Chrome 4.0 Vs. Opera 10 Vs. Firefox 3.5

Jim Karter writes "In a three-way cage match, LifeHacker threw Chrome 4, Firefox 3.5, and Opera 10 into the ring and let the three browsers duke it out to see which would emerge as the fastest app for surfing the web. Quoting: 'Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, but thorough. We install the most current versions of each browser being tested — in this case, Opera 10, Chrome's development channel 4.0 version, and the final Firefox 3.5 with security fixes — in a system with a 2.0 GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP.'"

Comments

Safari

[rallymatte]

It would have been interesting to see Safari in this test as well.

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article you'd see safari is in most of the tests.

Re:Safari

[abhi_beckert]

Safari is in the test. It's just that they focused on the three new kids on the block, of which safari 4 is not among.

TFA does list results of Safari and IE, as well as other browsers, for every test in a separate graph.

Re:Safari

[rallymatte]

Since when did people start reading TFA here?

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the latest major release of Safari (the 64-bit 4.0.3 that shipped with Snow Leopard) came out a whole 10 days ago. That's old news!
And it's only half again as fast as the last released version due to 64-bit optimizations for the javascript engine. That's no big deal!

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

New versions you fucking moron. Opera 10, Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 4.0 are all newer than Safari 4.

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are saying Opera is a new kid on the block?
Where have you been the past 10+ years?

Re:Safari

[Nadaka]

It also would not run on the not apple certified hardware running win xp that was the reference machine for everything else, so the comparison would be moot.

Re:Safari

[Hal_Porter]

Back in the old days we used to eat people who did that so that the knowledge they had gained unnaturally could be shared amongst the whole tribe. Now people have gone soft. Still one day the old ways will return.

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Google, Microsoft **AND** Apple? The evil would be off the scale.

Re:Safari

[foniksonik]

I think the parent's point is that the 64 bit version of Safari is ~10 days old. Being 64 bit should qualify it as a *new* version over the 32 bit version previously available in pretty much any review process.

Re:Safari

[TeXMaster]

And you are saying Opera is a new kid on the block?

Opera 10 is. When was the last Safari for Windows released?

Re:Safari

[dgatwood]

Normally, I'd disagree, but given how different the 64-bit version of Safari is, in this case, that's a good point. The 64-bit Safari introduces out-of-process plug-ins, which is a pretty huge feature that isn't in the 32-bit Safari 4.

Re:Safari

[Magic5Ball]

I guess Safari for Windows on generic hardware (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3657) doesn't yet exist in your continuity.

Re:Safari

[invalid_user]

Now people have gone soft.

Yes. They get softer if you cook them. Very good for digestion.

Re:Safari

[Nadaka]

I do not know if the latest version that the parent poster mentioned has a port to the windows version or not.

Re:Safari

[Phoghat]

I like mine braised at a low temperature for a longer time, then I finish them on the grill with a nice glase

Re:Safari

[jseale]

Nah, looks like LifeHacker is just using this opportunity to diss other WebKit-based browsers what are not Chrome (think Chromium, Safari, Midori here).

Re:Safari

[tehcyder]

If you read the article you'd see safari is in most of the tests.

It's probably lost in there amongst the flying pigs and non-Catholic popes.

Re:Safari

[tehcyder]

New versions you fucking moron. Opera 10, Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 4.0 are all newer than Safari 4.

You misspelled "apple fanboy". Then again...

Re:Safari

[treeves]

I don't disagree with the interesting mod, as you bring new info - could be just "informative" too - but I think your interpretation of the GP is wrong. He specifically mentions the *initial release dates* of all the browsers, and makes no reference to the latest Safari, or to any versions at all.

Why? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh please! This is for real browsers only.

BTW, is there any discussion where apple fanbois wont jump in touting their beloved products? Give us a break.

Re:Why? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, is there any discussion where Linux fanbois wont jump in touting their beloved saintly and pure and not-evil open-source apps? Give us a break.

General form, for the rest of the articles on Slashdot.

speed

[mdwntr]

I just can't get all that concerned about the speed of my browser. Extra speed never hurts of course but it's hardly a factor in which one I choose.

Re:speed

[derspankster]

I must agree. Of course, being a Linux user, my current choices are limited to Firefox and Opera. I use both, Firefox about 85-90% of the time.

Re:speed

[tygerstripes]

Agreed. How many more stories about browser-speed do we need, given how insignificant the discrepancies are? For most end-users, browser lag is completely dwarfed by restricted bandwidth.

In my case, judicious application of AdBlock and NoScript make this a complete non-issue. I'm far more interested in standards compliancy and security.

Re:speed

[noundi]

I agree, this hype about speeds has gone too far. Sure I admit I'd prefer a faster browser, but I hardly feel the need to make a thorough investigation in order to gain a few seconds. Something rather predictable is that Chrome is loading slower by the version. I got the feeling that Chrome was rather optimized when released, but optimized naturally means that whatever added content will also add to loading time, in contrast to FF which became rather bloated with a lot of, still useful, content. Thus allowing for such performance increases between version 2 and 3.5. Now that Chrome is actually gaining content I can't help wondering whether it will be such an outperformer or not. Still nothing beats adblock. The single most important extension for FF. Until there are worthy equivalents (and no privoxy doesn't quite cut it for this purpose) I can wait patiently for my browser to load.

Re:speed

[Xest]

You're not concerned about the speed of your browser because historically your browser is something that's run too slow for anything interesting to be done with it. If browsers were faster (as they are becoming) they could do things that would suddenly make you care about how fast your browser is. Rendering full blown 3D using just Javasript is one example, and we've seen some demonstrations of this being feasible with some of the newer browsers in recent times.

I followed the same line of thought as you previously until I realised the problem with the browser speed debate isn't how fast browsers do the things they do now, but how slow they do the things we want them to be able to do in the future.

Re:speed

[PouletFou]

You can use chromium on linux. I prefer it to firefox now because when flashplugin crashes (often on x86_64), chromium does not have to be restarted, a simple refresh works.

Re:speed

[TheLink]

I'm more concerned with availability, stability, security and the ability to fail gracefully.

When firefox crashes - everything goes poof. Worse, firefox does NOT let me launch separate firefox processes to workaround that stupidity. It is ironic that I can run separate instances of IE but I can't do that with firefox - an application that should be more "unixy" than IE.

When I tried Google Chrome on Win XP, it did not allow me to launch it as a different user. I prefer to run my browsers using different users - e.g. login as User A, but launch the browser as User B. That way it's a lot harder for the browser as User B to touch my User A stuff. The OS has to be exploited too.

Re:speed

[abshnasko]

In my case, judicious application of AdBlock and NoScript make this a complete non-issue. I'm far more interested in standards compliancy and security.

Reality suggests exactly the opposite. Adblock, Noscript, and whatever other browser plugins you use, in addition to most of the UI code on web pages, is written in JavaScript. Browser speed, and particularly JS execution speed, does matter. In fact, since you are running these applications, which run Javascript to customize your viewing experience, you probably depend on speed more than you think.

