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Google Chrome Tops Browser Speed Tests
ThinSkin writes "So many Web browsers, so little time. The folks at ExtremeTech have assembled the ultimate browser test to determine which Web browser is king. From speed tests to rendering tests, different browsers traded off wins, but Google Chrome came out on top."
Guess I must be the only one here using Chrome. No other comments yet.
But seriously, the speed difference is noticeable. When I'm on my mac, I miss using it. Plugins are hard to come by, but other than that, it's great. Quick as Firefox used to be.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
But speed isn't everything. The moment Chrome lets me use the 17 extensions I have to firefox and is still the fastest, I applaud. Currently I couldn't even consider having to lose all the extensions that help web development and surfing...
This thing should be clear to everyone by now.
Use Chrome if you want speed, Firefox if you want extensions, IE if you just want to annoy the hell out of all us Firefox fanboys, Opera if you want a ready package of speed and features, etc...
Which ones were in the category of spyware? Because I can only think of one myself.
You're using a non-release Chrome and yet I'm not seeing a nightly build of Safari referenced.
The Developer Preview of Safari 4.0 trounces Safari 3.1.x.
The Safari nighly builds trounce all over Safari 4.0 developer preview.
Unfortunately, speed is not everything. Chrome lacks a lot of functionality (and addons). Raw speed is nothing in this case. We aren't talking about 30 seconds difference here.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Summary: IE is crap, Safari has some issues, Opera most compatible with Acid 3, Firefox is OK and Chrome is fast but not finished.
So, a stripped-down browser is fast. Wow.
In the real world, I'll be sticking with Firefox, with Ad blockers, Greasemnkey etc.
I don't know, I just didn't like chrome. Whether it be I am just used to Firefox now or what. When I tried Chrome out it just didn't make enough of a difference for me. So what if the page renders in a half second to a second faster. That's not like it is saving me any real time. I like Google but I saw this step as a waste of time for them. Since they kinda sponsor Firefox. But to each their own.
https://www.speakservers.com/
That's just the rendering engine they're testing. My browser is called "AdBlock".
Nonsense. I'm using Firefox.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
If you want speed, use links, elinks, lynx, links2, links-hacked, linkx, etc...
You even get graphics in the last 4. I think lynx finds the window-id of the xterm and then draws in to it. Which is unholy and scary the first time you see it.
If you want features, then, well, you might want to look elsewhere. But they're fast. Personally, I use a graphical links variant for everything I can and switch to what ever Mozilla variant of the day in installed for websites requiring javascript.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Just a quick glance:
"We tested the version of Firefox (called Minefield) that does include the V8 code"
"IE7 did not even run the test correctly and produced no final score" (along with a image of a successful run of the test, with the score "17" clearly visible)
Well, that speaks for itself. Also, terrible choice of benchmarks overall and bad methodology as usual.
Unfortunately they already won: I didn't block the ads.
...at least for me. I don't care about optimizations that allow a page to be loaded and rendered 0.1 seconds faster. The lower bound on how fast a page loads is rarely imposed by the browser anyway.
I often like to use the "Open All in Tabs" feature of Firefox, in which an arbitrarily high number of bookmarks in a folder are opened and loaded simultaneously. I can open and load 15 sites (with adblocking) in under 3 seconds. Chrome seemed to take a second to open just one tab, let alone 15.
I'm not saying I'm the normal user, but test more than the scripting engine and the rendering system before saying a browser "tops speed tests".
Insert self-referential sig here.
They chose to exclude Minefield from this test.
I think Minefield might be faster than Chrome.
[at-least, from my personal experience.]
and what about the plugins and add-ons we used to in firefox ...
I think a long way still ahead
I'll leave it to others to attack the flawed methodology (although I can't resist pointing out that using a Javascript/DOM compatibility inspector as a test is seriously dumb. The thing is designed to short circuit on a matched API call, the order is going to have inherent bias by design!) My question is if you are willing to include Beta's why not include Webkit (and even IE8 just to be fair.) You could have painted a much more balanced picture...
But at east he did all the tests on the same day, we all know that network latency doesn't vary in less than 24 hour periods of time.
