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Browser Tests Show Edge Fastest, But Weak On Standards (hothardware.com) 165

Posted by timothy from the if-you're-on-windows-anyhow dept.
MojoKid writes: The Internet and web browsers are an ever changing congruous mass of standards and design. Browser development is a delicate balance between features, security, compatibility and performance. However, although each browser has its own catchy name, some of them share a common web engine. Regardless, if you are in a business environment that's rolling out Windows 10, and the only browsers you have access to are Microsoft Edge or IE — go with Edge. It's the better browser of the two by far (security not withstanding). If you do have a choice, then there might better options to consider, depending on your use case. The performance differences between browsers currently are less significant than one might think. If you exclude IE, most browsers perform within 10-20% of each other, depending on the test. For web standards compliance like HTML5, Blink browsers (Chrome, Opera and Vivaldi) still have the upper-hand, even beating the rather vocal and former web-standards champion, Mozilla. Edge seems to trail all others in this area even though it's often the fastest in various tests.
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Browser Tests Show Edge Fastest, But Weak On Standards More

Browser Tests Show Edge Fastest, But Weak On Standards

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  • Try Edge on the Insider Preview Build (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I use it daily, It doesn't have Adblock right now but blocking hosts works perfectly. Pretty amazing what Microsoft accomplished rebuilding their browser

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by cheater512 ( 783349 )

      'Their' browser as in the browser they initially bought.

      A long time ago sure, but like MS DOS and the Windows networking stack, it's not something Microsoft made.

    • Re:Try Edge on the Insider Preview Build (Score:5, Insightful)

      by davester666 ( 731373 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @07:20PM (#50751287) Journal

      What exactly is "amazing" about a multi-billion dollar, multinational software developer coding up a web browser?

      That they did it?
      That it runs?
      That significant parts of it are hard-coded into the OS, again?
      That it's more standards compliant that the previous version, even though it's the first version?
      That it works pretty good for a v1, given that normally Microsoft needs 3 major versions to get to that state?
      That the quality software known as Flash is BUILT INTO it?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Fast but weak on standards eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @05:16PM (#50750833)

    By that metric, I'll go you one better: Links [wikipedia.org]. Very, VERY fast, but very shit on standard (by design).

  • Not in the PPA (Score:5, Funny)

    by KGIII ( 973947 ) <uninvolved@outlook.com> on Saturday October 17, 2015 @05:19PM (#50750847) Journal

    sudo apt-cache search edge

    Too many listings - nothing interesting.

    sudo apt-cache search edge-browser

    Nothing...

    Try as I might, it doesn't seem to work. I guess, by default, that makes it the fastest browser, no?

    • Re:Not in the PPA (Score:4, Informative)

      by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @05:24PM (#50750871)

      Have you ran "sudo apt-get update"?

      • Is it not astonishing that you have to "sudo" to get some software?

        I installed "port" for Mac Os X the other day. Even after I fixed all the "wrong directory wx access" it did not work without sudo.

        It simply creates new directories and does not set the access rights correctly.

        Hence I stick to "brew" which installs all software with my users rights and does not require su/sudo.

        Why a project like port is that successful by simply alienating users rights and security is beyond me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by KGIII ( 973947 )

          Astonishing? No, not at all. In fact, that's a feature I'm quite fond of. I really like the idea of needing elevated permissions to install software. Substitute User Do (or sometimes called Super User Do) is a great tool that allows you to temporarily act as an administrator, with appropriate permissions to accomplish those tasks, and is quite a good thing - in my opinion.

          I'm not sure what you're finding fault in? You mean you want executable files to be able to install without permission? You want to edit

          • Yeah, you are an idiot like the guys who wrote "port" for Mac OS X.

            As a user who calls a "program" that downloads stuff from the internet, compiles it, installs it: you most certainly don't want to do that as root.

            If you believe otherwise you are not only unaware how a unix system works, but a complete moron!

            I'm not sure what you're finding fault in? You mean you want executable files to be able to install without permission? You want to edit system files (gksudo) without permission?

