Chrome 4.0 Vs. Opera 10 Vs. Firefox 3.5 354
Jim Karter writes "In a three-way cage match, LifeHacker threw Chrome 4, Firefox 3.5, and Opera 10 into the ring and let the three browsers duke it out to see which would emerge as the fastest app for surfing the web. Quoting: 'Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, but thorough. We install the most current versions of each browser being tested — in this case, Opera 10, Chrome's development channel 4.0 version, and the final Firefox 3.5 with security fixes — in a system with a 2.0 GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP.'"
speed (Score:4, Insightful)
javascript whitelisting ? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's simple : i want javascripty whitelisting. so FF+Noscript : only thing i can use.
AdBlock (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, the fastest browser is the one that's running AdBlock, with flash, java, and javascript disabled.
Re:speed (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. How many more stories about browser-speed do we need, given how insignificant the discrepancies are? For most end-users, browser lag is completely dwarfed by restricted bandwidth.
In my case, judicious application of AdBlock and NoScript make this a complete non-issue. I'm far more interested in standards compliancy and security.
Re:speed (Score:3, Insightful)
Choices? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what you are saying is that if you used XP, you wouldn't be limited by those choices. Windows gives you more choice?
Well, it does, unless you limit your choices by placing preconditions.
Exactly, the question is now why should I change? (Score:1, Insightful)
I think that is the main point these days; browser speed has long been "good enough".
I have yet to see a compelling reason to move from Firefox since I moved from IE many years ago. Memory was getting a little out of hand with version 2 but that seems to be have been nailed now and so much so according to that article it's still better than the others.
* Decent developer plugins - check
* Quickly patched - check
* Automated Updates - check
* Standards compliant - check (I admit could be better though)
I was interested in syncing bookmarks etc and Mozilla already have a working solution with Weave which seems to work well between my work desktop & laptop.
Re:Graphing Fail. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're assuming they don't want to exaggerate the difference in results.
How incredibly important! (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't care about security. We don't care whether the browser hogs half a gig or more. We don't care whether it can render a page correctly or makes CSS look like a 5 year old had a field day with some sharpies.
We care whether a page renders 0.223 seconds faster.
Sorry if that sounds like flamebait, but do I care about speed in a time when speed difference is measured in fractions of seconds? Even if it's seconds. Does that really matter? I'm not too convinced that the browser speed plays any significant role in the loading speed of a page when you have crappy servers crammed into farms that oversold their capacity hundredfold and ISPs doing the same.
Poor tests (Score:3, Insightful)
It's obvious Chrome would be faster becuase of its simplicity...
What always bothers me is that these "testers" don't test the browsers after some "normal" or "not quite so normal" use.
People don't just start a fresh install of a browser and open eight tabs, people have lots of bookmarks, passwords, saved forms in browsers and after a time, these affect the speed and performance of a browser.
A good tester should bookmark about 200 sites in various categories, save passwords for about 20-30 sites, have some forms saved, and then he should see how much latency browser has from the moment you start typing an URL in it's address bar and bringing URL's or suggestions from its separate SQLite databases that hold bookmarks and previously accessed websites history (it shouldn't matter but in reality users usually stop from typing when they see something changing on screen and check the url and suggestions and time is lost)
Also, in my case I work with various web apps that basically make me access hundreds of url's like site.com/page.php?id=[number] , so all these are saved in the history and after about a week, I basically have to clear the database because Firefox becomes too slow to load, it takes up to a second from the moment I start typing a website in the address bar and so on, I have to empty the history to make it work properly again...
I use Firefox and it's not perfect and not the fastest, but I still prefer it over Safari or Opera simply because of extensions like Firebug or Live HTTP Headers or even Screengrab, which make my life way easier.
Re:Memory (Score:5, Insightful)
Please bear in mind they tested on the latest stable version firefox, not the latest alpha 3.6 which has various speed improvements. Yet Chrome they used a development branch. Seems a bit biased in Chromes favour.
Chrome dev version vs. FF/Opera release versions? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about Opera, but as far as I am aware, FF has preview versions 4.0 already. So if we're going to be testing the not-even-beta version of Chrome, isn't it fair comparison to do the same with the other browsers? I realize that TFA has results for FF 3.5.99 and a beta of Opera, but these are relegated to a less prominent position in the results...in contrast, Chrome's 4.x dev version is highlighted with the 2.x version is being downplayed in the results, and no mention is made of the (perhaps more relevant) Chrome 3.x beta. Not that I really care, it just seems like a bit of favouritism is playing into the presentation of this analysis...
Re:Summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep hearing a few loud people complaining about the awesome bar, but I can't for the life of me figure out what they don't like about it.
Because people using the same computer will see their porn bookmarks. Embarrassing for a 15 year old when their mothers find the carefully hidden list by typing in something innocent in the address bar.
Re:Firefox is unstable. (Score:2, Insightful)
If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox. There seems to be no hope that Mozilla Foundation will ever be managed well.
If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, it's performance will be on par with FF.