The graphs on page 2 ("Browser Extensions") don't make much sense. Look at the values shown vs. the tickmarks at the bottom.
Additionally, you might note the omission of how the timing was done in the first section, Testing Methodology. That the author claimed to use their home broadband connection for the tests doesn't suggest a controlled environment...at best, sort of a "If you happen to be on one of these machines at my house at the same time of day that I was, you might see similar results."
I'm sure everyone has a preferred browser by now, I know I've got mine. But these benchmarks strike me as bogus, regardless of the results.
I'll give up a few milliseconds for Firefox's features...
I'm surprized safari scored this bad. Anyway, Browsers are likely the most complex software to properly benchmark. Writing a tangible and useful conclusion from all those charts and numbers is nearly impossible.
I have coded a few large javascript/DOM-intensive applications and my overall feeling is that chrome rocks both on compliance and speed. It also seems much better on garbage collection than FF3, which stills badly suffers from unreleased memory. My experience with safari on those applications is good overall; faster than FF3 and a little slower than chrome.
As a rather skinny virgin nerd user of Chrome who has my own place, I take offence to that.
There's some weird stuff in this "article". For example, what does it mean to "include V8 code" in a browser? Even choosing V8 as a benchmark is a mistake. Sunspider is the standard JS benchmark and it's much broader in scope.
Awarding 10 points for winning a category and then adding up the points to reach a final score is the most statistically bogus "methodology" ever.
It's nice to see SVG and canvas in benchmarks, but "IE8 will fix that compatibility issue"? Completely untrue, IE8 will not support SVG and canvas. This bit of ignorance makes me worry about the whole piece.
And as others have noted, comparing the Chrome beta against various-aged releases of other browsers makes little sense.
Till it's got adblock, I don't care if it renders pages before they exist. I don't care if it makes me breakfast or does my laundry. In short, without adblock, it ain't S**T.
-=sig=-
they are cocks who pack their website so full of advertising i can hardly find TFA.
Chrome is the current browser beta from Google, and IE8 is the current browser beta from MS... so why compare Chrome in the same group as IE7?
Nurse: Doctor, the tests came back inconclusive. It seems that the patient already suffered heavy memory loss. In addition to this the patient is severely obese and is likely to suffer a heart failure at any point.
Doctor: Curse that Vista! Curse it and all the suffering it has cause us!
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2335253,00.asp
Defectivebydesign
I am the lawn!
I can't help to to long for the days of gopher. the web browser is really the only reason do not use the terminal exclusively.
Yeah... Chrome? Don't care. Get back to me when they give back to the open source community.
OK, maybe it's just me, but browser speed has absolutely not been an issue since the Netscape days. I've never said, "gosh, these pages look great, but they're just being rendered too slowly!" and then abandoned a web browser. The only thing that's an issue is download speed - rendering speed is not even noticable. Is this just me? I get the feeling that the "browser speed" issue that slashdot talks so much about is like some obscure industry metric that is rather meaningless, but still gets brought up in conversation because it's a bright shiny number that people can quote when regurgitating arguments.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
That's only a JS engine speed test. If you test the HTML engine speed then you should include Dillo and you would be surprised who's the winner.
Why does no-one include Konqueror in these tests? It's even available for Windows these days.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Chrome is in beta state (maybe for the next 10 years?). I use firefox 3.1 whiwh is in beta state and seems very speedy also.
If you compare browsers, compare the betas in one side, ant the stables in other side. What you can see is that IE stable release sucks, others ares equivalents. Chrome is'nt stable thus it does'nt exists. Show me the same with the betas and we will see the fastest next-gen browser
lernu.net
TraceMonkey is reportedly faster than V8.
Isn't tracemonkey supposed to amp up FireFox too?
Not sure why in the article they keep saying:
MS advised us against testing IE8
Mozilla advised against FF3.1
Who cares what MS/Moz want... just test the damn things.
Have you tried Firefox 3.1b with Trace-Monkey java script VM enabled?
The new Javascript VM TraceMonkey is pretty fast, if not faster than Chrome's JS VM.
Very few FF3.0 plugins will work on 3.1beta.