Re:speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing hardware is usually _relatively_ easy. Throw up a bunch of benchmarks and your own opinion of how they should be weighted (but make sure to leave the option open for those with other priorities to work it out for themselves). Make note of anything unusual not covered by benchmarks (eg: "it was awkward to install")

Comparing software (like web browsers and OS's) is quite difficult. It's quite difficult to get a scientific, object analysis of things like security. Performance benchmarks, like with hardware, are the easiest thing to do with any chance of being accurate and informative. Considering the fact that this information is quite useful for a notable (if small) section of the market (underpowered machines like the eeepc are still regularly sold), it's beneficial for _someone_. Those like you can just skip over the article. It's not hard, really.

Re:speed

[sznupi]

You know, you could also use a browser that has all this plugin funcionality built-in, without relying on js, if you care about performance...

Re:speed

[sznupi]

Well, there's "Opera Turbo" to mitigate restricted bandwith...

Re:speed

[sznupi]

Well, there's this one little browser that is both helluva snappy and has lots of features, Opera ;p (and yes, it has adblock built-in, no extension needed...you just provide it with a list http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ )

Re:speed

[noundi]

Except it's closed source. I forgot to mention that it's a rather important feature for me to have the source available.

Re:speed

[sznupi]

Fine by me - a completelly valid reason, as long as you're not one of those hypocrites who convinced themselves they need OSS browser on Windows (or when using, say, Nvidia binary blob drivers); especially when talking about software company that plays nice, and is from the area with one of the best business ethics.

Re:speed

[abshnasko]

Would you like to suggest one?

Re:speed

[Ingenium13]

I'm also a Linux user and have been using Chromium for a while now. I switch back and forth between it and Firefox, but I'm starting to stay in Chrome more often. Now only if they could add printing, it would be feature complete compared to the Windows version...

Re:speed

[noundi]

Fine by me - a completelly valid reason, as long as you're not one of those hypocrites who convinced themselves they need OSS browser on Windows (or when using, say, Nvidia binary blob drivers); especially when talking about software company that plays nice, and is from the area with one of the best business ethics.

Hehehe, no sir, we won't have any of that sillyness. Although I do use the proprietary nvidia drivers, since they work best for my card. Unfortunately the choice between nv and nvidia was never as easy as, say, between Opera and FireFox. I'm no fundamentalist, but when given equivalent choices, there's no doubt.

Re:speed

[sznupi]

But you did a have a choice between Nvidia and other manufacturers...

Re:speed

[Ant P.]

being a Linux user, my current choices are limited to Firefox and Opera

...is just another way of saying you're ignorant of any browser not explicitly pushed to you via advertising, like Konqueror and Arora.

Re:speed

[Runaway1956]

Linux user restricted to FF and Opera? I'm not sure that you said what you meant to say. Maybe you meant, "Of the three choices being tested, Chromium is still to unreliable to use on Linux."

As Linux users, we have several browsers available that the larger MS audience doesn't have. Midori, epiphany, Konqueror, Links, Links2 - the list goes on.

If you've never used Midori, you should try it. It's the only browser to get 100% on all the acid tests.

Re:speed

[noundi]

Well if by choice you mean that I should have not accepted an Acer Aspire 5520EG which was being discontinued and was leaving for the crusher, but which my dear brother, who works at a large electronics franchise, cashed out for 250 EUR, almost half the price it was in the store while being sold, then yes, I did have a choice. I chose sanity over vanity. As I said, I'm no fundamentalist. If opportunities come along I will grab them. But if I have the time and money to be picky, then yes I probably would have chosen otherwise. Oh and it's ok to like OSS and still use proprietary software, but no we won't have any of that Windows, I can assure you of that, except for the office. That I'm rather bound to, or would you consider quitting my job as a reasonable choice? ;-)

Re:speed

[wampus]

False believer!

Re:speed

[derspankster]

Thanks for the compliment! Used Konqueror, found it a POS.

Re:speed

[uvajed_ekil]

I agree. This sort of seems like deciding which minivan to buy based on their top speeds. Sure, one may go a bit faster, but would you buy one that couldn't go where you wanted it to or that was the worst looking piece of shit you had ever seen? Or one that didn't have enough seats? I suppose it is nice to know which browser is fastest, but they are all plenty fast enough to meet most people's needs, and there are more important considerations.

Re:speed

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get the same advantage in firefox by using npviewer.

Re:speed

[sznupi]

For a better job, and more ideologically pure, why not? ;p

But seriously, what you've done was of course completelly reasonable (accidentally...using Opera might also fall under similar categories, since its advantages become more apparent the slower the machine and connection is). And so is liking OSS, even if not exclusively using it (I do try to limit my pet projects to OSS). It's mostly just "I must have OSS browser on Windows" that I have a problem with...

Re:speed

[Mozk]

Indeed, these graphs are bullshit. You can't expect to get an accurate tally of load times among browsers when loading websites like YouTube, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo. You can visit YouTube one minute and it'll load lightning fast, but then two minutes later it'll load slow as fuck.

If they're gonna do tests like that, they need to run the websites locally. Otherwise, they're conflating network speeds (which vary at any given moment) and rendering speed.

Re:speed

[GreyWolf3000]

Lynx... I would say that ads and javascript both do not work in Lynx.

Re:speed

[shutdown -p now]

Would you like to suggest one?

Opera fully covers AdBlock + NoScript functionality out of the box.

Re:speed

[zobier]

In my case, being able to use Firebug, Vimperator, Adblock, NoScript, CookieSafe, RefControl, and BetterPrivacy, among others is the reason I won't take any other browser seriously.

Re:speed

[Xest]

What version of Firefox are you using and on what OS? I've not seen Firefox crash in years, but it's certainly become quite sluggish compared to Chrome. Each time Windows update has forced Firefox shut overnight it's always kept my tabs waiting when it came back.

I build web apps for a living and hence use multiple browsers regularly. The only instability I've seen in browsers across a variety of systems is Safari for Windows (which is a horifically bad piece of software) or as a result of plugins in other browsers. Of course this does mean browsers should be doing more to protect themselves from bad plugins, but raw browsers themselves, or at least with only the most trustworthy and solid plugins (i.e. AdBlock in Firefox) have always been solid as a rock for me.

Are you aware of instability in browsers being a common issue? I wasn't under the impression instability had been an issue with browsers (or in fact a lot of mainstream software) for years- even Windows hasn't crashed for me in a long long time!

Still, I agree with you on security, that's always been an issue in browsers and still is, so more work certainly needs to be done there. I'm not sure what you mean regarding availability in browsers, I've never found my browser unavailable. Whilst Chrome has always seemed fast enough for me, IE and Firefox are horribly slow browsers in comparison and I really notice it when tuning page loading speeds. Having large numbers of tabs open makes the poor performance of IE and Firefox ever more obvious too.

Re:speed

[TheLink]

Firefox 3.5.2 (with noscript and adblock plus) on Windows XP Pro.