            Permission of what? You

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by KGIII ( 973947 )

              I think you herped when you meant to derp but that's okay. No, no it's a good thing to need elevated permissions to make changes. I know, it's too hard for you but it's really a nice feature. It takes three seconds to type in a complex password and press enter. And I absolutely want to do it as root. It's a chain of trust - I trust the packages that I get. Why? Because you've gotta trust something so I might as well trust that which has countless other people looking. Does it mean I'm 100% secure? Nope. Not

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Fruit ( 31966 )

                Finally, I don't think Unix (any variant) uses apt-get? There might be one but I haven't met it. It has, of course, been a while since I have played with it.

                Well, there's Debian GNU/kFreeBSD [debian.org] but that isn't an official Debian architecture just yet (unfortunately).

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by KGIII ( 973947 )

                  Now THAT could be interesting. I keep going back and poking at GhostBSD. I think it's time to take it out of the VM and onto the metal. I just really like Opera as my browser. I mean, really, really, prefer it. I am going to have to spin that up in a VM and see what it is like. Thanks! This is the first I've heard of it. I haven't played in Debian land much lately - not at all, actually. I tend to flit between distros like a drunken prom queen between 'dances.' Maybe even faster.

                  Hmm... Do we count BSD as Un

              • No, no it's a good thing to need elevated permissions to make changes. Only if you want to make changes on stuff that is "secured" by those permissions.

                To install a thing into /usr/local/bin I don't need nor want any privileges.

                So if a tool is asking me for privileges I get immediately suspicious.

        • Is it not astonishing that you have to "sudo" to get some software?

          Well, yes and no.

          True, it's an extra step, but as others have said it's a good thing in terms of security to require root (or at least elevated) permissions to install stuff.

          Just look at the disastrous and malicious stuff that routinely managed to install itself on older versions of Windows...if they'd forced people to make a user account with tighter install privileges, half the stuff that plagued (err, plagues) Windows boxes would never have gotten a foothold. This is how botnets and key loggers and root

          • True, it's an extra step, but as others have said it's a good thing in terms of security to require root (or at least elevated) permissions to install stuff.
            No, it is not.

            You can install stuff as "user" in areas where only "user" has access to.

            If root is required during installation, you don't know what the "install program" is doing as root.

            So it is the dumbest thing ever to run an install program as root.

            Just look at the disastrous and malicious stuff that routinely managed to install itself on older vers

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              If your machine has six users, do you want six copies of each program and its associated data taking up space on your drive?

              • If my machine has six users and each of them has group read/execute access to the directory /opt/share/bin, /usr/share/bin or /var/whatever: it does not matter who is installing it as all of them can use it.

                Also you seem to have missed the last 30 years: storage is cheap now.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by tepples ( 727027 )

                  If my machine has six users and each of them has group read/execute access to the directory /opt/share/bin, /usr/share/bin or /var/whatever: it does not matter who is installing it as all of them can use it.

                  But only root has write access to /opt and /usr. This means you still need to elevate to install something that all of them can use.

                  Also you seem to have missed the last 30 years: storage is cheap now.

                  This is true of HDDs but not SSDs.

                  • You don't need write access to /opt or /usr to have write access to /opt/share or /usr/share or how ever you want to call the directories.

                    I suggest to read up (agaon?) how access rights in unix work.

                    This means you still need to elevate to install something that all of them can use.
                    No, you don't! Otherwise I had not written the rant against 'port' ... as 'brew' and IIRC also 'fink' does it the right way.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KGIII ( 973947 )

        kgiii@kgiii-desktop-8:~$ sudo apt-get update

        *** scads of info ***

        kgiii@kgiii-desktop-8:~$

        Nope, nothing there. Purging the cache doesn't help either. I guess I'm just going to have to miss out on this wonderful new browser. Oh, the humanity! Oh the huge manatee! HALP!!!