How is it that Opera beats Firefox in all but one test (SVG and Canvas) and beats it in the ACID3 and yet still gets placed 3rd? And then he says (despite it getting the highest ACID3 score) that both Opera and IE7 have compatibility issues? WTF?
It's quite dubious that the only beta browser tested was Chrome, especially when most of the others have publicly available beta versions available for testing. Yes, I understand that the *only* release of Chrome is a beta, but then either Chrome should be disqualified from testing since it's not a final release or other browsers' beta releases should be allowed into the test (why not include both a final and beta release of those in that case, so we can see if there are improvements in the beta?).
I'd also like to see tests on non-Windows platforms as well, although Chrome scores as badly as IE here - it's *only* available on Windows at the moment and there's been a vague promise of ports to Mac and Linux, but these seem to be predictably dragging on and on.
They didn't test w3m!
From my tests the webkit nightlies perform the fastest on javascript, significantly faster then chrome. safari 3.2 doesn't contain the latest js performance optimizations.
I love how thorough the testing was on this.
....but I don't see it being used en-masse...
The latest version can be found here. It renders /. so it must be good, right?
Is it fair for them to run these tests on different machines? If you'll notice, Safari was run on an obsolete Mac Mini, a relatively slow single core laptop in a desktop box. Some poster there had run his own tests with the browsers in question, all on the same machine and he got different results -- Safari was fastest. I think they should have also tested Safari on a standard issue Mac, like a current iMac.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
When a browser is the best in one particular test it will receive 10 points. All other browsers receive 0 points. So, google won with 30 points, i.e. was the best in 3 tests (they migh as well handed out 1.000.000 points when winning a test, that looks much more awesome). Opera had 10 points, losing from Firefox and Chrome. Safari didn't get a single point. Now if give 1 point for 1st place and 5 for last place I would get the following results:
Firefox 4 1 4 1 3 4 = 17
IE7 5 5 5 3 4 5 = 27
Chrome 1 2 2 5 1 1 = 12
Opera 2 4 1 3 2 3 = 15
Safari 3 3 3 3 5 2 = 19
(note: test 4 has 3 browsers with the same result)
Using these numbers it is: 1. Chrome, 2. Opera, 3. Firefox, 4. Safari, 5. IE7
Using their score it was: 1. Chrome, 2. Firefox, 3. Operate. Safari+IE7 "did not place".
In this case I even assume the different tests have equal weight. Which is simply dumb. And then there's the question about the quality of the tests. They picked up some random test suites, and finally a test of real website load times (measured with a (human operated) stopwatch).
I couldn't even name 17 , much less use them. Wtf do you need them for "web development" for? You don't seriously develop in a browser do you other than for testing purposes??
As for surfing - the only extension i have is flash and Ive yet to find a page I couldn't surf so why you need 17 is a mystery to me.
FUCK YEA CHROME RULES!!! +534
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
I love Chrome. The speed difference is very noticeable, especially on launch. I tried going back to Firefox for the add-ons, but I missed Chrome's speed too much. I also love the sleek, minimalist look and the way it handles tabs (I never even bothered with them in Firefox). It really just depends on what you're into.
Let it be known now and henceforth, Google Chrome IS THE ONLY BROWSER USING V8. Safari's new stuff is SquirrelFish and Mozilla's is TraceMonkey.
Please know this before you write an article making yourself look foolish.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
So for three broken elements on the Dojo 1.1.1 part of the SlickSpeed test Safari has three errors and he completely disqualifies the browser from the end results? Even though it performed well in all the other tests?
Wow, that's insightful.
Well, Chrome doesn't run on my Mac so I disqualify it.
Rendering tests, etc, are usually "load this up, check, run the next test from a clean slate". But where Chrome, in my experience, falls apart is longer-term usage. When adding and removing elements using Javascript on a page, for example, Chrome gets progressively slower until it is completely unusable. These tests do not cover this.
Interesting that Chrome will now be known as the fastest browser. I never imagined that a browser that requires a gui, wastes time displaying flash animations, and runs only on the windows platform could ever be faster than my favored choice: links2. Wait, links2 is still the fastest, at least in my tests. But then I do use Firefox for YouTube and The Onion every now and then. Oh, and idle doesn't look near as horrible on links2.