I have to admit that it was my first firefox crash for a long while, so I submitted the bug report (I normally don't bother with such stuff). Firefox is much better nowadays than the bad old days of 1.x and 2.x (and back then it used to use tons of memory - more than a Windows XP virtual machine with IE :) ).

As for XP, I haven't had a bluescreen on my desktop for years. XP SP3 + all updates is so much better than the original XP that they're almost different OSes :).

Regarding availability, when it comes to browsers I see it more as browser/window launch times, and the ability to use one browser window/tab even if another one has hung or is busy doing who knows what.

Stability is often related to security. Many crash bugs can be security issues. So a crash prone browser is likely to be vastly more insecure than browsers that rarely crash.

Re:speed

[noundi]

"I... have... Windows" that I have a problem with...

Fixed that for you. ;-)

javascript whitelisting ?

[polar red]

It's simple : i want javascripty whitelisting. so FF+Noscript : only thing i can use.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Kjella]

Or just use site preferences in Opera....

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or pera , browse to a page right click and choose "Edit site preferences" You can control if you want scripts running , content blocked, cookies accepted, enable or disable sounds and a few other things on a site by site basis.

I just switched and I am finding the adjustment from FF rewarding but not as smooth as I would think. I believe Opera is a better browser which needs a little more polish than it currently offers. Not in features but in small UI tweaks and additions.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[gnud]

Opera lets you turn off javascript globally, and then whitelist individual sites. Without any extension.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Shin-LaC]

When was the last time you tried browsing without Noscript? What happened?

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Barny]

Like on one of the virtual machines I use to test sites my customers suspect might be giving them spyware? Uh, yesterday we picked up 3 different infections of "smitfraud" based scareware...

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[maxume]

So you visited a site that you expected to give you malware and it gave you malware?

That isn't quite the same thing as browsing. FWIW, the only attacks I have been hit with (running with javascript on) are some pdf exploits (none of them have succeeded).

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[dicobalt]

The lack of NoScript and Adblock Plus are the only things keeping me from using Chrome. They allow for quick and easy permissions to be allowed, there is no editing a text file or reading the source code of a page to find domains, just a couple clicks.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That should make the now all-javascript web really usable for you.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[whoop]

Well, if they want to recruit Firfox people, they need to make one! That's all they will understand. Just say the plugin adds the ability to whitelist sites and they'll be none the wiser.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[metamatic]

Site preferences in Opera is a complete pain to use.

Firstly, there's no toolbar button to bring it up, it's buried under 3 levels of menu selection.

Secondly, the browser doesn't tell you which domains are trying to set cookies or run scripts, so you have to guess.

Thirdly, it's only simple to set preferences for the current domain. You can't set preferences for other domains that the current domain accesses.

Compare to CS Lite + NoScript and you'll see how badly designed and functionality-poor Opera's site preferences feature is.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Hal_Porter]

Site preferences in Opera is a complete pain to use.

Firstly, there's no toolbar button to bring it up, it's buried under 3 levels of menu selection.

Right click, edit site preferences. Not admittedly that I use it much.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Opera let me allow scripts just for this session?

Does Opera show me where the script is actually from and let me choose to allow only that?

Does Opera show placeholders that you can click to enable them?

Can I do this without much effort (compare to the two clicks in NoScript)?

If you answer all that with yes you have a reason to bitch. Otherwise just keep your mouth shut.
The point of NoScript is convenience.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Still, that's *after* you've already visited the page. If you are just coming to the site via a link, it could have already launched a CRSF attack draining your bank account.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Hal_Porter]

Well Opera is immune from that sort of thing because only about 10 people use it so no one bothers to hack it.

Err.

I mean "You're totally right! Opera is a security nightmare! Don't ever use it!"

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Ant P.]

Or FF + RequestPolicy (much more thorough and less bloated than NoScript). Or Konqueror's built-in Javascript whitelisting.

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[Lakitu]

Doesn't whitelisting imply that javascript would be shut off otherwise? You'd be just coming to the site via a link, only to not launch the CSRF since you have javascript disabled.

And it's not under three levels of menus, as the GP said, unless he meant it takes three clicks to get there (click on tools, click on quick preferences, click on edit site prefrences).

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[c6gunner]

Obviously you don't have a teenager living with you. I installed an antivirus suite and an anti-spyware scanner on a relatives computer, and still every time I visit them their kids have somehow managed to get at least 3 new pieces of malware on it. After I replaced IE7 with Firefox - and installed NoScript - I only ever caught one more piece of spyware on the computer. I figured that's about a 3,000% decrease :)

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[shutdown -p now]

Right click, edit site preferences.

Or Preferences -> Shortcuts -> Keyboard, and configure it the way you want...

Re:javascript whitelisting ?

[TheMuon]

First f12 brings up quick preferences

second, yes, the only point in using site preferences is if you have javascript and other things turned off by default and only turned on on sites you choose.

Versions

[Fri13]

Google Chrome 4.0? I just one hour ago upgraded to latest Google Chrome beta of coming 3.0 version from Google labs. (3.0.195.10). If 3.0 has not come yet out, how can they test 4.0?

Re:Versions

[Anonymous Coward]

I think v4 is the developer builds.

Re:Versions

[nycguy]

4.0 version is in the dev channel.

Re:Versions

[Barny]

So they compare the current, stable release of firefox against dev builds of other browsers?

And as others are saying, the fastest way to render a page that has a ton of scripting is of course firefox + noscript.

Re:Versions

[selven]

You can see Chrome 2 and Chrome 4 in some of their comparisons.

Re:Versions

[drinkypoo]

And as others are saying, the fastest way to render a page that has a ton of scripting is of course firefox + noscript.

You mean, the fastest way to partially render a page? Sometimes parts of script-heavy websites are implemented in CSS, but most often even layout elements require javascript. You end up with just navigation, or just content... or just a big empty page. I'm using noscript right now, but you have to factor in the time you spend enabling some or all of the scripts on a page if you default to scripts disabled (as I do.)

Re:Versions

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't know FF 3.5 is stable :P

Re:Versions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just checked and I'm running version 4 of Chromium browser too (have it in my repos but didn't use on daily basis).

I see it as pure marketing, for a browser that isn't even couple years old that sounds like really mature release: 4.0. Damn, it's not even finished yet.

On the other hand, Mandrake started with something like 6.2 or 6.4, skipping all the previous numbers altogether... ;)

Re:Versions

[killthepoor187]

The fastest way to load a page full of javascript is to not load the javascript? Brilliant.

Re:Versions

[Anonymous Coward]

And as others are saying, the fastest way to render a page that has a ton of scripting is of course firefox + noscript.

Uh, if that counts as rendering, then the fastest way to render that webpage is actually to type the url into Notepad and press enter. Takes literally no time at all!

Re:Versions

[Barny]

You end up with just navigation, or just content... or just a big empty page.

You made this too easy.

