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9 Browsers Compared For Speed and Features
notthatwillsmith writes "Counting public betas and release candidates, there are a whopping nine different web browsers out today with enough market share to be considered mainstream. Maximum PC explains the differences between the browsers, future and present, so that you can make a more informed decision about the primary tool you use to browse the web. From the rendering engines used to the features that set the different browsers apart, this is a comprehensive, blow-by-blow battle between Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1, IE 8, Safari 4, and Opera 10."
And their conclusion is...
There is no conclusion?
FTA: "In our testing, the answer is no. However, we did notice a difference among browsers, just not as pronounced as the benchmarks indicate. Safari 4 and, to our surprise, Internet Explorer 8 felt the snappiest, though neither version of Firefox ever felt slow by comparison."
They need to get someone with a backbone to say one is definitely better than the other, so that I can tell them that they are wrong.
shouldn't v1 be in the current section, and the latest nightly be in upcoming?
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Or so many pages, so little time, so here is link to the "print" page -- one page with all the text and pictures and no ads.
PS. Mods, if you are tempted to downmod this post as redundant because there is a similar post above mine in your listing, please check times of posting first.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
How could they miss Seamonkey?
I won't use a 'browser' that doesn't have an integrated WYSIWYG html composer. It's in the tradition of Netscape for browsers to also be composers. In the early days of the WWW, the vision was that people would be creators and communicators, not just 'browsers' in the spirit of cows on a feedlot. Blogs have replaced 'personal home pages' (PHP anybody???) but not completely. And the integrated Editor isn't just for creating sites. With Seamonkey, you can cut and paste off web pages to your local system in a fashion far more powerful than anything from Microsoft. Firefox is a gelded browser.
Internet standards are a known entity and have been so for a long time. Can somebody tell me why programmers of open source browsers decide not to code to standards? Why?
Why then should we expect Microsoft to code to standards?
Am I the only one who noticed this story tagged with "lynx"? Sure. We all know that no browser renders pages faster and with less resource overhead than lynx, but it wasn't one of the browsers being compared.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
This statement from page 4 of TFA bugs me:
It may be true that Apple started the Webkit project, but they did so by forking the KHTML codebase. Saying that Apple "gave birth" to WebKit is stretching the truth. It implies that they created it from scratch, when they didn't. Many other people put in a tremendous amount of work to create the foundations upon which WebKit was built.
A nitpick, perhaps. But it bugs me that the contributions of the KHTML team are being forgotten.
This idea of people making their own sites is what gave us myspace and the like. So sorry, but for the good of humanity and to stop your idea you must be shot. It is for the best.
Also, this function has been taken over by wysiwyg javascript editors in the website itself which is a reason the next bullet will go to the guy who thought this up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He is simply stating the truth. Webkit is a fork of an existing project. Apple did NOT create webkit from scratch. Of course, that is not a bad thing, in fact it is one of the goals of opensource that you can take existing projects and modify them for your own needs BUT it is usually considered nice if you mention this. Apple sure as hell ain't advertising it loudly and sadly a LOT of people on the net seem perfectly happy to ignore it.
It also shows that Apple doesn't exactly return the favor because Safari is not available for Linux. So they used opensource code but do not contribute in the full spirit of opensource.
No law that says they should, but it is important to remember that the only difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is that Bill was succesful in being a monopoly. If the 'success' had been reversed things wouldn't be all that different and perhaps even worse (who do you think is in bed with the media companies more. Bill "MSN" Gates or Steve "Disney" Jobs? Though call)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It is a shame they did not do Firefox on Linux, Firefox on windows XP and Firefox on windows Vista, all on the same hardware. It would have been interesting to see how the underlying OS affects the performance of the browser. Then further compare IE on Vista vs Firefox on Ubuntu.
With netbooks final end user experience is driven by the application on top of an OS and the interface that is used access and control that application.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Can somebody tell me why programmers of open source browsers decide not to code to standards? Why?
The standards can be a bitch. Not just a bitch, but a major bitch. Standards at their best are forward looking and interesting because they are stated without much thought as to how they would actually be implemented and part of the problem is figuring out how too implement them.
In a perfect world, yes, you could go and code something completely to a standard, but a turn of a phrase could blow a design. Then you have to backtrack, re-implement, and repeat the process. You could go for years without a release and one thing that the world shows is that someone who implements most of the standards and delivers on time is better than the guy who is perfect with them. Indeed, quite often, shipping "enough" of a standard is quite often cause for a midcourse correction in the standard itself.