  • Trident has been lagging behind on standards for more than a decade. Just because MS stripped a ton of cruft out of it and slapped a new "e" word on it doesn't make it more compliant.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EMN13 ( 11493 )

      Despite what the summary may suggest, there's no evidence presented that edge lacks standards compliance or indeed that chrome leads in standards compliance. The test used (html5test) isn't a test of standards compliance nor of html5; it's simply a large grabbag of features some of which happen to be defined in html5 - and those features aren't even really tested for, they just use feature detection. Many of those features are experimental (i.e. it's probably better if a browser *doesn't* support those wit

      • What if Edge scored all its html5test points in legacy and/or experimental stuff?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EMN13 ( 11493 )

          That would only further demonstrate the misleading nature of html5test. An test aiming to measure support for modern "html5" should not award bonus points for non-standard (speech apis), deprecated (keygen) or outright rejected features (websql).

          • An test aiming to measure support for modern "html5" should not award bonus points for non-standard (speech apis)

            Webaudio [github.io] is a W3C standard.

            deprecated (keygen)

            It is not deprecated in HTML5, it will be in HTML5.1, and deprecated does not mean removed.

            outright rejected features (websql).

            In fact it does not award points for it: it is listed, but its inclusion does not award any points. Firefox does not nahve it and it still gets 35/35 points in that test.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by EMN13 ( 11493 )

              An test aiming to measure support for modern "html5" should not award bonus points for non-standard (speech apis)

              Webaudio [github.io] is a W3C standard.

              At issue are the speech (sythesis+recognition) API's, not the audio API's. However...

              outright rejected features (websql).

              In fact it does not award points for it: it is listed, but its inclusion does not award any points. Firefox does not have it and it still gets 35/35 points in that test.

              You're right - I was mislead by the fact that the feature is listed as providing 5 points, but that seems to be in error. The same also goes for speech api's incidentally.

              The test isn't as bad as it seemed at first glance (though it's unfortunate that it's unclear what counts for what). Nevertheless, it counts proposed and experimental features, and misdetects at least keygen (which doesn't bode well for others), fails t

  • Benchmarks... (Score:3)

    by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @05:34PM (#50750897)

    The fact that IE11 and Edge run SunSpider—and just SunSpider—so fast is rather suspicious... Feels like they optimized the engine for those specific routines until they could claim 'Twice as fast as other browsers!'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      If you read the article, they are doing quite a few things wrong such as standards support and garbage collection.

      So you may be running your test really fast if you skip garbage collection or a host of features but that's not feasible for real-world situations. SunSpider specifically runs the same test(s) multiple times to get some statistical confidence in the results and only tests bog-standard JS performance, it also doesn't test the latest versions of EcmaScript so you may be running eg. a hand-built ar

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EMN13 ( 11493 )

      Well, sunspider certainly doesn't have the most reliable name:
      http://news.softpedia.com/news... [softpedia.com]

      Don't read too much into sunspider scores. Octane v2 isn't perfect either, but it's a lot better. Mozilla's kraken is probably even better, but it's much more focused on what CPU-intensive JS can do than on what normal JS actually does. I wouldn't call it a general purpose JS benchmark.

    • Edge, the Volkswagen of browsers!

  • ok (Score:1)

    by Nartie ( 1128613 )
    It's easy to make a program fast if you don't care much what it does.

  • What did you expect .. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nickweller ( 4108905 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @05:36PM (#50750909)
    Microsoft Edge browser runs fastest on Microsoft Windows. Metrics such as memory commit are meaningless as most of Edge gets loaded at boot and such processes aren't counted. What are the results on other desktop operating systems. You know the computing ecosystem that exists outside the Microsoft universe. Brand new browser same ole MICROS~1 shuffle.

  • What happened to the programming adage.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "First make it work. Then make it work right. Then make it fast."

    What use is a program that fails in the most efficient manner?

    Captcha: swiftest

  • Edge isn't bad. The devtools are decent too, so it's not terrible to test your stuff against.

    But the fonts. Omg the fonts. With only basic grayscale antialising, unless you have a 4k display and scale at 125% or higher, the fonts are worse than Linux's were in the late 90s.

    Its unbearable.

