Slashdot Mirror
Chrome Vs. IE 8
snydeq writes "Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 herald a new, resource-intensive era in Web browsing, one sure to shift our conception of acceptable minimum system requirements, InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy concludes in his head-to-head comparison of the recently announced multi-process, tabbed browsers. Whereas single-process browsers such as Firefox aim for lean, efficient browsing experiences, Chrome and IE 8 are all about delivering a robust platform for reliably running multiple Web apps in a tabbed format in answer to the Web's evolving needs. To do this, Chrome takes a 'purist' approach, launching multiple, discrete processes to isolate and protect each tab's contents. IE 8, on the other hand, goes hybrid, creating multiple instances of the iexplore.exe process without specifically assigning each tab to its own instance. 'Google's purist approach will ultimately prove more robust,' Kennedy argues, 'but at a cost in terms of resource consumption.' At what cost? Kennedy's comparison found Chrome 'out-bloated' IE 8, consuming an average of 267MB vs. IE 8's 211MB. This, and recent indications that IE 8 itself consumes more resources than XP, surely announce a new, very demanding era in Web-centric computing."
>"surely announce a new, very demanding era in Web-centric computing"
Yep, an era that won't sit well for users of thin-clients, multiuser servers, older machines, and smaller mobile stuff. I think some of the ideas in Chrome are good, but I am not so sure I like the idea of ultra-fat browsers. I recently was complaining that Firefox was starting to get bloated (defeating the goal of FireFox, to be lean and mean). I don't mind different concepts, except the design of web sites will, no doubt, start demanding more and more "fatness" to work (kinda like trying to use the web without Flash).
Now I will go crawl back under my 90's rock...
Can somebody explain to me why resource limits are still an issue in Windows? I usually keep 25-40 tabs open in FF, and after it gets over the 350MB range, the whole browser starts to act flaky. Why is 211MB, 267MB, 350MB or even 500MB a problem on today's platforms with 2 to 6GB RAM standard?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Simply inserting an a href linking to "evil:%" crashes chrome. ALL of chrome. While this is acceptable in a beta product, I don't buy the graceful, tab-only crashes they're promising.
An OS contains more than just a kernel. Usually it contains many daemons working. For example, on my Xubuntu OS, I have 96 programs without counting any major ones (terminal windows, browsers, apache, etc.) All of these daemons are needed to provide a modern operating system experience.
A kernel by nature should be tiny, but an OS should contain tons of functionality.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
WebKit itself is doing 100/100 on Acid3. One would assume that Chrome would be performing similarly as it is based on WebKit, especially when this 100/100 result was achieved in March of 2008. Is Chrome based on an older fork of WebKit? Or is something else going on here?
You don't see anything useful huh? Process separation improving security and responsiveness, UI improvements like Fitts'-law-obeying tabs, Incognito mode; those aren't useful to you?
Oh, and you do know that Chrome doesn't index your hard drive or send your browsing history to Google, right? It really doesn't have any more "integration" with Google Search (or GMail, or G-anything-else) than Firefox does. And you don't have to take Google's word for it because it's open source.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
My first question is what web pages define their average? I just fired up vanilla versions of both IE8, Chrome, and Process Explorer and opened the same two tabs: the Facebook login page and Wikipedia (English).
Process Explorer tells me IE8 is using 389652 KB of memory. Chrome is using 260668 KB of memory. Both have three processing running.
What the heck, I'll try again. I fully restart both browsers and open up Slashdot and Newgrounds. IE8 with three processes, 465348 KB; Chrome with four processes, 358128 KB.
Now I upped the ante to 9 tabs, which for brevity, I won't list. IE8 with 6 processes was using 958524 KB and Chrome with 11 processes was using 783840 KB.
Admittedly, this is a small test to find an average, but what do I need to do to see the difference TFS[ummary] speaks of?
Multiple intercommunicating processes are generally a good thing. And almost all modern operating systems can share read-only code regions between processes, which is safe.
However, once you put "just in time" compilers in, the sharing goes away. This is classically a Java problem; each Java instance has yet another copy of all the Java libraries in use. If Google Gears ends up importing as much cruft as Java does, it will have the same bloat problems.
Still, browsers have become memory hogs, even when rendering pages that aren't doing anything exciting. Firefox can balloon to 300MB after viewing a modest number of relatively vanilla pages. Even with "browser.cache.memory.enable" set to False.
Read the EULA. It's HUGE. (I recommend using something like EULAlyzer rather than reading the whole thing.)
It sure looks like Google Chrome is designed first and foremost to be an advertising delivery system. There is so much legal CYA in that thing, you know they're up to something they figure they're going to have to defend in court at some point.
If you think the fact that Google Search stores your search strings is a potential invasion of your privacy (I do), then you will be amazed at what it looks like they plan to get from their "browser." This is the first install in over a year I actually aborted after analyzing the EULA.
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
Thank goodness somebody pointed out that the emperor has no clothes.
Quite apart from the resource consumption, the main feature was supposed to be speed. FF3 is faster to load the same set of tabs than Chrome is, and I haven't noticed massive speed increases even on single Javascript-heavy pages. As for runaway Javascript lunching the whole browser - never happened to me, TYVM. The only thing that did that to FF3 was an extension.
I installed Chrome because it was New! Shiny!, but I am sticking with FF3 for now.
" There is a rational explanation for everything. There is also an irrational one. "
However it is slow and crashes or freezes (or rather individual pages freeze).
Actually, you CAN crash the whole browser, not just individual pages. Try typing "about:%" in the address bar. The entire browser crashes before you even see the %.
And that makes it unlikely I will ever use it.
I tried Chrome and mostly liked what I saw, but I stopped using it and went back to Firefox, because it has Adblock Plus. Each time I am forced to use a browser that doesn't have this, I am horrified at how sites look and why people still use Internet.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.