You state there are three possible outcomes:

1, Just navigation - usually happens when the page is just a nav page anyway

2, Just content - WOO HOO we have the holy grail of the net here

3, Big Empty Page, If you trust the site, start white-listing if you don't, you likely just saved yourself about a minute of absolutely nothing loading to tell you "guess what, all my content is just wind and piss". This is the only instance that takes longer to render than if you had everything on.

Re:Versions

[MobileC]

No. They compared the current, stable release of firefox against the current, stable release of Opera and the dev build of Chrome.

Re:Versions

[c6gunner]

The fastest way to load a page full of javascript is to not load the javascript? Brilliant.

Yep. Just like the fastest way to walk to the store is to drive there. What's wrong with that?

If your objective is to dick around with javascript, then yeah, the solution sucks. But that's not what most people are looking to do. Just like most people don't actually want to WALK to the store, they just want to get there. If two different methods get you to the same objective, go with the faster one.

AdBlock

[mangu]

In my experience, the fastest browser is the one that's running AdBlock, with flash, java, and javascript disabled.

Re:AdBlock

[Chrisq]

You've obviously never run Lynx on a beowulf cluster.

Re:AdBlock

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the most useless browser, you idiot.

Re:AdBlock

[daveime]

Well no shit Sherlock ... how long does it take to render an empty page ?

Re:AdBlock

[Opportunist]

RTFA, dammit, it depends on the browser!

Re:AdBlock

[robot_love]

Thank you, Captain Pedantic.

Re:AdBlock

[Anonymous Coward]

render an empty page

I browse 95% with flash off, java off, and javascript off, and I get by just fine. In fact, I'm posting to slashdot with all of that disabled right now. I don't know where you got the idea "the web doesn't work without flash and javascript". Again, I find that only 5% of the time I need to turn these features on (and usually this isn't for a good reason, but simply because of poor website design choices, such as the brilliant "flash-only site").

And yes, everything runs much faster and smoother with flash and javascript disabled. For easy on/off configuration, use the firefox extensions flashblock and quickjava (better than noscript IMO).

Re:AdBlock

[Hurricane78]

Hey, you forgot to disable that pesky HTML. Let alone all images!

How can you surf that way? Everything but plain telnet is way too cluttered, slow, and has too many holes in its parser!

And don't dare to use and ANSI colors on me! Even if my client could parse them, I'd still have to buy one of those useless color displays!

But I'm thinking about just connecting the Ethernet cable to my headphones and listening to the noise of the packets...

Re:AdBlock

[Anonymous Coward]

... how long does it take to render an empty page ?

I'll let you know once IE8 is done.

Re:AdBlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx p0wns them all - and surprisingly (for a text-mode browser) you can STILL see individual images if you choose. Just hilight the link, and hit enter.

Or you can just open the page in kate instead of hitting "view source" if that's what you want ...

Re:AdBlock

[Hal_Porter]

echo "http://www.vordweb.co.uk/standards/lynx_text_browser.htm" | mail -s "YOU ARE VIOLATING UK Disability Discrimination Act (Part III) YOU KNOW WHO ELSE DIDN'T LIKE THE DISABLED?!" webmaster@website.com

Problem solved.

Re:AdBlock

[msormune]

Lynx, out of the box?

Re:AdBlock

[Blakey Rat]

Using my Netflix Streaming benchmark, your configuration takes... infinite time to begin streaming the movie. On the other hand, Firefox takes approx. 10 seconds, making Firefox the clear winner by a margin of infinite time.

Re:AdBlock

[daveime]

Javascript was first seen in 1995 on Netscape 2.

At what point are YOU going to accept that Javascript in itself is not inherently dangerous, only the flawed security of certain browsers that allow you to script ActiveX controls and interact with things outside the browser model.

I don't understand how you can equate web usability with a form that requires your basic information, niehter the implication that a bit of js implies "bad web site design" ?

Please enter your birthdate - submit - oops, not a valid date.
Please enter your SSN number - submit - opps, not a valid SSN number.
etc etc ...

Javascript allows a lot of client side interaction and saves on all those damn submits ... people want to fill in a form, and know it's correct before they submit it.

Still, you stay in 1995 ... I'm amazed you don't just use Lynx and have done with it.

Re:AdBlock

[zobier]

Unfortunately it takes around 5 seconds to display a blank page in IE8 (on a fresh start on Win XP Pro). Seriously MS, WTF!?

Don't get me wrong I primarily use FF, but as a web developer I need to use all the popular UAs.

Re:AdBlock

[zobier]

As long as the developers are re-checking those datum on the other side of the tube, I don't have a problem with client-side validation. The form should still work without JS though, any site should, anything else is poor design.

Progressive enhancement people!

Re:AdBlock

[Ifni]

In fact, I'm posting to slashdot with all of that disabled right now

And sadly this doesn't support your stance that the pages you are viewing are not devoid of meaningful content...

Thorough?

[E IS mC(Square)]

>> Finally, we take a Windows Task Manager measurement of how much memory is being used at startup and after those eight tabs are loaded. The eight tabs are the same as in the last set of tests--basically, each browser's home page, and then the Google home page, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and YouTube thrown in for good browser-dragging measure.

Not sure how that would make any measurement thorough.

Re:Thorough?

[justthinkit]

Routinely I find that half the memory used by the browser does not show up as such in Task Manager as used by the browser -- in fact if you add all the memory usage figures it is evident that many programs/processes are not fully reporting their memory usage to Task Manager.

So I note the amount of RAM used before loading the browser, after loading all the tabs, and then after I quit the browser -- with the last measurement being the most important to me because it shows what the browser is really up to -- how much memory it used vs what it said it did AND how well it cleaned up after itself. My ideal browser would score "same" and "perfect" respectively on these, the only tests that matter to me.

Summary:

[d3ac0n]

Google Chrome is generally faster, but seems to use more memory than either other browser at start up. However, the performance difference between the browsers is negligible.

Personally, speed isn't everything. The reason I've stuck with Firefox, even through the Awful Bar debacle of 3.0.x, is the functionality it offers via it's add on system. Opera and Chrome simply do not offer this. Until they do, I don't have a good enough reason to switch.

Re:Summary:

[Richard_at_work]

Agreed on the extended functionality - I hate the 'Awesome Bar', but no other browser offers keyword searches or the ability to easily add search engines to the search box (save for IE which I dont want to use).

Give me something to replace 'wp rabbits' and I will dump Firefox in an instant for Chrome or Safari.

Re:Summary:

[Erik Hensema]

What debacle are you refering to? The awesome bar is fast and useful. I rarely click bookmarks these days, I just type the name in the location bar and it will pop up soon enough. It's possible to search through pages titles instead of urls. It's never failed me. So what debacle?

Re:Summary:

[xaxa]

Agreed on the extended functionality - I hate the 'Awesome Bar', but no other browser offers keyword searches or the ability to easily add search engines to the search box (save for IE which I dont want to use).

Give me something to replace 'wp rabbits' and I will dump Firefox in an instant for Chrome or Safari.

In Opera: tools, preferences, search.

Wikipedia is already in there as a default though ("w rabbits").