I have been using chrome for some time now the major place where it sucks is flash. It doesn't work too well with youtube as well. Hoping that google would have atleast checked the browser with their own website. But yes on javascript heavy page this thing works like a charm
Advertisers have arrogated to themselves the right to plaster their crap over every surface that we see in every waking moment, and for some reason society has allowed them to get away with it.
That doesn't mean we all have to accept it. I'm quite sure they would prefer you to blindly follow the rest of the herd of sheep, but if you really elect to make a conscious choice to be blind AND stupid, that's your call.
Just don't expect me to join in. I choose the websites I visit, and I have a list of those I don't want to hear from in a big hosts file. The rest I leave to adblock and flashblock. My choice.
Too bad that they used an old version of Prototype. Version 1.6.0.2 didn't support querySelectorAll(), that Safari has for a long time.
{{.sig}}
That is the whole problem of this benchmark, they are comparing beta prodcuts (like google chrome) with stable products (like firefox 3.0.4).
It is comparing apples with oranges.
The test are comparing raw javascript performance.
However the test explains thatthe only good benchmark is to do the test yourself. with that in midn the rest of the test is useless..
Chrome has a nice feature that lets one launch Google apps like gmail in an app like window (without the browser chrome). I use Chrome for gmail exclusively since it launches then loads and downloads my inbox in a trice. However, Chrome has no built-in RSS. It imported my bookmarks from Firefox, but not the "live bookmarks" or RSS feeds. Since I browse news and info using my feeds as a point of departure I don't use Chrome for most stuff. I tried an aggregator plugin, but it did not integrate well with Chrome.
BTW I think this app-like behavior is the central feature of Chrome's ultimate utility. In the end it can function as a sort of OS within an OS, but one that is tailored to use the cloud - quickly and efficiently. Just a thought.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
How long till they start making browsers with a "firefox plugin compatible" feature?
That would be a hack-job to implement on every browser except for Firefox. An illustration of that would be the number of plugins that got bricked from V2 to V3 a few months back.
Instead, all browsers would be better off electing to support a "Unified Browser Plugin Architecture" that could itself be enabled via a native plugin that fits into existing browsers, and later be built into them.
Kinda like Java, only without the monstrous JVM.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
It all goes back to the design and common functionality of the internet as we have it now, not as it could be. It is not an equal two way street. The ISPs and telcos don't "allow" you to be a server without draconian extra fees and rules (a "business class" connection), you are mostly restricted by their TOS as just a regular user to only "serve" up a request. If on the other hand everyone was free to be equally a client and server (real net neutrality), we could have a lot more content out there willingly served up to other people merely based on the individuals payment for bandwith, purely voluntary then, and greatly reduce this artificial forced "need" for ads. And the content itself could be replicated with P2P file sharing, which would handle increased demand and interest so it could scale exactly as interest in your content went up.
We should be eliminating bottlenecks, not constructing more elaborate ones based on ad revenue. Bandwith would be a net wash, but the cost of the bandwith would be exactly borne by the ones who used it directly in their connection fees they choose to pay for, and no more, and no less. And this might actually help make better websites and help reduce overall traffic pressures in general, look at some of those sites that spread out a single page of content over ten pages of ads just to pay for things.
It is sort of the micropayment idea but carried over to the simpler side of how to do that, you pay one fee for your connection then and that's it, perhaps a basic per gig a month model, so one size really would fit everyone then, you want more internet, you pay for it, you want less, your fee is less, simple as that, skip the ad and bloated pages middleman layer.
A more viable option (in the Slashdot case) is to subcsribe if you don't like the ads and wish to better the site.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
clearly you havent used Internet Explorer in recent years.
since a good deal of browsing is history navigation, which is instantaneous in Opera.
The tests were not carried out on the very newest software, which puts Firefox and Safari in particular at a significant disadvantage.
Firefox introduced TraceMonkey to 3.1, and beta builds of it are available. In pure JS testing, they completely destroy 3.0.4 in terms of speed.
