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Browser Speed Comparisons
kfrench writes "Internet browser speed tests for 'cold starts', 'warm starts', rendering CSS, rendering tables, script execution, displaying multiple images and 'history'. 'Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice.'"
I suppose the fact that IE has all sorts of nice direct access to the Windows code with god-knows-what tricks embedded to speed it up helps. Firefox is bound by what any non-MS program can do with the API.
That is not to say that I find Firefox slower - but thinking about it, I believe the Firefox interface (especially tabs and yes I know it was Opera first(?)) speeds _me_ up. So my perception is that using Firefox is generally faster than using Internet Explorer, even though it may be in actuality slower.
Really impressive work by that tester tho.:-)
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RTFA, no? The Moox version of FF is in there and doesn't fair well.
...if I wanted to read garbage like that, I'd go to \.
From the article:
Surprisingly, Mozilla is now faster at most tasks than Firefox.
Again, I ask--what exactly is the point of Firefox these days? When it was being billed as the replacement for Mozilla's browser, it made more sense. But Firefox is neither faster or slimmer than the official Mozilla browser, and now it seems it's actually slower too!
I'm just curious what the incentive is supposed to be to use it over Mozilla.
From the article:
The Moox Firefox install is actually slower than the standard Firefox versions distributed from Mozilla.org, even though it is supposedly optimised for my particular processor.
I tested browsers myself a while back with Stopwatch, and I found Firefox to render consistently faster than IE6. I collaborated with others on the test, and we found that overall, Firefox was about 25% faster. There were some exceptions to the rule though... (most notably, mozilla.org rendered faster in IE. But Microsoft.com rendered faster on Firefox).
I honestly don't know what this guy did differently to achieve opposite results.
incapable of properly processing the internal helpdesk software that was designed with FrontPage to the latest standards
Excuse me, If I was Dogbert, my tail would be wagging right now.
You're designing your software with Frontpage?
Wow... that's great... There's your first problem.
Frontpage? Standards? What ones are those?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
What I love about Opera is that it is fast with all of its features turned on. To have similar functionality on Firefox I need a dozen plugins that are not seamlesly integrated and that weight the browser down.
Still, for most people I recomend Firefox. Its lack of ads and free price cannot be beaten and its default feature set don't confuse people who switch fron IE.
Either way you can't loose. Its the only way to live malware free.
Cheers,
Adolfo
I wonder what webserver they were using to test the browsers? If using IIS...I seem to recall that IIS was 'rigged' to skip some steps normally in a browser/server conversation...and this helped IE 'look' faster that other browsers.
Dunno if this is still the case....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm not really sure where people are pulling these stats. Probably from their asses, but when I load firefox, ie and opera this is the score:
P3 1GHz - 128MB Ram - Win2k Pro
Firefox loads the fastest
Opera loads almost as fast
IE... wtf is taking it so long if it's "integrated" as they say? It not only takes so much friggin time to load, but chews up the hard drive like they're going out of style!
Sorry. I'll believe my own results on the machines I use here.
450mhz 192Mb ram
500mhz 128Mb ram
1000mhz 128mb ram
2.8ghz 512mb ram
3.2ghz 2gb ram
all run win2k for games (sorry, new xp interface just doesn't cut it for me to mean a "new os") and linux for the main systems.
FF beats them hands down. I'm not a fan boy or anything, but it would be trivial to become one. I just use what's "WORKS" and works the fastest without pop-ups/problems/whatever.
-zo
I'm actually a bit impressed with how well the 400MHz Mac numbers came out compared to the 800MHz PC numbers, that is Linux and Windows. Especially since they all had 256MB of RAM which everyone seems to say is not enough RAM for running OS X acceptably. The script speed seems to be the only dog for Safari. Perhaps this is something I should be mentioning to potential switchers.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Firefox v. IE - there are IE tweaks just like ones you find for Firefox. Once I compare my tweaked IE 6.0, it renders amazon.com faster but microsoft.com slower (how ironic
So you want the IE tweaks (for faster Internet Connections) so we begin to compare apples and apples?
First, I'd recommend downloading a free program to edit the registry, because it has a history of previous locations visited...very useful for me to remember the tweaks.
Then, goto OK, add two new keys to have more simultaneous connections: Ok...now move to eliminate searching of Scheduled Task on the local network when loading Explorer, goto location and remove the {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} key.
You may need to restart Windows (or maybe just IE) and you should notice a speedup.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
While these tests are nice for having empirical data, it's also important to not focus too much on this data. In many cases, the differences in results was not much more than a second. IE sucks for many reasons that are not its speed. Firefox and Opera have far more benefits other than what speed it displays pages at.