HTML isn't the only culprit here, but it stands out to end users because it is as prevalent as it is comparatively complex. C++ itself relies very heavily on standards and even with numerous holes to allow for vendor implementations, it took years to get good implementations of C++.
Why then should we expect Microsoft to code to standards?
The basic simplistic explanation is that Microsoft recruits what it feels are the best programmers from the best universities and has in the past been willing to invent some rather complicated products and forward looking designs. One asks Microsoft to comply with standards, because, if anyone could be able to, they would, and that, in some circles, is sort of thing a responsible leader of the computing community should do. They are members of these standards bodies, after all, and as such, -agreed- to them.
But, Microsoft is just as prey to the backtrack problem as anyone else, and having all those brains can sometimes mean that when they do have to backtrack, they have to do it spectacularly. That is, the degree to which you have to backtrack in a design tends to raise the costs of modifying your product significantly, and its likely that even they cannot resolve some issues in a timely fashion.
Of course, in the case of IE, they damn well could, but have chosen not to. For them IE is a problem. If they spend money on IE, they might well lose it all because the EU and other anti-trust bodies might well make them give it away or discontinue it or, something. And, until recently, IE has been "good enough for government work". But, with Firefox really coming on, and Google Chrome showing so much promise, now IE8 looks like Microsoft is to re-engage.
This is my sig.
I'm absolutely fed up with Firefox, and no longer care about it's performance. I started out LOVING it back in the 0.9 beta days and still love the web developer extension and tabbed browsing (though that's become standard) but lately it's just been one issue after the other:
* Tired of opt-out upgrades. I don't like software that automatically updates itself or that blocks you from using the full functionality of old versions by, for example removing the ability to search for and add compatible plugins. Don't believe me? Try running firefox 1 and installing updates off the web. Good luck.
* Awesomebar is awful not awesome. I don't care if other people like it. I just want to be able to turn it off. As it stands the only way to get back an address bar that doesn't look like a circus and flash every bookmark up at any passer by is to install TWO extensions: oldbar to get rid of the look and hideunvisited to stop showing off every bookmark in your collection to anyone watching you use the browser.
* Firefox 3 includes "security" functionality (that thankfully can be turned off, ONCE YOU WORK OUT WHAT'S HAPPENING). Symptoms were that if I downloaded a file with firefox and tried to open it with IE, the images would be missing and none of the scripting would even come close to working. At first I thought it was an IE problem, but no. It turns out that each and every file being downloaded with firefox is being flagged as being in the Internet Zone by means of hidden file streams on the NTFS file system. This behaviour is turned off if browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone is set to false, but it's set to true by default. Thanks for the headache, FF devs. I guess I could just not upgrade....except...err...for the point above.
* Somehow infected with pop-up window Spyware (Advertisemen) that only affects firefox cut and copy functionality and only when running as firefox.exe. (Renaming it was enough to work around the spyware. Of course the real solution was to get rid of the spyware itself, but this was one nasty bug to find). At first the FF devs were in denial and were less than friendly about the whole thing but have since included information on this spyware in the info files.
* The extensions are wonderful aren't they? But have you ever looked into coding an extension for FF? It's horrid horrid stuff....and then you'd be constantly having to change it to keep it up to date with the latest version since they constantly break backward compatibility. As you might have guessed by the tone of what I'm saying, as time has gone on I have wanted to bother with this less and less.
Only problem is I hate Chrome even more and there aren't many options, especially if you want something cross platform.
Go on, tag as flamebait or troll. If you really think I'm just saying these things to stir up trouble, you've got wax between your ears.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
From TFA, on Google Chrome:
All the navigation tabs -- Back, Forward, Refresh, and Home -- sit to the left of the Address bar.
All the navigation tabs-- except STOP! No other browser puts Stop and Reload on opposite sides of the screen like Chrome does. Unfortunately, Ben (Goodger?) always WontFixes bug reports on the issue. At this rate, the only hope is for someone to create a Stop-button extension, once that becomes possible.
In the meantime, is it true that nobody uses Stop nowadays, and thus don't care?
Um, anyone know where the Linux version of IE7 is?
It is here: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
PS. Mods, if you are tempted to downmod this post as redundant because there is a similar post above mine in your listing, please check times of posting first.
How did you know there was a similar post?
I'm terribly confused...
Oh, I see...
You must be running firefox with the "oracle" plugin (affectionately known as the pre-post-preview) enabled?
Or are you simply posting from the future?
With all this talk about people giving up their computers for mobile devices, it would be nice to see a mobile device browser rundown. From what I have seen, most mobile browsers are atrocious.