Safari introduced SquirrelFish, and then SquirrelFish Extreme which added JIT capability to Safari's JavaScript interpreter. It is available in the nightly WebKit builds.
Furthermore, with Acid3, WebKit nightlies pass Acid3 with 100% and Firefox nightlies get around 93%. Chrome nightlies, having merged newer WebKit code, get 100% as well.
A few months ago, I ran a test using the then-current nightlies, which I posted on my blog. One particularly good test site is Dromaeo, which TFA failed to mention. Dromaeo tests not only JavaScript, but JavaScript and DOM interaction, making it a good candidate for testing the performance of a real-world situation.
For me, the clearest sign that this article represents technically incompetent me-too "journalism" was made abundantly clear when they said-
`Obviously, Chrome includes the V8 code and the other browsers do not. We tested the version of Firefox (called Minefield) that does include the V8 code and listed those results below our "official" findings.'
Minefield doesn't include "V8". They mean "JavaScript JITing", I'm going to presume, but chose a terribly inept way of saying it. It's also a bit embarrassing when they decide to fluff up an article with idolizing -- Lars Bak and his team didn't invent this.
Then again I knew something was wrong in the preceding sentence where they said that V8 radically improves the JavaScript "load time".
He only uses V8 for JS testing. V8 has two problems. One, it's created by Google and they've been quite open about the fact that it's the benchmark they used when optimizing Chrome. Two, it's incredibly inconsistent. Run the benchmark twice and you're likely to get results that are 10-20% apart. SunSpider and Dromaeo are the de facto standard among JS benchmarks. I've tested Chrome vs. nightly builds of WebKit and FF 3.1 (with JIT enabled) on SunSpider and Dromaeo, and suffice it to say Chrome loses. In its defense, though, I was comparing it to pre-release code.
The other issue here is when the browsers he tested were released:
On the one hand, the most meaningful benchmark to end users is the one that deals with *released* versions of the software, and not betas or nightly builds, since 99.9% of users are only ever going to use full releases. What's tricky about that, though, is that you're always giving an advantage to whomever released most recently.
It might have been nice to see a benchmark of the FF 3.1 Beta vs. IE8 Beta vs. Safari 4.0 Beta, since all of those exist right now. Throw in Opera 9.6 for kicks.
Wait...what? Firefox 3.1 will have TraceMonkey, which is not V8 but is on par in terms of speed, but I've heard nothing about V8 being in 3.04. Seems extremely unlikely, as 3.04 is a minor update and adding a completely new scripting engine is a truly massive update.
I think Safari uses/will soon use SquirrelFish, a separate (but probably related, as it's WebKit) JIT compiler. I'm not sure what Opera's doing in the area.
As far as game timedemo benchmarks go Chrome also cleans up. So much faster at this benchmark than the competition. Will be interesting to see how the next generation of Safari, IE, and Firefox compare.
I'm not sure an all-or-nothing methodology for scoring the browswers is very accurate for my purposes. I'd take a browser that got second place in each test over the others (if there were one), but it would have scored last place.
I don't see why they didn't test Minefield. Just because it's not as mainstream? People claim Minefield is faster, and it has a lot (not all) of the extensions Firefox has.
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.
Looking at the test methodology, it seems vague and random. No scoring system is specified. They just try several tests, and then assign a final winners list.
Chrome won three of the six tests, Opera won two, and Firefox won one. I wonder why Opera was placed third?
I'm sure there were studies that proved Chrome wasn't the fastest but I can't seem to Google them any more. Maybe I'm not using the right keywords...
Porn 'samples' from porn sites without error.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You must be new here... The proper slashdot response would be, "I'm a rather skinny virgin nerd user of Chrome who has my own place, you insensitive clod!"
Score -1: Unmemed
Developers: We can use your help.
I demand independent verification. I just read the article and the scoring process seems hugely subjective. He doesn't list numbers for the times of various tests. Just a 1 through 10 score??? WTH. If I had pulled that shit in HS chem class, I would still be taking it. 1-10 Jeesus. My illiterate cousin could come up with a better scoring process.
This author seems to have a bias towards chrome from the start. How many times do you think chrome got an 11?