The point is, for most of these browsers, they all run 'fast enough.' A second or two here and there isn't going to significantly impact your browsing experience. Tabs, intelligent UI design, intelligent security decisions, and perhaps themes/extensions will add up to the overall experience.
IE is a slimmed down browser where I can imagine its rendering engine simplicity combined with Microsoft's unique experience with the Windows kernel and the integration makes for a fast browser.
Opera seems to be a minor miracle in terms of code optimizations, at least on the Windows platform, since it's not OS integrated or cheats with pre-loadings, and the Opera team lacks Microsoft developers with knowledge about undocumented API calls, etc. Still it usually beats IE hands down with a vastly superior rendering engine, on par with Gecko. It's only unfortunate it's ad supported and closed source.
Finally, Firefox/Gecko is a very nice open source browser with nice extension support, but building on the cross-platform UI toolkit XUL instead of using native widgets, along with being built for platform independence instead of being heavily optimized for various platforms (I imagine the Opera team has to do more work for their browser to work on other platforms). I think some of these things play a role in some of Firefox's speed issues. There's no problem with the code I think, just a side effect from what Mozilla is trying to accomplish with the code.
It would've been interesting to have him compare to K-Meleon or Galeon as well, since it's slimmed down to the bare bones Gecko layout engine with just minor stuff in addition, and that stuff is also using native widgets AFAIK. Might have a positive effect on the loading times at least.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I would actually like to see a comparison of a P3 optimized Firefox (Moox) against Opera. My guess is that Opera uses speed optimizations for higher end processors that would not be available in the vanilla distro of Firefox.
Another question is, did they test the free "Adware" version of Opera or did they use the $40 "Commercial" version (I know Opera 8 was the Beta, so that one is obvious)?
I would personally like to see if Firefox could beat Opera with processor specific speed optimizations and some fairly standard performance tweaks to the about:config...remember, these optimizations would not be available on Opera...
I would also like to see how the much used Adblock extension slows down or speeds up Firefox in rendering some basic pages.
I'm trying to get into the habit of sending letters to sites complaining that they don't work with Firefox or Mozilla. I figure if more people take their business away because they have useless IE-only pages, they'll be forced to revisit these ill-considered decisions.
The same thing is even more true for those sites with popup messages: "This site only works with Internet Explorer." Fix your damn site -- don't blame me for your stupid decision to hire VB programmers.
Hell, even microsoft.com is perfectly usable with Mozilla and Firefox. I certainly haven't noticed a "lack of richness in my browsing experience" there.
John
...and that is useful to me the average user how? So you have to: a) search for exploits that were fixed b) if you find some then you need to download and install "a non-release" version? BS. If FF has an update built in then it should use it. I wouldn't mind if it didn't but it does and all it results in is a false sense of security. Also, the fanboys need to shut up about how quickly exploits get patched because until they make it into the update/recommended download it's not really patched for most people.
I have to say you do have a very good point. Post 1.0 there are published security flaws in Firefox yet no client-side patches. Where are the patches? Fixed in CVS? Post 1.0 the firefox crew has imho dropped the ball in some areas. Seven months from 1.0 till 1.1 with no security updates in between? I know these aren't load a webpage and your computer explodes type flaws but they are flaws and should be addressed.
Btw lest people think "Ha gotcha!", the same problem occurs with IE. Many IE vulnerabilities hang around for months as well and with IE there is not even a remote chance of using a "nightly" which contains the proper fixes. Firefox even with these problems is still a better browser in every way over IE, but these delays in fixing published security flaws for end users have to end.
ex http://www.mikx.de/firedragging/
list http://secunia.com/product/4227/
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
The only reason I use Firefox (and I use it a lot) is that I can't split proxy servers in Opera.
The best best best part about Opera is that it doesn't check with the server when you hit the back button!!! This is the best feature in Opera, IMHO, and has saved me hundreds of hours (and that might just possibly be literal) of waiting.
When you hit 'back' in Opera, the browser simply redisplays (from the cache) what was there before. No waiting, no re-rendering, no asking 'do you want me to re-post the data from the form you filled out?' NO!!! - if I want to re-post the fucking form, I'll hit reload!
If Firefox can overcome this limitation and simply REDISPLAY the previous page, I will be a very happy man, because then I will have TWO amazing and extraordinarily handy browsers. But for now, I'll only use Firefox when I absolutely have to.
(Oh, and BTW, whoever coded the mouse gestures xpi for firefox gets a huge dollop of my undying gratitude. You made firefox usable.)
