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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.:-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
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
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
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*/
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.