Re:Summary:

[Richard_at_work]

What debacle are you refering to? The awesome bar is fast and useful. It's never failed me. So what debacle?

You can't disable it - thats the debacle. A lot of people don't like it, but the Firefox devs have essentially told us to shut up and live with it.

Its a fairly fundamental change to browsing habits, and quite frankly I don't wish to change my habits on the whim of someone else.

Re:Summary:

[A Friendly Troll]

Agreed on the extended functionality - I hate the 'Awesome Bar', but no other browser offers keyword searches or the ability to easily add search engines to the search box (save for IE which I dont want to use).

Start Opera. Go to a website not included by default in its search options. Right click on the search field. Choose "Create Search".

Give me something to replace 'wp rabbits' and I will dump Firefox in an instant for Chrome or Safari.

Built into Opera before Firefox had it.

Re:Summary:

[xorsyst]

no other browser offers keyword searches

Like most cool browser features, Opera had it first.

Re:Summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

about:config
set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0

Not exactly the way it was, but closer.

Also, try extensions:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Personally I like the awesome bar, but having choices are a good thing.

Re:Summary:

[d3ac0n]

You can't disable it - thats the debacle. A lot of people don't like it, but the Firefox devs have essentially told us to shut up and live with it.

Pretty much.

Although at least you can disable some of the more annoying aspects of it via Tools - Options in 3.5.x. Basically, I jumped from 2.20.x to 3.5.x after getting frustrated with 3.0.x and deciding to stick with the 2.20.x version for a good long while.

While I don't think we will ever get the proper revert to the 2.x style URL bar that SHOULD happen, as long as we can easily disable the crap parts of the Awful Bar without having to dig in about:config I'm satisfied.

Re:Summary:

[macshit]

You can't disable it - thats the debacle. A lot of people don't like it, but the Firefox devs have essentially told us to shut up and live with it.

C'mon, they haven't really said that -- you can actually config it in various ways, e.g., setting "browser.urlbar.matchbehavior" to 3 (using about:config), and using "browser.urlbar.maxrichresults" to control the display. There's also some more configuration being added in newer versions, e.g., see this bug.

Re:Summary:

[Richard_at_work]

The problem is, none of those suggestions (and the myriad of other suggestions people have come up with) actually revert the address bar to the FF2 behaviour - they simply massage the current address bar in various ways, and it shows.

Re:Summary:

[d3ac0n]

Why the heck was my comment marked "Offtopic"? It's EXACTLY on topic, it's a SUMMARY OF THE FREAKING ARTICLE!

Sounds like I got a FF Dev's panties in a bunch with my follow-up comment. Can somebody mod my comment http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1360227&cid=29339165 up please? That was an unfair and inaccurate mod.

Re:Summary:

[kamochan]

Saft for Safari.

Documented in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Searching#Browser-specific_help. There's even a trick to do it in IE.

Re:Summary:

[d3ac0n]

Yes, they have.

The general user base was NOT included in the discussion about the Awful Bar during development. Now, the only way to communicate with the Devs is through the incredibly obtuse and confusing bugzilla system by bugging a problem. After FF 3.x was released, ANY "bug" of the Awful Bar has been immediately and rudely closed as "not a problem, will not be fixed".

So basically, the FF Devs created the Awful Bar in a vacuum, and have refused to listen to any criticism in the only communication channel available to the public.

That sounds VERY much like "Shut up and live with it" to me.

Re:Summary:

[Richard_at_work]

I don't want to configure it in various ways, I want to disable it entirely. Wheres that option?

Re:Summary:

[Siberwulf]

Are we talking about the searching, or just the look and feel of it? If it is the latter, I've always just run the oldbar addon to revert back to the FF2 feel. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227 YMMV though

Re:Summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hearing a few loud people complaining about the awesome bar, but I can't for the life of me figure out what they don't like about it. It works fine for me, and I would imagine works fine for most people which is probably why the devs put it in and kept it in. I think the standard slashdot answer to the "well I don't like them changing my browser habits" is: go fork the project. Or just grab the code and do it yourself. Or use Konquerer or some other browser.

Re:Summary:

[hjrnunes]

I'm not sure what you're saying but Chrome allows you to do that from the very first version. In fact, I'm not sure if it wasn't the first to come up with it. While I used Windowz, I instantly switched to Chrome from Firefox exactly because of the search shortcuts.

From your sig I infer you use OS X, so you might wanna try OmniWeb. It's a very good browser that has become freeware and recently updated with the new Webkit engine. It offers site preferences since god knows when... It's actually the most feature complete browser I've ever seen. You don't need a lot of the usual add-ons because there is similar built-in functionality. And it has that "wp rabbits" feature you like so much - as do I. Oh and vertical tabs which in my opinion rock. And the plugins to do that in Firefox suck.

Re:Summary:

[JohnBailey]

I keep hearing a few loud people complaining about the awesome bar, but I can't for the life of me figure out what they don't like about it.

Because people using the same computer will see their porn bookmarks. Embarrassing for a 15 year old when their mothers find the carefully hidden list by typing in something innocent in the address bar.

Re:Summary:

[sznupi]

BTW, not saying it's like that in your case, but in most cases when people say "I can't use Opera because it lacks functionality from those FF extensions"...well, it usually has it (and often the idea even originated from it...)

In case of Opera it's good to have a closer look...

Re:Summary:

[Richard_at_work]

Primarily I am talking about the searching.

Re:Summary:

[SanityInAnarchy]

KDE4 has this not only built into Konqueror, but into KDE itself.

That is, I can currently do alt+f2, gg: foo, and it will open a new Konqueror window Googling for 'foo'.

Re:Summary:

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Because people using the same computer will see their porn bookmarks. Embarrassing for a 15 year old when their mothers find the carefully hidden list by typing in something innocent in the address bar.

I think you mean embarrassing for a stupid 15 year old who has no idea how to use multiple user accounts or Firefox 3.5's Private Browsing mode.

Re:Summary:

[lolwhat]

Like most cool people, I don't care.

Re:Summary:

[Wildclaw]

In Opera: tools, preferences, search.

You don't even need to go to the preferences menu, unless you want to edit any of the existing entries. To add a new entry, just right click the search textbox and select "Create Search".

Re:Summary:

[BitZtream]

15 year olds? Dude, I'm thirty, its just as embarrassing when my mom sees them now.

Re:Summary:

[DocHoncho]

In chrome if you right click in the address bar there's an option called "Edit search engines"

Adding one entails giving it a name, a url and adding a %s in the url where the query is to go.

I added one for the KoLWiki and it works great. Very nice.

Re:Summary:

[Blakey Rat]

In other words, Opera has a shitty UI which makes it nearly impossible to even figure out what features it has.

Re:Summary:

[sznupi]

Uhmmm...no. It is just natural that you realise a feature exists if you activelly seek & install it on a barebones base, if you add them incrementally. Doesn't make the whole UI great (actually, the contrary might be true since there are so many small, disconnected extension projects).