/*grabs soapbox and walks off*/
You didn't RTFA right?
IE6 is slightly faster than FireFox on some things, but it is pretty close, and loses out on script speed. IE5 is faster, but does less stuff (speed to render CSS is going to be less when you ignore half of it).
In any case, IE isn't close to being "head and shoulders" faster. Opera is actually faster than both on windows. It is faster than Safari on most test on the Mac too.
There are areas where closed source software is better than open source, but the browser sure as hell ain't it. Open source browsers won't be everybody's favourites, but technically they are right up their.
I doubt they had pipelineing enabled on FireFox.
These days, I take tests like these with a grain of salt. Particularly after the Gartner groups speed tests of Windows vs. Linux. They tweaked the hell out of a Windows machine, and used a stock Linux install and claimed Windows was faster.
When called on it, they conceded.
I have a feeling something similar is happening here.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
An IIS/IE exchange has fewer packets to send and less overhead when disconnecting...
whther you tearing down a socket or sending a disconnect ACK and then tearing down a socket, there would be no concievable performance advantage as the latter step must take a whole lot more cycles. Your second point makes since but obviously, as you said, has nothing to do with helping IE be (or appear to be) faster than other browsers that don't do this.
And that's even if this is all true, but i've seen enough trolls and FUD from all sides to make replies like this from me few and far between.
why run from Vincenzo?
Opera and Firefox run *much faster* on Linux and Macs than IE does. I bet their only speed gains come from being integrated into the OS.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
...why firefox is considered to be so amazing.
0 /19/023 6213&tid=113
I personally greatly dislike tabbed browsing. I have tabs...on my task bar.
I could never detect a speed difference between IE or Firefox. IE crashes on me once a month at most. I've used Firefox 1.0 maybe a dosen times for it's one useful feature, is its superior javascript debugger. In those dosen times, I have had it crash on me three times.
Since SP2, I have managed to avoid spyware completely without any additional effort.
As for standards compliance, what good is standard compliance when web pages fail to shine on broken code:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/1
As for the claims of "undocumented APIs" I defy anyone to find these APIs. You can explore the externed interface of a DLL. Go ahead, find this stash of undocumented APIs.
I use IE because it works with the most pages without giving me spyware, and apparently it's faster. I have Firefox around because it is growing in popularity and I do a little bit of web development.
http://brandonbloom.name
Ok so I haven't read the article, but from the disclaimer, it doesn't sound like it's possible to make a fair test. What I mean, is that IE is EMBEDDED in windows. IE loads when you open windows explorer, or "My computer" or whatever else file-viewing window it's IE behind it. So there are no real "cold starts" for IE. So that's my first comment on comparing "cold starts" and "hot starts". Second, Firefox shows much more speed on a linux platform. I don't know if that's because I'm running gentoo with a bunch of USE flags to speed up and prelink on top of that, or if it's just because it's linux. Now on the other hand, there's no IE for linux (thankfully!!!). Besides, most users are concerned not about rendering pages but about connection speed and features of their browsers. Not the speed on the machine. Only at work or in a college dorm will you have a connection that could make those speeds perceptible to the user. So, next, comparing Opera to Firefox. Great. Whatever happened to the saying "don't look at gift horse in the mouth?". Opera is not free. Firefox is. Why would you compare something free with something you want a better quality from? It's fine if you want to determine whether it's worth spending the money on another browser, but then you're looking at features, not at speeds. After all, if the whole of the industry wanted lots of speed from their systems, they'd all have dual processor machines running a linux-smp enabled kernel, with blackbox only, right? So, while it may be interesting to compare the ALGORITHMS behind it all, it's not that interesting to me to compare actual speeds, because they're going to vary by environment, machine and user. Someone who has several apps open in the background will notice everything slow down a bit, when someone who only browses without popups will find it more responsive, at least for local operations. Just my $.02 worth.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
The best best best part about Opera is that it doesn't check with the server when you hit the back button!!!
This is good and really bad at the same time. Sure, generally the prior page is the same. But what if its not? Most of today's web technology is based on dynamic page content. This means that the prior page may be different than what it was a second ago. With web applications, Opera's functionality you describe it flawed. IE, Firefox, and the rest of the browsers know this and force the browsers to recheck. That is not a "bug" in their design but rather a required feature. Opera's special "feature" is more of a bug actually and causes hardship on web pages designers to handle its non-standard way of performing such a simple function.
Opera caches the state of the DOM, Firefox doesn't. This is an informed decision on the part of the developers (I'm too busy to find a bug number, but it's there, as well as reasoned out some other places online.)
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.