user
experience not caught by
traditional load testing
20

Different Browsers -
Different Experiences
▪ Presentation Layer
▪ Browsers render HTML elements and CSS structure and
styles differently
▪ Do you know how your content is being seen by your
end-users?
Internet Explorer 7.0 - Windows XP Opera 9.62 - Windows XP
Missing
Content
21

Browser Problems
Cause Lost Revenue
Internet Explorer 7.0 – Windows XP
Opera 9.62 – Windows XP
Page Missing Promotional
22
Offer in Opera 9.62

Browser Problems
Destroy User Confidence
Safari 3.1 – Macintosh OSX 10.5
Internet Explorer 8.0b2 – Windows Vista
Missing
Content
23

Browser Problems Damage
Brand Reputations
Safari 3.1 – Macintosh OSX 10.5
Page functions
correctly in
Safari 3.1
Internet Explorer 7.0 – Windows XP
Missing
Content
Page does not
function correctly
24
in Explorer 7.0

Ensure Your Web Site Looks &
Functions As Intended
▪ Profile your web site across
multiple
browsers, devices, operating
systems, and screen sizes
▪ View pages exactly as your
customer sees them
▪ Understand the browser-
specific performance
characteristics of your
application
25

Different Browsers -
Different Performance
▪ Difference between quickest and slowest browser load
time equals 13.226 seconds
▪ Large sample of US end-users, on broadband connections, visiting a
particular page on a web site over a 48 hour period
26

Load Time Vs.
Perceived Render Time
▪ Load time for MS Internet Explorer higher than Firefox
▪ Perceived render time for MS Internet Explorer lower than Firefox
▪ Perceived render time is the amount of time needed for the page
layout to stabilize and for all content visible to the end-user above
the fold to be completely rendered
27

Optimizing Perceived Render
Time & User Experience
▪ Most prominent
image on site -
fish_top.gif - loads
almost last
▪ Changing load order
will not impact raw
page performance,
but will improve
perceived render
time and user
experience
28

Browser Impact On
Performance
Page Cache Level
Page Load Time Internet Explorer
Safari
Firefox
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Safari
29

Understand & Manage Impact Of
User Experience On Your Business
▪ Learn how most valuable
customer segments
experience the application
▪ Identify exactly what
contributes to that experience
▪ Understand how that
experience impacts business
results
30

Top Four Trends
1. More client-side processing
2. More composite applications with more
3rd parties involved
3. For the first time, your customer choice
of web browsers will have an impact on
your infrastructure
4. More browser choices– causing not only
rendering issues but also performance
issues and even web application failures
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Gomez Solutions Address
Challenges Of Browser Diversity
Actual Experience XF
Reality Load XF
Reality View XF
Does your website
look right and
function correctly
on all browser and
OS combinations?
Do you know which browsers your customers use and
how they perceive your website's performance?
Can your servers handle the increased
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loads created by parallel connectivity?

Gomez Offers Full Lifecycle Solutions
For Web Experience Management
“Gomez has made spectacular progress in the last 18 months…to
become the leader in web experience management.”
Jean-Pierre Garbani, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
33
Tech Horizons: Evaluating Gomez’s Web Experience Management Services, August 2008

Find Out How Gomez Can Help You
Are you ready for Browser Wars? Some of Our Customers
Testing from the customer point of view
quickly answers questions like:
• Does your website look right and
function correctly on all browser and
OS combinations?
• Can your servers handle the increased
loads created by parallel connectivity?
• Do you know which browsers your
customers use and how they perceive
your website's performance?
Learn More:
http://www.gomez.com/pdfs/sb_GoXF.pdf
Speak To A Gomez Solutions Expert
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Toll Free: 877.372.6732