You are on slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is a technology website dedicated to of people who take great pride and joy in disabling every new bit of technology in their stack.
Personally, I leave all that stuff on. I used to disable javascript out of the same "spite" most of slashdot commenters seem to have--but that was before Kuro5hin came with their fancy dynamic comments in what, 1999? So far, my CPU's have never melted, my power supplies are still purring, and my mice haven't keeled over and died.
Wonder what rigs these people run? 386DX 40mhz's? Orange screen VT100's hooked up to the local time-share in the university basement? ... remembers when his public library still had those VT100's.
Re:Memory (Score:4, Insightful)
You could measure the average time from clicking a UI element to something happening. Actually I wish people would test things like this rather than how quickly the Javascript implementation can crack brute force crack DES or whatever benchmarks Google are pushing so their prototype stuff can finally be released without people mocking it for being bloatware that is worse than Vista.
It would also let me avoid Java applications - we have some horrible intranet ones at work that feel like your mouse has a dodgy button or something - you click stuff, assume it didn't notice it and click another couple of times before you see an hour glass cursor. If people tested for UI responsiveness at least I could avoid things that don't have it in situations were I have a choice.
And, as a bonus it would encourage people to stop doing things that could potentially take more than a few milliseconds in the UI thread of Windows applications. In a very real sense UIs are a real time system and it is time more people realised the implications of that.
Re:Versions (Score:2, Insightful)
The fastest way to load a page full of javascript is to not load the javascript? Brilliant.
Re:Firefox is unstable. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're really that sure the FF codebase is that very close to optimal, for what it does?...
Re:Firefox is unstable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlikely.
Firefox addons run in the same process as Firefox, likely in the same thread. Firefox tabs are similar. All it takes is one slow extension to slow down the entire experience.
Chrome, on the other hand, is implementing addons as just privileged webpages. This means that, except for the very small part of an addon that might be interacting with the current page, the addon won't block the browser -- it's mostly going to be running in a separate process. And even the content script that's running on the current page, well, there's one of those running per tab, so an extension being slow in one tab won't block another tab.
Not to mention, if you're going to implement a nice, cross-platform Firefox addon, you're doing it in Javascript/XUL. Chrome addons are Javascript/HTML. Thus, Chrome's faster Javascript engine does count here.
How about correcly rendered HTML? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really care about speed, all browsers are pretty fast. The main issue I have with for example Opera is that it doesn't always render HTML correctly (even in 10 RTM), and sometimes hangs when you resize windows. I rather like a correctly rendered page which is done in 0.012ms than a badly rendered page which is rendered in 0.003ms
Re:Memory (Score:3, Insightful)
The user's subjective experience will sell a product - or not.
I don't care HOW MANY benchmarks a browser might win. If I click a link, and the browser changes to a plain white page, then sits there for 5 seconds, it sucks. On the other hand, if I click a page, immediately see title, wait second for the background, another second for banners to fill in, yet another for the adverts, etc, I can SEE something happening. Even if it takes a full second longer for the page to be finished, I feel like the browser is faster.
So many professionals shoot for the ultimate benchmark figures, with no clue about what the user perceives.
Go ahead, fire up all the browsers you can get your hands on, and test them on some really shitty overbloated page with nonstandard code. Something that you KNOW actually works, but takes three eternities to load. Then come back and talk about seems/second. ;^)
Re:Firefox is unstable. (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you base that assumption on? I haven't seen any benchmarks that compare the difference between Firefox without and without add-ons running.
In fact it's standard practice to benchmark products "out of the box" and note any changes from the out-of-box state (i.e. anything you've done to it beyond the install process from the manufacture). A Firefox vs Chrome (or whatever) benchmark wouldn't have a Firefox loaded with add-ons. So how can you conclude that Firefox's benchmark performance is suffering from add-ons? Do you mean something else by "performance"?
Even if add-ons slow Firefox to some extent, if Firefox still gets its ass handed to it without extra add-ons installed... what the hell is the point in bringing them up?
Which is the best car? (Score:3, Insightful)
These debates start to get sillier and sillier over time, or perhaps just more irrelevant. As the browsers' available features and performance exceeds what most people will veer use in practice, the "reviews" become a lot like reading Motor Trend or Car & Driver - which car has the coolest looks? Which car has the most massive supercharged 500 hp engine that will be mostly used driving to the local Starbucks?
Personal preference is of course valid, and perhaps the most valid metric - if you like something and you are happy with it, then there you go. Other than that, what I'm interested in these days is security and quality, and this "review" had jack on these topics. It basically was a typical fanboi-ish survey c. 2004 on which application has the biggest e-peen, and I just don't care anymore.
Re:speed (Score:3, Insightful)
For a better job, and more ideologically pure, why not? ;p
But seriously, what you've done was of course completelly reasonable (accidentally...using Opera might also fall under similar categories, since its advantages become more apparent the slower the machine and connection is). And so is liking OSS, even if not exclusively using it (I do try to limit my pet projects to OSS). It's mostly just "I must have OSS browser on Windows" that I have a problem with...