(Nigel: "You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. Youâ(TM)re on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff...Eleven. One louder." DiBergi: "Why donâ(TM)t you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number, and make that a little louder?" )
chrome is best suited for small screens like on a netbook. i mean, i love my firefox and all, but the screen real estate management (yes, i just made up that term) in chrome is second to none.
I used Opera for a decade before I was forced to switch to Firefox a couple of years ago. Something that still annoys me is that in Firefox the web pages are useless until they are fully loaded. First you wait... and wait... then you get a page but text and images jumps around and a lot of links won't work. In Opera you had to wait much shorter time before the page appeared and you could start to use it instantly, before it was fully loaded. Because I haven't used Opera recently, I don't know if this is still true.
The time before I can use a page is to me more important then the time it takes to load it fully.
No Script, Ad Block makes firefox fast. Just try browsing once without all those pesky javascript libraries and you will never go back! It might not be as fast as Opera but it is fast enough for me.
Rendering speed DOES matter for highly interactive pages.
"But seriously, the speed difference is noticeable" - by freakmn (712872) on Tuesday November 25, @03:21AM (#25883129)
Oh, yea... I bet/no doubt, on F A S T E R, alright:
Especially @ getting "infected/infested" faster, since JAVASCRIPT PROCESSING appears to be the ONLY gain present here (talk about 'deceptive advertising' on this /. post, no specifics as to WHERE the speed was gained).
E.G.-> Today? What do 99% of the attacks online occur from??
That's right - you guessed it:
JAVASCRIPT MISUSE!
Period...
I.E.-> As to PROOF of that statement, on my part?
WELL - Any security based websites, such as SECUNIA.COM &/or SECURITYFOCUS.COM (as just a couple examples thereof) can show anyone reading here, this much, easily (that the majority of today's attacks online vs. users occur via javascript usage)...
APK
P.S.=> I don't get these browser makers, I truly don't - IF you're going to work on speed, fine, but... work on SECURITY first, then speed, & especially as regards javascript (fix it's DOM (document object model) for security, first)... apk
That's awfully fast, but the results don't exactly look right, and navigation is extremely difficult. :)
Let me know when there's a version of Chrome that doesn't require me to infest my system with expensive malware just to get it launched.
No, I just hate memes.
I don't watch commercials. Period. Any movies or tv shows I watch are on DVDs renting or preferably checked out from the local library (they have all of Star Trek, Bab5, Stargate, and Doctor Who :-)
Does that mean that I don't buy any products??? I actually research before I make a significant purchase instead of relying on a figurehead convincing that I need/deserve it.
We tested the version of Firefox (called Minefield) that does include the V8 code and listed those results below our "official" findings.
No version of Firefox includes "V8 code" - the engine is called Tracemonkey, or at least that's the name of the significant improvement over the last engine in Firefox.
Based purely on this example of the writer's ignorance, I would ignore this article.
But, I've switched to Google Chrome because it is so much faster. Yes, I don't have many of the plugins, and when I need something like FireBug, I load up FireFox.
But, Google Chrome, despite its problems is faster, crashes less often, and rarely freezes. I also like the way it puts popup windows on the bottom of the browser. Much better than merely attempting to block them. Most popup blockers no longer work, and I am tired of switching them on and off. I also like the fast JavaScript engine.
There are many problems in Google Chrome. Jira and Confluence don't like it. When you have multiple tabs, and close the browser window, there's no warning. Spell check doesn't work too well. There are many sites (mainly Flash sites) that Google Chrome doesn't work well with.
But, the speed is a major selling point. Opening Chrome is instantaneous. Compared to it, other browsers seem to take forever. I've opened pages in Google chrome, read them, and closed them before FireFox even opened.
I would love to see many of the features in Google Chrome in FireFox, Opera, and Safari. And, I think that's what Google really wants. They don't care what happens to Chrome as long as the other browsers become faster and more dependable.
I've used IE 4 / 5 /6 / 7, FFox 1 / 2 / 3, I've use netscape, I've used chrome (which seemed the fastest) and they are still too slow.
I am a nerd who checks the same damn sites all the time, I don't know what the hell is wrong with web browsers but they simply aren't fast enough.
