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Firefox 3.5 Benchmarked, Close To Original Chrome
CNETNate writes "The tests prove it: It's the third-fastest browser in the world, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3. In terms of Javascript performance, Firefox 3.5's new rendering engine places it squarely above Opera 10's beta and Internet Explorers 7 and 8 (based on previous benchmarks), plus it's getting on for being almost as quick as the original version of Google Chrome. Also, the new location-awareness feature was testing in central London, and pinpointed yours truly to within a few hundred meters — easily enough for, say, a Starbucks Web site to tell you where your nearest Starbucks is."
I prefer to read the html code and interpret them myself...
Well, I guess we're in for a thread about how Firefox is still the (greatest|worst) browser in existence because of its (extensions|javascript performance|standards compliance|support for HTML 5). Looks like I need to go and get some snacks and pull up a recliner.
We're #3 - wow that's something to boast about.
According to Nike, this means that your the second loser.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The new benchmark in Javascript performance - slashdot.
...and I wonder if it will be powerful enough to get the line breaks right in "plain text" mode so I don't have to insert "br" tags manually.
No sig today...
I just did my own test and lynx is faster than firefox and chrome.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
It's like my dad use to tell me, "If you're not 1st your last!" Shake and Bake Baby!!!
.. I know 92% of time statistics are made up, but if you read the article you'll see they have a pretty graph, so I think the data is good.
"All I see is 'blonde...brunette...redhead...'"
For one, the government usually doesn't ask for permission first. Not to mention that the information used to determine your geolocation is also derived from something already passed to the web host, your IP, assuming you're not using the WiFi option. Generally speaking web pages can achieve a similar result already with a little effort. As it stands this new feature isn't making new information available to the public, it's just making old information a bit more friendly.
"Firefox 3.5's new rendering engine places it squarely above Opera 10's beta and Internet Explorers 7 and 8 (based on previous benchmarks)" Opera 9.6 =! Opera 10 Beta, or am I missing something here?
Having used Chrome now for a little while after becoming irritated with FFX's memory utilization in particular, I'm going to have to admit that while it is quantifiably better than FFX (and Opera) in many ways, I don't find the speed difference compelling. Indeed, I find myself occasionally wondering if Chrome is actually slower than FFX in some ways. I am still using it, as the memory utilization is significantly better, but the little inconsistencies in presentation and the weird sensation that it feels slower makes me really want to switch back to Firefox. If Mozilla can get off their ass and really plug the memory leaks and utilization, I'd probably switch back today.
That's not to say that Chrome is bad. It's 100% usable, and its much more compatible with sites I use than Opera is. (I tried Opera first after I started looking around). The problem is that it still breaks some sites that aren't broken in IE or Firefox. And whether or not you blame the browser or the non-standards compliant webmasters, the reality is that I cannot switch their sites, but I can switch browsers that I am using. That means I have opened IE 7 windows more while using Chrome, than I have with Firefox.
You have the option of not using the web browser.
Beyond that, I tried one of the location demos. A Firefox prompt opened at the top of the window: "${site} wants to know your location: Share Location, Don't Share" with a checkbox to remember the settings for that site. Go ahead and explain how you could possibly be offended by that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The article is about Firefox, and yet it is shown, in the only quantifiable test that the author conducted, to rank third in a three-horse race against its two speed competitors.
I don't care how fast it loads webpages. What I want to see is a browser that isn't riddled with bugs and easy ways for badware to end up infecting my machine. I'll gladly surf on the slowest browser in the world if it really is proven to be the most secure. So what if I save a few seconds surfing web pages. That is nothing compared to the hours spent trying to get rid of a virus/trojan/keylogger/etc.
Presumably in Seattle it could tell you where your nearest 100 Starbucks are...
I suspect some configuration problem on your end, to be honest. I'm running FF3.5 on XP SP3 inside of VirtualBox. I do not see that behaviour. Using snaplinks, I just opened six tabs, and the current tab remained responsive while they loaded in the background.
Whether the configuration problem is in your VM, within Windows, or in Firefox, I couldn't even begin to guess. In my case, I have 1 gig of memory allocated to the VM - if you have less memory, that might be something to look at.
Of course it's possible that my FF is different than yours in some subtle way. I upgraded from FF 3.5 b4 to FF 3.5 RC1 and then to FF 3.5 final. I really wouldn't EXPECT there to be any real difference, but crap happens, right?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Strange thing...when it restared, it of course had a tab opened saying it was upgraded, etc.
Trouble is...I can NOT close this fucking tab to save my life?!?!? I can close and open others, but, cannot close this one. I can go to other sites on it..but, cannot close it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The Tracemonkey JIT doesn't work on x86_64 in the Firefox 3.5 release. Apparently it works in trunk, but for those on x86_64 machines, you either have to run the 32 bit version or just deal with no JIT.
Why would I ever want to share my location?
Seriously? Imagine you could search Google for something like "sushi restaurant near me", let Google access your location information (once or every time), and get a list of nearby restaurants. Location services are shaping up to be the killer app for mobile computing.
Why would I want part of my window eaten up by an option I don't like?
It's not. When you choose "share" or "don't share" the prompt goes away. It's exactly like the "remember this site's username and password?" prompt.
What happens when I click the wrong one at 5am cause I'm tired?
Oh, it clears out your checking account, sells your dog, and dumps your girlfriend. Honestly, what does any other random program do when you make a dumb choice? Whatever you asked it to do.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As with any benchmark, important questions to ask:
1) Does this measure things that are actually relevant? (For sunspider the answer is
"maybe".)
2) Does it do a good job of measuring them? (For sunspider the answer is "maybe".)
3) Do the scores on the subtests of the benchmark mean anything? (For sunspider, as for
any benchmark, the answer is "only if you're doing that exact thing that the subtest is
doing").
None of which makes V8 slower than what IE is using, of course, across a broad range of loads. But it's pretty easy to write script that's 4x slower in V8 than in Firefox... or 10x faster (as the benchmark above). What really matters to a web page developer is how fast the different browsers run his code, not how fast they run benchmarks. What matters to a user is how fast the different browsers run the code of the sites he visits, not how fast they run benchmarks. Benchmarks are a poor proxy for both, especially when dealing with these early-stage JITs. It's pretty easy to tweak the code just a bit and have it jit a lot worse (or a lot better). It's also pretty easy to tweak the JIT to make particular tests faster, since so much of the game is various heuristics.
All of which is to say that better sunspider performance may or may not translate into better performance on _your_ code, and in fact improving sunspider performance may regress performance on your code if the JIT is seriously being tuned for sunspider...
The only website I've come across that Opera doesn't render properly is Slashdot. By which, the correct statement is actually Slashdot "can't be rendered in anything correctly".
(Opera doesn't crash for me, either, discounting the Flash plugin that crashes, and Adobe have yet to fix. Works fine now that I've uninstalled it.)
Mozilla today announced Firefox 3.5, which will be compulsory for all citizens to install on their machines.
"The public support these plans," claimed the Mozilla spokesperson, "So we have passed legislation that will require Firefox to be installed on all computers, allowing us to keep track of the population, which is essential in the battle against terrorism".
A copy of Firefox is expected to cost around £100. "Most people keep their computers for about 8 years," claimed the Government, "So it's only actually £12.50 per year."