For instance, Safari on the iPhone, which is a descendent of Konqueror, has no option to constrain text to the screen (just as Konq-e did not). There is no Firefox derivative for the mobile world. NetFront is ugly and slow and missing lots of character sets, but at least constrains text. PocketIE is so stupidly slow, memory inefficient, and painful to use it is hard to discuss without liberal use of expletives. Android's webkit browser is designed not to link to local URLs (ie: file:///).
That is only one criticism each, but a more appropriate figure would be much higher for each. The bugs in these browsers are sort of unbelievable. Even worse, unlike downloading from the net, these browsers all have a price. When one buys a mobile device, these browsers are included and part of the purchase price goes to these browsers. Why are the for-pay browsers worse than the free ones?
About the only mobile browser I would even say nice things about is Opera. Opera is missing some features I want, but considering the competition -- or lack thereof -- I cannot complain too much.
It is hard to believe that when everybody seems to believe that we are on the eve of the mobile computing revolution that there can be only one decent mobile browser to choose from. Further, it seems absurd that with all of this browser code floating around on the net, one cannot download and install any given mobile browser but must, instead, be stuck with a device vendor chosen browser for good or ill.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
...at:
Netscape's source was released in 1997. Firefox 1.0 was released at the end of 2004. During those 7 years, Internet Explorer 6 strangled innovation on the web. We're still far from free of its legacy.
If the writers of the article have such a poor sense of perspective on browser history, I'm not trusting their views on browsers now.
I think he is afraid that so many people will post it as a reply to the FP (or something further up), by the time mods get to his post they will be tired of the suggestion.
Netscape's source was released in 1997. Mozilla 1.0 was released in the middle of 200s. During those 5 years, Internet Explorer 6 strangled innovation on the web. We're still far from free of its legacy.
Also, I understand the history of the Mozilla project. I've been pedantic about their history here before.
Mozilla 1.0 was released in the middle of 2002.
How can you talk about the "early days of the WWW" without realizing that Netscape Communicator (which you obviously reference when mentioning that "people would be creators and communicators")and other in-browser editors were middle-age for the Internet?
Those days, to me, are when browsers really began to get too bloated.
And I'm still a few years from 30. I wonder what the 30 year-old geezers on here think of your comment.
Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1, IE 8, Safari 4, and Opera 10."
Man, it's almost as bad as the gaming industry. Nothing but sequels.
Update: Mike Beltzner, Firefox product lead, clarifies that despite what the meeting notes may have suggested, the version bump is not a final decision at this point.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Remember the browser wars, round 1? It seemed that everytime you turned around, there was a new version out with new features and new tags to learn. Features like VRML and javascript, CSS, a dizzying array of choices that seemed like it could go on forever.
That is, until MS killed the browser wars by bundling their browser and coming up with a browser that was 'good enough'. Innovation stalled almost completely. Webmasters, frustrated with the pain of developing cross-platform web sites, frequently bought the koolaid of the all MS dev stack.
The open, free Internet was, for a time, in danger.
But then the guys behind Mozilla, mostly funded by AOL who only used Mozilla to threaten MS in order to get an icon for the desktop, finally started to mature into something good.
And, though years in the making, the browser wars are suddenly back! Suddenly MS releases two versions of their browser rapid-fire, suddenly there's a reason to pay attention!
Just imagine where we'd be if there hadn't been that near-decade of stagnation in the middle? That's the price of the MS monopoly.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.
You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources about it. For a few examples, you can:
Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.
Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.
I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.
AdBlock? What about Opera's Content Blocker and urlfilter.ini?
With Adobe Flash being so ubiquitous on the Web, it is important that your browser handles its flaws in a non-annoying manner.
When Flash misbehaves and locks up and/or crashes, Firefox freezes up completely. Meanwhile, in Chrome you can kill it via the Chrome task manager and continue browsing without having to restart the browser. This is why I use Chrome, and not Firefox.
I would have loved to see this article review how Firefox, Chrome, and other browsers handle Flash.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
Nice list & style, works just as good as FF Adblock for blocking, somewhat better for hiding empty spaces.
One that hath name thou can not otter
OK. Source code is here - I though I had it on sourceforge, but a search there didn't seem to work. It is written in java and an adaptation of something far older (trying to use grammars to generate music). Code is not as nice as I'd like, but it is not intended to be production quality - it is intended as a testbed for hackery and experimentation.
Unpack, cd down to the html directory (down a few levels) and run make. There are scripts (unix) to then try to run different browsers ("run-firefox" for instance).