Google Chrome Tops Browser Speed Tests

ThinSkin writes "So many Web browsers, so little time. The folks at ExtremeTech have assembled the ultimate browser test to determine which Web browser is king. From speed tests to rendering tests, different browsers traded off wins, but Google Chrome came out on top."

Re:Google Chrome

[appleprophet]

Use Safari -- it uses WebKit which is the "secret sauce" of Chrome. Seriously, if you want something really fast, use the latest WebKit nightlies, which hook into the Safari shell. They are actually quite a bit faster than Chrome at the moment, which obviously uses an older WebKit build than the WebKit tip-of-tree.

Re:Google Chrome

[pembo13]

Is the rendering engine speed really your bottle neck when browsing? Because I would love to have that problem.

Re:Interesting, but nothing really new

[MichaelTheDrummer]

But changing the hosts file to block ads on a per domain basis is fairly basic. One of the more useful features of plugins like AdBlockPlus is you can block any particular image/flash animation on a site, whether it is an ad or not. This is great for things like flash banners that sit in front of drop down menus because of rendering bugs on Linux.

Nonsense

[roca]

There's some weird stuff in this "article". For example, what does it mean to "include V8 code" in a browser? Even choosing V8 as a benchmark is a mistake. Sunspider is the standard JS benchmark and it's much broader in scope.

Awarding 10 points for winning a category and then adding up the points to reach a final score is the most statistically bogus "methodology" ever.

It's nice to see SVG and canvas in benchmarks, but "IE8 will fix that compatibility issue"? Completely untrue, IE8 will not support SVG and canvas. This bit of ignorance makes me worry about the whole piece.

And as others have noted, comparing the Chrome beta against various-aged releases of other browsers makes little sense.

Re:Google Chrome

[beelsebob]

The speed advantage of the nightly web kits is caused not by the fact that they're newer than chrome's rendering engine, but by the fact that they don't use Google's V8 javascript engine. Instead, they use the much faster (and also more correct) SquirrelFish Extreme engine.

Re:Google Chrome

[beelsebob]

Actually, while not strictly "pure safari", the nightly builds of WebKit (safari's engine, including javascript engine), have a new, much faster Javascript engine called SquirrelFish Extreme, it not only beats V8 in speed (even on the heavily biased V8 benchmark), but also correctly renders Acid3, along with getting many less-corner-case parts of javascript correct.

Re:I'll give up a few milliseconds.

[Woldry]

Amen! Whatever time Firefox may lose in rendering is more than made up by features such as having a menu accessible via the keyboard, "Undo close tab", searching for text when I start typing, and extensions like Add to Search Bar, DownThemAll, Add Bookmark Here, and Uppity. Not to mention "runs in Linux"...

Re:Not a suprise to anyone who has tried Chrome

[beelsebob]

It's built in, turn the Developer menu on in preferences, and select Develop -> Disable Javascript.

Re:Google Chrome

[secmartin]

Well you can use it anyway... There is a crossover [codeweavers.com] version for both Mac and Linux, you can build your own version [aaronboodman.com] for both Mac and Linux, and there's a recent Mac build here [securityandthe.net]. I'm sure there are lots of other builds available as well.

Re:Google Chrome

[rpmayhem]

Actually, it is. The folks at CodeWeavers did it.

http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/ [codeweavers.com]

Re:Google Chrome

[rpmayhem]

Also, I forgot to mention, they have a Mac OS version too.

Subscribe instead

[RulerOf]

A more viable option (in the Slashdot case) is to subcsribe [slashdot.org] if you don't like the ads and wish to better the site.

Re:Firefox 3.1b with Trace-Monkey

[Teilo]

Very few FF3.0 plugins will work on 3.1beta.

Actually, most of them will, if you install the Nightly Tester Tools [mozilla.org] add-on. You can then force compatibility on any or all of your add-ons.

YMMV, but in my case, the following work fine in 3.1 beta 1: iMacros, Adblock Plus, DownloadHelper, Firebug, Flashgot, Foxmarks, and Web Developer Toolbar.

Re:How come the only beta browser tested was Chrom

[ergo98]

It's quite dubious that the only beta browser tested was Chrome, especially when most of the others have publicly available beta versions available for testing.

For me, the clearest sign that this article represents technically incompetent me-too "journalism" was made abundantly clear when they said-

`Obviously, Chrome includes the V8 code and the other browsers do not. We tested the version of Firefox (called Minefield) that does include the V8 code and listed those results below our "official" findings.'

Minefield doesn't include "V8". They mean "JavaScript JITing", I'm going to presume, but chose a terribly inept way of saying it. It's also a bit embarrassing when they decide to fluff up an article with idolizing -- Lars Bak and his team didn't invent this.

Then again I knew something was wrong in the preceding sentence where they said that V8 radically improves the JavaScript "load time".

Re:17 extensions??

[SanityInAnarchy]

You don't seriously develop in a browser do you other than for testing purposes??

You've obviously never used them...

Granted, I don't actually use 17, I probably don't even use 10, but the ones I use are pretty essential. Firebug is a large part of it -- it means I can see exactly which files are loading from where (and how long they're taking). It means I can see exactly what the DOM tree looks like, and which styles are being applied where, and from what CSS classes. It means I can then edit said CSS inline to see what it looks like -- no more guessing pixel values, I just use the arrow keys to position something, then copy that value into the actual CSS file.

The Javascript is pretty good, too -- I get a nice console I can type arbitrary code into, I can keep a log, set breakpoints, etc... In so many ways, Firebug brings modern software development tools to the Web.

Then there's the Web Developer toolbar, which adds an absurd number of tools -- the ability to temporarily disable CSS or JavaScript, for example. It's also nice to know whether a page was rendered in "standards mode" or "quirks mode", and there's even an extension (which I haven't needed) to run an actual validator against that page.

Then there's Firecookie -- cookie support for Firebug. Easy access to which cookies are being used on this page, and console logs of exactly when they were modified, and to which values, and by which script.

None of them are necessary, but there's no way I'm giving up Firebug.

As for surfing - the only extension i have is flash

Flash isn't an extension, it's a plugin. Not that there's a lot of difference.

and Ive yet to find a page I couldn't surf

That's not the whole of it.

For example, I missed a feature of Konqueror -- ctrl+m to hide the menubar. Most of the time, you don't need it, so why leave it there taking up space? So I got a Firefox extension to hide the menubar, and show it when I press alt.

I'm sure with heavier Firefox users, stupid little extensions like that account for most of it.

Then there's the really powerful ones, like Greasemonkey. I can write a bit of Javascript that will run on a given page -- or on a given set of pages, or on every page. If you know anything about Javascript, sit back and think about how powerful that could be. All kinds of things you'd think you need extensions for become simple scripts that anyone can understand.

Simple, stupid example: Suppose you don't like the "parent" link in this comment. You could write a script to remove it. Something fancier -- maybe add a mouseover "tooltip"-like effect for usernames and userids on Slashdot, which fetches the user's profile via AJAX, and shows you just the bio.

Basically, Greasemonkey makes it possible for a competent web developer to get rid of just about any annoyance from just about any page -- or add features, or just customize it (want Slashdot to have a blinking red background?) -- with a few lines of Javascript.

It's a gateway drug -- there's already one site I won't visit outside of Firefox, because of the script I've written for it.