Don't confuse UI that is quick & easy to learn with one that's quick & easy to use; feature-full apps NEVER fall into the first category.

Re:Summary:

[WiiVault]

Apparently the mods don't have a sense of humor today.

Re:Summary:

[JohnBailey]

I think you mean embarrassing for a stupid 15 year old who has no idea how to use multiple user accounts or Firefox 3.5's Private Browsing mode.

That too.

Re:Summary:

[zuperduperman]

> Personally, speed isn't everything.

You know, after using Chrome I've decided that actually, for me, speed IS everything - or at least, the most critical factor in my browsing experience.

I can't explain why rationally that it matters so much whether it takes 0.2 seconds or 0.8 seconds for a tab to open, or 1 second instead of four seconds to cold start a new browser instance. I just know that it completely changes how I feel about the browser from it being a tool I'm fighting with and struggling to control to something that's almost like it's an extension of my own body. It's the same as with cars - people obsess over how a vehicle 'handles' which has no practical impact for the everyday purpose of travelling from A to B, and yet a car that handles poorly will be shunned because it just feels wrong.

I'm actually happier with Chrome + ads than I am with FireFox and no ads because Chrome actually feels *more* responsive than FireFox even though it is burdened with the ads as well. In fact, I half suspect that this may be a part of the reason Google invested in Chrome.

Re:Summary:

[macshit]

I don't want to configure it in various ways, I want to disable it entirely. Wheres that option?

Perhaps "browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled"

[Go into about:config and type "urlbar" in the filter box; you'll see a bunch of related options.]

Re:Summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome does this even easier, but admittedly too behind the scenes for most users to pick up.

Go to a webpage you've never been to before, as a completely random example I'll say vcdq.com
Type anything at all in the search box and hit submit.

Now in any chrome address bar, type "vcdq" and hit tab, the url bar should now say "[Search vcdq.com]" and anything you type after that is search terms.

You can manage the keywords and such as explained http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95653

Re:Summary:

[AniVisual]

That, or they identify with him.

Memory

[NoYob]

I made a bee line to the memory tests and based on my browsing habits, Firefox is the winner.

Re:Memory

[hattig]

Of course using Windows Process Monitor to get memory usage for a application like Chrome which has different processes per tab/plugin leads to horrendously incorrect results, which the article acknowledges in an edit, without any attempt to get the correct figures. Shame really, as this functionality is built into Chrome...

Re:Memory

[sopssa]

One thing these tests don't take into account is the UI responsiveness, in which Opera really owns the other browsers - everything just seems fast and responsive. Chrome isn't that far, but you can still see how things like opening new tabs takes some time and isn't "instant". Firefox is also behind on UI responsiveness, and I probably dont have to mention IE (3-5 secs to open new tab, seriously?).

This is what MS tried to improve in Win7 too. Even if its not really faster technically but just feels so, it improves usability a lot.

Re:Memory

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

IE 8's multiprocess architecture hurt its tab opening responsiveness. Most of the plugins apparently have to be reloaded for each tab and some of them take forever. I discovered that if I turned off some stuff like Macfee scriptproxy and Java SSV helper, I could make new tabs open .5 sec. Still, if Chrome can do it fast, I have no clue why IE 8 can't do just as well.

Re:Memory

[whoop]

everything just seems fast

So true. More benchmarking tests need to include seems per second. I mean, come on, it's the 21st century and all! At least, it seems to me they should. That way their reports will seem much more seemingly accurate to what I want them to seem. ... I think.

Re:Memory

[Ash Vince]

Please bear in mind they tested on the latest stable version firefox, not the latest alpha 3.6 which has various speed improvements. Yet Chrome they used a development branch. Seems a bit biased in Chromes favour.

Re:Memory

[Hal_Porter]

You could measure the average time from clicking a UI element to something happening. Actually I wish people would test things like this rather than how quickly the Javascript implementation can crack brute force crack DES or whatever benchmarks Google are pushing so their prototype stuff can finally be released without people mocking it for being bloatware that is worse than Vista.

It would also let me avoid Java applications - we have some horrible intranet ones at work that feel like your mouse has a dodgy button or something - you click stuff, assume it didn't notice it and click another couple of times before you see an hour glass cursor. If people tested for UI responsiveness at least I could avoid things that don't have it in situations were I have a choice.

And, as a bonus it would encourage people to stop doing things that could potentially take more than a few milliseconds in the UI thread of Windows applications. In a very real sense UIs are a real time system and it is time more people realised the implications of that.

Re:Memory

[Z8]

If you look at the graphs, they tested both Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.5b99, and 3.5b99 was actually significantly slower for every test (except Javascript, for which they were about the same). Also Chrome 4.0.203.2 seems to be slower and use more memory than Chrome 2.0.

Re:Memory

[SanityInAnarchy]

They also used a beta of Opera, if I recall -- and they did compare to stable versions, also.

Re:Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree.

Why test the stable version of Fx vs the development version of Chrome?

Re:Memory

[BrokenHalo]

Speed isn't the only important criterion.

Empirical evidence appears to show that Firefox is not always the fastest browser around. However, it offers a comprehensive and mature set of add-ons or extensions that make it almost indispensable for people like me. Not that I use so many (Zotero, Adblock, Flashblock, Better Privacy, Page Saver), but just enough to make me reluctant to change.

In the past, my choice of browser used to revolve around whether my bookmarks were easily importable. But over the last few years, I have tended to go straight to Google, and I no longer have any idea how useful my bookmarks file really is.

Re:Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

3.5b99 was a preview for 3.5, even further away from the current 3.6 then 3.5 itself. Try again.

Re:Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're taking longer than 400ms to open a tab, you need to disable your crappy browser addons.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ieinternals/archive/2009/07/20/IE8-Performance-and-Speed-Tips.aspx

Re:Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Firefox is the loser, by far. These "tests" were not only unscientific, but they weren't remotely thorough as stated. It looks like they just fired up each browser, ran through the paces and declared a winner.

Firefox is notorious for its memory hole where it leaks memory over time and starts using more and more CPU resources until it becomes unbearably slow. These tests should have tried leaving all of the browsers running for a week and see how well they fared. In my own experience, Opera works very well even after weeks of continuous use. Chrome seems to work fine after running for several days, but I don't use it very much so I can't give a proper evaluation at this time. Firefox will start exhibiting signs of resource hogging after only a couple of days of normal use.

Re:Memory

[Runaway1956]

The user's subjective experience will sell a product - or not.

I don't care HOW MANY benchmarks a browser might win. If I click a link, and the browser changes to a plain white page, then sits there for 5 seconds, it sucks. On the other hand, if I click a page, immediately see title, wait second for the background, another second for banners to fill in, yet another for the adverts, etc, I can SEE something happening. Even if it takes a full second longer for the page to be finished, I feel like the browser is faster.

So many professionals shoot for the ultimate benchmark figures, with no clue about what the user perceives.