    • Edge is shit for anything other than its dev tools or its rendering engine, though (and the latter still needs work, as TFA notes). No support for many of the things that any modern browser is expected to have, like:
        * No ad or tracking blocking (something IE has had, built in, since version 9)
        * No way to block Flash (built into IE in two different ways, ActiveX filter and site whitelisting for ActiveX), much less to block JavaScript
        * No extension support of any kind
        * Barely any cookie filtering (all, none, or no-third-party are the only options)
        * No "restore last session" (only possible if you set it to *always* restore the last session)
        * No RSS support
        * No useful context options (aside from Inspect Element) like "search this" or "translate this"
        * No user control over features like TLS versions image placeholders, etc.
        * No support for tab thumbnails (was in IE as "Quick Tabs" from v7 to v10, and on taskbar starting with Win7)
        * No tab grouping or ability to set Ctrl+Tab to switch in last-used order
        * ...

      It's an overgrown phone browser. It's not even close to suitable for PC usage.

      Now, with that said, you can get IE to run with Edge's engine (EdgeHtml), at least on Win10 Enterprise. That combo works pretty well. A few minor bugs, but you get the better rendering engine combined with the features of an actual PC web browser.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cfalcon ( 779563 )

        It wasn't project Spartan because it faced off against the Persians. It's a comment about the featureset.

      • No way to block Flash

        The Edge on my Windows 10 box has Flash turned off.

        • Sorry, yes, should have been more clear. You can disable Flash entirely, but there's no way to do per-site or per-applet blocking.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Trogre ( 513942 )

        * No significant MathML support

      • In Internet options you can use a privacy list from ad block plus. Edge will have or has in development mode a webkit add on support in 10.1 which will come out next spring.

        10 and edge were rushed Vista style so not to miss the back to school cycle. I am keeping 8.1 and office 2013 until it becomes stable next spring

      • It seems that's the future for desktop programs. At least if we believe Microsoft.
        Given that most people are moving to mobile platforms, desktop programs, if anything, should be getting more complex, not simpler, since they're supposedly, only going to be used by more hardcore users.
        I know that's not really true, but it's sad that mobile-style apps (spare and touch-optmized UI, no functionality beyond the barest basics) are becoming the new normal on desktops.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      They want to replicate the shitty mobile experience on desktops.. They've succeeded.

    • Greyscale antialiasing was already with IE10 (or even 9).. Before that it was just excellent, but i think the reason they changed it had to do with tablets and phones.. It's one of the worst decissions MS has ever made, and I certainly doesn't understand why they don't add the better antialiasing mode back..

  • Cross-platform (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aaaaaaargh! ( 1150173 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @05:58PM (#50750981)

    The only browser I would ever use is cross platform. Like any other software I use, including programming languages. Anything else would be impractical and is too 90s.

    • Re:Cross-platform (Score:5, Interesting)

      by supremebob ( 574732 ) <themejunky&geocities,com> on Saturday October 17, 2015 @06:23PM (#50751053) Journal

      Yeah... one of the reasons I like Chrome so much is that my bookmarks are updated automatically on my Windows Desktop PC, Mac Laptop, Android Tablet, and iPhone. I doubt that I'll be able to pull off that stunt with Edge for awhile.

    • Why? The web is meant to be client-agnostic. I use different browsers on mobile and desktop. The main thing that I want from a web browser (beyond actually working) is to integrate cleanly with the host environment and that's far more likely in a browser that's developed for a single platform than one that's written to be portable. For example, Chrome 'runs' on OS X, but it doesn't integrate properly with the system keychain, so you end up with passwords scattered between two credential stores. Chrome

  • Fast But Crappy? (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @06:25PM (#50751065) Journal

    "Edge Fastest, But Weak On Standards"

    Great, so Edge will show me a crappy, mangled page really really fast!

  • standards matter more than miliseconds (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @06:34PM (#50751099)

    if you want to render a webpage the fastest: cut corners (standards be damned!)
    if you want to render a webpage properly: don't use a microsoft product

  • They're all fast enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Threni ( 635302 ) on Saturday October 17, 2015 @06:53PM (#50751169)

    You can stop making browsers faster, putting more megapixels in camera sensors and resolution on phones, tablets and laptops, thanks. It's done; no-one's going to either notice or appreciate the difference any longer (apart from marketing, perhaps). You need to work on battery life, waterproofing (as in, actually waterproof), security and making the mobile experience better than the embarrassing ginger stepchild it currently is.

