Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers

An anonymous reader writes "Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against 'underdog Web browsers' Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests."

Shiira

[xrayspx]

I looked at that like a year ago, and it looked as if it hadn't been updated in years then. Are they back to work on it? It was quick, but it was also very crashy when I tested it out. Now that KDE4 is in Ports, Konqueror works nice and fast on OSX also, however it crashes way too often too.

...checks site... Yeah, looks like Shiira has seen some activity since February of this year. Prior to that the previous news item on their site was Jan '08, and before that, July '07. Could be nice.

Smoke and Mirrors

[Redfeather]

The Acid3 test sort of bugs me. Yes, it's nice that browsers are fast, but even the most complex pages have lower kilobyte counts than most internet connections allow for, which means servers are the lag points, not your browser. I'd love to see a usability test sometime, rather than a flat-out speed rating. Webkit's neat, but with so many people using their browsers as a primary operating base - and we see proof of this approach in Google's development of the Chrome OS - usability is being sorely ignored in many technological benchmarks. I can't tell you how annoying it is to have Firebox' Live Bookmarks fail to load every ten minutes, it breaks the RSS experience. And while IE has its flaws and benefits, it's emulated, not inovating and old hat. Chrome is nice, I like how my computer treats it, but it's still in the works. Who's going to decide to pick up a new browser based on a speed test? Yes, CNet included some key features and noticed bugs, but Shiira and Arora both get termed works-in-progress, which does not make them underdogs now, it makes them next year's underdogs. And by the time they're ready for mass adoption, all of their good points will likely have been emulated as thoroughly as anyone cares for. Acid3 is like telling people your browser has 700 horse power, instead of the 300 horsepower their browsers have. No one cares if you top out at 200mph, the speed limit's still 60, folks.

Opera

[mxh83]

Personally, I hope Opera doesn't gain any further market share, because it is not open source. It is becoming less and less relevant.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[internewt]

Am I the only one who finds that 99%+ of my time is spent waiting on DNS and data transfer and shit? I'm never actually sitting there, data downloaded, waiting for my browser to respond.

Depends on your browsing habits, maybe?

When I am browsing forums I regularly visit, I ctrl-click in FF on all the new post icons, opening a load of tabs in a short period. I also tend to modify my forum preferences so as many posts as possible are on each page, so each page tends to be rather large.

I find this kills FF for a while - it stops and starts responding, and if not responding and I go to a different workspace then FF will jump workspaces on its own when it does decide to respond again! This is rather irritating, to say the least.

But simple browsing, one page at a time kind of thing, is OK. But then I use NoScript, adblock etc. which get rid of many things that add delays to pages loading/rendering. I guess the regexp that adblock does on pages does actually have a penalty, but it's that or the cost of blocking ads. I'll take the adblock delay, ta very much.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[TheModelEskimo]

I used to use Opera for Windows a lot. It was really stable and generally just an awesome browser. Very fast. Then I found out it had an EMAIL client built in, of all things. Started to use it instead of Outlook, and it handled tons of mail via IMAP without a hitch. Wow! Then I found out it had IRC chat support. Another (though less polished) awesome feature.

Then I moved to Linux. I've used it on 5 separate Linux machines, and I still can't use Opera for the length of a single day's web browsing without a crash. It hates Flash. It also seems to hate GMail, so I'm surprised you like it. Slashdot and Opera don't seem to get along now, either. Overall, it's a great browser, but for whatever reason, the Linux version just sucks. My wife still loves it on her Windows laptop, though she despises its weird interactions with GMail.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[rolfc]

I have 100 Mbit , two ways, and I'm not alone. Speed in browser is a factor. Remember, "640 Kb ought to be enough for everyone"?

Honestly...

[Zixaphir]

None of this speed thing matters to anyone but this small enthusiast crowd who actually care about a few nanoseconds of difference. I mean, seriously, have you ever switched to a browser because of it's javascript performance before... y'know, Chrome?

But, in my opinion, if you switched to Chrome, your reasons probably included that Google was backing it, and therefore it stood a chance in a "market" (I use this term as loosely as possible) dominated by Internet Explorer and Firefox? Oh, and Safari if you just HAPPEN to use a Mac.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Redfeather]

Yeah, Google removed the beta tag from a lot of their products, but given their visible patterns, Chrome has a high chance of getting really fun when ChromeOS comes out - I'd bet dollars to donuts that the version released soon before or soon after the ChromeOS release will have made a few milestone improvements that really move it from just being adoptable to really being desirable for a larger audience of people.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[buchner.johannes]

Use an aggressive dns cacher. The web will feel faster.

Re:Opera

[mxh83]

My post was misunderstood probably because it was incomplete. Due to Opera not opening up their browser, people can't make addins like Firefox. Useful things like Roboform don't work either. If they made it open source, it could have grown faster. Now even Chrome has overtaken Opera, because it's open and people are developing cool stuff for it.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[TCM]

Care to elaborate what that's supposed to be?

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[damburger]

How can someone post such a comment on SLASHDOT of all places? I am running the latest version of Firefox on a MacBook Pro 2.5Ghz dual core with 2 gigs of RAM, and I constantly get beachballed if I have the temerity to click on more than one thing in the span of ten seconds.

This site has slowed down for me over the years, despite my computers getting faster.