Go ahead, fire up all the browsers you can get your hands on, and test them on some really shitty overbloated page with nonstandard code. Something that you KNOW actually works, but takes three eternities to load. Then come back and talk about seems/second. ;^)

Re:Memory

[BitZtream]

Google's development branch is about 100 times more stable than Mozilla's development branch, so its not really all that biased. When Firefox gets their shit together and starts running the show like professionals and not Microsoft, they can get the same treatment.

Re:Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

"Various speed improvements", doesn't every release have that in the description?

Re:Memory

[wampus]

I haven't noticed this since the end of the 2.x days. 3.5 has been open for a week on this box. Between flamewars and dumping a bunch of multi-megabyte pics into other fora, it's sitting at 120MB of RAM. This one actually gives memory back when it's finished.

Re:Memory

[quixote9]

I run Firefox 3.5.2 and 3.6 in Ubuntu. No memory problems. And with Adblock and Noscript, its speed beats the pants off any of the other browsers. The so-called "speed" tests are done without those critical add-ons. That makes them meaningless. As other commenters have said, what matters is the user experience, not how fast some arcane benchmark runs.

As for Chrome, who cares how fast it is? It makes zero sense to rely on an advertising giant. Once they've got market share, kiss all that speed goodbye because it'll be used up tracking clicks and serving ads.

Re:Memory

[Blakey Rat]

I'd rather have a computer that seems fast but takes 3 hours to do a video encode, than one that seems sluggish but could do the same video encode in 2 hours.

Your opinion is your own, of course.

Re:Memory

[Mex]

In Opera 10: Tools > Options > Advanced > Navigation section > Render pages while loading.

Default is 1second, change it to 0 or "as it's loading" (something like that, I use the spanish version). Opera is ridiculously fast. I also love the mouse gestures, and there's probably some Adblock equivalent but it seems unethical(and a little petty) to block ads, I find that blocking pop ups is enough.

Re:Memory

[sopssa]

Yes, because video encoding in the background and UI responsiveness in browsers is exactly the same thing.

And this is something that is only about programming and design, not the computer.

Re:Memory

[Trouvist]

Think of how much electricity would be wasted, on a very large scale, if every computer-based operation took 50% longer merely to make it seem like it was "responsive"... your ideas are scary, both from a programmer's point of view and from a utilitarian's point of view

Re:Memory

[Trouvist]

Except, of course, for all of the debugging code built into the dev-branch executable that wouldn't normally be there (both inline and out-of-normal-scope). All that extra code actually equates to a slower experience...

Re:Memory

[zobier]

FYI 3.5b99 is the pre 3.5 beta from their old tests, not the predecessor to 3.6

Re:Memory

[elcid73]

this is the still the primary reason I use Opera as my daily driver.

Re:Memory

[snadrus]

Programmers aren't getting smarter. It would be nice if OS maintainers realized that and better separated UI threads & work threads as a standard practice. It has been done well before.

Re:Memory

[Hal_Porter]

Windows has support for worker threads for decades. It's not hard to design your Windows application to have pass a structure into a thread to do time consuming tasks. Still I see a lot that freeze up completely doing something which obviously could take a long time worst case.

Re:Memory

[Ash Vince]

Maybe, but since they didnt test it we do not really know, we are just guessing.

Re:Memory

[NFNNMIDATA]

The only test I care about is the one where I click the Firefox and Chrome shortcuts, in that order, and Chrome opens first every time. Until Firefox can remedy that, I just can't make myself use it anymore.

Re:Memory

[thexile]

It's IE by M$ duh!

Re:Memory

[bhiestand]

Programmers aren't getting smarter. It would be nice if OS maintainers realized that and better separated UI threads & work threads as a standard practice. It has been done well before.

Read up on Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch if you haven't already. It seems like a much better system, taking threading out of the programmer's hands entirely.

Safari 4?

[Val314]

What about Safari 4 with its fast JavaScript engine?

Re:Safari 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA? Safari was included

Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[gadget junkie]

Having read the article, I found two things particularly interesting:

1. the author did not put any version of MS internet explorer in the Arena. Now that's understandable, all windows system come with IE installed, so the rationale, as I see it , is that there's no point in benchmarking a program that no one has to choose on its own. I only wonder what will happen if Europe goes forward in forcing MS to sell OEM copies of Win7 without IE installed.

2. the whole "speed" thingy is rather moot in my view. I've been using Firefox for some time now, and I DO appreciate the fact that fewer resources are used, even at the expense of a couple of seconds of starting and/or loading time. After all, it's not a multiplayer game where milliseconds seem to count.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[gbarules2999]

After all, it's not a multiplayer game where milliseconds seem to count.

You forget you're on Slashdot. The Windozers will race to post XKCD 619 on every Linux-related story, and it gets neck and neck for the karma boost that "+5 Insightful" offers.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not moot. without this speed war launched by Chrome, you couldn't say something like "I DO appreciate the fact that fewer resources are used"...

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[MartinSchou]

The Windozers will race to post XKCD 619 on every Linux-related storyWell, first I misread your post as talking about http://xkcd.com/629/ and wondered what the hell you had been smoking.

But are you claiming that http://xkcd.com/619/ is somehow a completely silly point?

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[YourExperiment]

the author did not put any version of MS internet explorer in the Arena. Now that's understandable, all windows system come with IE installed, so the rationale, as I see it , is that there's no point in benchmarking a program that no one has to choose on its own.

Without a benchmark for IE, how do you know whether to replace IE on the computer you just bought with one of the above browsers? IE might be the quickest browser there is. *

* Hahahahhahahaha!

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[gbarules2999]

The Windozers will race to post XKCD 619 on every Linux-related storyWell, first I misread your post as talking about http://xkcd.com/629/ and wondered what the hell you had been smoking.

But are you claiming that http://xkcd.com/619/ is somehow a completely silly point?

No, I'm claiming that quote tags suck. Also, that XKCD 619 isn't goddamn funny anymore because it was played out so much that it became unfunny, then funny again, and then boring as hell.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes please elaborate; I wondered the same thing.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[SanityInAnarchy]

What's frustrating is that in the space of all this, I also upgraded from a 32-bit Flash 9 on Ubuntu to a 64-bit Flash 10.

That Flash 9 could play fullscreen video. Not, you know, well, but it could do it. And this Flash 10 turns it into a fucking slideshow.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[gbarules2999]

Well, isn't 64-bit Flash in an alpha stage right now?

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[colonslash]

the author did not put any version of MS internet explorer in the Arena. Now that's understandable, all windows system come with IE installed, so the rationale, as I see it , is that there's no point in benchmarking a program that no one has to choose on its own. I only wonder what will happen if Europe goes forward in forcing MS to sell OEM copies of Win7 without IE installed.

I assumed it was because IE isn't competitive. Including IE would stretch the scale on the various graphs so you wouldn't be able to discern the differences between the browsers from competent software engineers.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[AceofSpades19]

Its because you run ubuntu, the slowest and most unstable distro ever made

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[celle]

"You forget you're on Slashdot. The Windozers will race to post XKCD 619 on every Linux-related story, and it gets neck and neck for the karma boost that "+5 Insightful" offers."