    • I totally agree, but many people disagree. There's a huge amount of people on engadget and such that claim that a 2k screen on a 5 inch phone is much better than a full hd one (I doubt I'd be able to see a difference even if I used a magnifying glass).
      Also, many people also blindly believe a camera on a cellphone is always better when the megapixel number is larger. They're dooming us to a world of phones that take 30 megapixel photos, can almost display them without zooming out and whose battery will las

  • I'll think about trying Edge ONLY after it is supported by AdBlock Plus!

  • I haven't read the original article, but i know that a lot of the 'html5' standards aren't all finalized yet, and edge would only support finalized stuff as i remember..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EMN13 ( 11493 )

      See http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org] - in short, the html5test site is deeply flawed. If anything, a high score suggests a browser that supports deprecated, rejected or experimental features without decent feature toggles. Not a good idea.

  • HTML5Test is not a test of standardscompliance. (Score:4, Informative)

    by EMN13 ( 11493 ) on Sunday October 18, 2015 @05:17AM (#50752639) Homepage

    HTML5test is not a test of standards compliance; the title is misleading. It's a wishlist of features, some of which are standardized, but many of which are not (or are not part of HTML5). For example, html5test doesn't (in general) test whether you've really implemented a feature correctly (or really - at all) it just uses feature detection to check whether you've claimed to implement a feature. Fortunately, browsers are never buggy and this distinction doesn't matter.

    Then, html5test follows the whatwg's "living standard" instead of the less-cutting year-old actual standard html. This makes sense at first glance - we want to know which browsers support "new" features too! As a developer, that's great. As a score for a browser, that's questionable. Many features are added to the standard because one of the browsers initially experimented with a non-standard extension; lately that's been webkit/blink due to the mobile push, but previous names have included IE6. By *intent* the whatwg living spec is a few steps ahead of the browsers. What this means is that if you use this as a score is that you're going to penalize whoever is following the spec, and promote those leading the spec. That deserves at least a separate score.

    Then, there are HTML5 features that are deprecated, like . The continued support for scores chrome two points, and edge+firefox none. Is that really what you wanted to know? I bet there are *lots* of deprecated features in old IE; if you're going to start counting those...

    Then there's features like speech synthesis and recognition. Those aren't part of the spec, have never been part of the spec, yet they're worth 5 points together. Or worse, the Web SQL features, that have explicitly been rejected, also worth 5 points (only webkit-derived browsers support this).

    Almost all of the point differences between browsers can be explained by features that are experimental, deprecated or rejected.

    In short: don't use html5test. It's pointless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EMN13 ( 11493 )

      I meant to say deprecated like keygen, but slashdot stripped the "html" tag.

      • The fact that keygen is deprecated in a draft doesn't mean that it shouldn't be supported. As of now, it must be supported, while, probably, its use will be discouraged in newly written code. But that again doesn't mean that it shouldn't be supported now or tomorrow: HTML5.1 will last at least a few years from now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EMN13 ( 11493 )

          There are multiple perspectives here. As you point out, keygen wasn't always deprecated, and it hasn't been removed from the standard yet. So, as you point out, it's OK for a browser to support that. And I totally agree with that.

          But also look at the context - the suggestion here is that a low score means a browser that is lagging in standards support. And that's clearly misleading. There may be nothing wrong with supporting keygen; but clearly the aim is to *remove* it, and there should certainly not

  • That's their measure of "standards compliance". Unfortunately it's rather bogus. It includes non-standard stuff like WebSQL, which is not a standard at all and was only ever implemented in Webkit (which Blink inherited). Also, it's just checking for the presence of features and doesn't do any testing how well those features work. So it incentivizes browser to provide a bare-minimum buggy implementation of every feature under the sun, which isn't actually good for the Web.

  • >"Browser Tests Show Edge Fastest, But Weak On Standards"

    And single platform. Doesn't run on Linux, MacOS, Android.

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