I am speculating it's very poor cache code, it seems no matter how many times I hit slashdot a day or theage.com.au or techreport or any other site I frequently hit, the browser still seems to be slow in pulling in the data, they simply can't be using the disk cache routines properly.
I don't care what needs to be done, I do not care in any way about resources, offer me a 'power user' or 'internet addict' freak mode, I don't care if my cache directory for firefox is 12gb and the application uses 900mb of ram (no leaks though please) I just want my pages to open FAST.
I've used an application called 'easy dns' where you tell it a list of 10 dns servers and it uses all 10 and keeps a DNS cache, you then tell the machine to use your own IP as a DNS server, it certainly improved browsing for me.
You know what else I'd like? I'd like a way to have my browser automatically grab a fresh copy of common pages in the background, from a list I determine, so that when I do go to those frequent sites they come up almost instantly.
I realise I'm impatient, make no mistake! Ultimately, I've gone from a 56k modem on Pentium 133 with Windows 95 and 16mb of ram through the years to a quad core 3ghz machine, 4gb of ram, 18mbit adsl with 1/3 the latency and yet browsing honestly doesn't seem any better (seriously!) - sure it's doing more but it's just not enough.
I'm not talking about youtube either, with distinct large content, I'm talking about pages like slashdot, digg, etc, pages which are just text and images, I mean surely a PC can throw around some text and images half decently?
I have the money and the resources for a decent PC and half decent internet link, I really don't mind my browser being greedy, just reward me with a fast experience.
Posted on Tech Crunch
Lunascape Browser: Firefox, Internet Explorer And Chrome All-In-One
Lunascape is a new web browser that handles all three major web rendering engines â" Firefoxâ(TM)s Gecko, Internet Explorerâ(TM)s Trident and WebKit (which is used by Safari and Chrome). Lunascape Corp., a Tokyo-based web software company, offers the browser as a free download. Lunascape 5 Alpha is Windows-only and the first English version of the browser (a Japanese version dates back to 2001).
Lunascape 5 is an interesting alternative for people (like me) who primarily use Firefox but keep Internet Explorer as a second browser when they encounter rendering problems (i. e. on some of the few IE-only and IE-optimized web pages out there).
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/25/lunascape-browser-firefox-internet-explorer-and-chrome-all-in-one/
"speed isn't everything" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, @03:22AM (#25883139)
Agreed, 110% - especially when the speed gains occur in an area that needs OTHER WORK, first (like javascript's security & object access model).
After all, JAVASCRIPT PROCESSING appears to be the ONLY gain present here (talk about 'deceptive advertising' on this /. post, no specifics as to WHERE the speed was gained).
E.G.-> Today? What do 99% of the attacks online occur from??
JAVASCRIPT MISUSE!
I.E.-> As to PROOF of that statement, on my part?
WELL - Any security based websites, such as SECUNIA.COM &/or SECURITYFOCUS.COM (as just a couple examples thereof) can show anyone reading here, this much, easily (that the majority of today's attacks online vs. users occur via javascript usage)...
APK
P.S.=> I don't get these browser makers, I truly don't - IF you're going to work on speed, fine, but - work on SECURITY first, then speed, & especially as regards javascript (fix it's DOM (document object model) for security, first)... apk
All this latest/greatest "craze" of building up speed in javascript processing's rather "ass-backwards", don't you think? I mean, the faster you can run that javascript, the faster you're going to get yourself infested/infected by malware it seems.
E.G.-> Today? What do 99% of the attacks online occur from?? That's right - you guessed it:
JAVASCRIPT MISUSE!
Period...
I.E.-> As to PROOF of that statement, on my part?
WELL - Any security based websites, such as SECUNIA.COM &/or SECURITYFOCUS.COM (as just a couple examples thereof) can show anyone reading here, this much, easily (that the majority of today's attacks online vs. users occur via javascript usage)...
APK
P.S.=> I don't get these browser makers, I truly don't - IF you're going to work on speed, fine, but... work on SECURITY first, then speed, & especially as regards javascript (fix it's DOM (document object model) for security, first)... apk