There's a good reason to ban all windozers from a linux users board.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[SanityInAnarchy]

Citation needed.

Also, no it's not. Even if I ran the slowest and most unstable distro ever made, it doesn't explain why Flash 9 would work, and Flash 10 would turn into a slideshow.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[SanityInAnarchy]

Indeed it is, but it works well enough, except for this one issue.

I suppose it's possible that this is one thing which hasn't been ported to 64-bit, and I should try a 32-bit Flash 10. But it is kind of frustrating that this "alpha" works flawlessly for everything I throw at it, including an "alpha" version of 64-bit Chromium, except for fullscreen.

In other words, that XKCD is still relevant.

Especially because it's not even Linux's fault. It's whatever asshat they have working for Adobe, who somehow claims using XVideo (what mplayer uses to play fullscreen 1080p flawlessly while Flash struggles with 480) would be impossible because of some bullshit like color spaces. Which might've been a valid argument, if Gnash hadn't already implemented XVideo support.

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[Anonymous Coward]

what you really mean when you combine posting and linux is 456

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[zobier]

Fixed!

See Changelog

Re:Raw speed is probably a moot point....

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/619

phew. glad i got that out of the way. o wait....

all browsers slow on robbIE's site

[Anonymous Coward]

mynuts won; so advanced it's like moleasses.

And the irony is...

[memphis.barbecue]

... according to NetApplications, the most popular browser version (IE 6) wasn't considered for the test.

How about that thar ActiveX blocker, eh?

--

Yesterday, I walked out to my car with a bag of trash in one hand and my laptop in the other. When (after stopping by the dumpster), I made it to my car with the trash, something was wrong.

Graphing Fail.

[hattig]

Ugh, graphs like this review has should start at 0.

It's incorrect to start them at higher figures, it exaggerates the actual difference in results.

It's basic stuff this, you're taught it at school early on.

Re:Graphing Fail.

[AmaranthineNight]

You're assuming they don't want to exaggerate the difference in results.

XP, 2 Gigs RAM

[lobiusmoop]

I'd be more interested on the speed tests on machines with smaller memory, since a big win in browser development for me is bringing older kit back into play by making it more comfortable for websurfing. (I'd also be interested in seeing browser comparisons under Linux instead of XP too)

Re:XP, 2 Gigs RAM

[sznupi]

There's a pretty easy answer to that one - use Opera. Its snappiness means it's enjoyable on older machines (even my old dual pII 266 with 192mb of ram is fine).

Probably the reason when it has quite big market share in many ex-Eastern Block countries, where PCs have much longer life. And why it's available (with basically the same engine) for smartphones for so many years / works good even on old & slow ones (and how many years do we wait for mobile Mozilla?...)

Re:XP, 2 Gigs RAM

[Rockoon]

I also believe that this is the explanation for why Opera is so popular in some areas of the world. Its just flat out more efficient where it really matters.

As far as the memory usage tests they did in the article .. thats always horseshit. If I have 1 gig of free memory before I run my browser, and my browser can better itself by using it all.. then it should! Opera has used a memory cache for web pages and so forth for a very long time and I suspect that most other browsers now do as well.

The real test, as you say, is how they deal with low memory situations. I remember how netscape completely and utterly sucked to the point of being unusable on a 4MB windows 3.1 system, while the same era Opera and even Internet Explorer were actually usable. This was back when 4MB systems were still quite common in the world.

Choices?

[WED Fan]

Of course, being a Linux user, my current choices are limited to Firefox and Opera.

So, what you are saying is that if you used XP, you wouldn't be limited by those choices. Windows gives you more choice?

Well, it does, unless you limit your choices by placing preconditions.

Re:Choices?

[derspankster]

No, I didn't say that, you said that. I choose to run Linux and am perfectly happy about my choice. I was reminded that I could use Chromium with Linux. I did try Chromium early on found it pretty rough around the edges.

Re:Choices?

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's gotten a lot better -- and for that matter, I'm posting this from the nightly. I use it as my normal browser.

That, and Google Chrome has a developer version out for Linux also.

Re:Choices?

[Runaway1956]

May I ask what distro you use? On Ubuntu Ibex 64 bit, Chromium seems terribly unstable. It's quite possibly due to my configuration - for instance, I've uninstalled and reinstalled several versions of Webkit, and various libraries. I'm always trying out some new thing (new to me, anyway) so my system can't be called "standard". Maybe I should try a clean install of Ubuntu in a VM to test Chromium's latest?

Re:Choices?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yeah, I'm on Jaunty 64-bit. And I'm using the Chromium nightly PPA -- Google for it -- means I have to download maybe 10-20 megs per day, but it also means I don't have to compile anything.

Exactly, the question is now why should I change?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is the main point these days; browser speed has long been "good enough".

I have yet to see a compelling reason to move from Firefox since I moved from IE many years ago. Memory was getting a little out of hand with version 2 but that seems to be have been nailed now and so much so according to that article it's still better than the others.

* Decent developer plugins - check
* Quickly patched - check
* Automated Updates - check
* Standards compliant - check (I admit could be better though)

I was interested in syncing bookmarks etc and Mozilla already have a working solution with Weave which seems to work well between my work desktop & laptop.

"Centrino Duo Processor"

[Timosch]

Sorry guys, but Centrino is not a processor. It is a platform, specifying a certain processor, graphics chipset etc..

Re:"Centrino Duo Processor"

[darthflo]

Sorry Timosch, but Centrino does not specify the graphics chipset. It seriously constricts the choice of mobile chipsets, but discrete graphics are an option e.g. using PM965 in "Santa Rosa" Centrino.

If you're being pedantic, do it right.

Re:"Centrino Duo Processor"

[Timosch]

If you're being pedantic, do it right.

Touche. Got me. :-)

same functionality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it "clean and clear" installation of each browser?
Opera offers lots and lots of functions at standard, which have to be added to FF via many plugins. And plugins makes FF slower.
Don't know about chrome, but probably it will be similar to FF.

I need mouse gestures, popup blocker, content/ad blocker, better pagebar, preferences for each page, password manager, built in grammar check (new in opera10) and some more... I don't care if clean FF is faster or slower then opera. I cant work with clean FF. I need browser with same functionality, and than we can speak about speed.

Evil Overloards

[ynohoo]

They obviously ignored how long it takes Chrome to send all your personal information to their "Evil Overlords"(TM Google inc.)

Re:Evil Overloards

[unick]

Parent isn't flamebait. This happened to a friend (he installs networks, firewalls, etcetera for a living, so I suppose he knows his stuff): installed a new webserver on a new dns that was never on the internet before. To test firewall settings he surfed to a URL on that webserver using chrome (it happened to be installed on that client's pc). Half an hour later he sees google spiders hitting exactly that rather obscure URL... Freaks me out!

Re:Evil Overloards

[Nicolay77]

That actually sounds very useful for SEO.

Re:Evil Overloards

[SanityInAnarchy]

Did he, by any chance, disable the phishing/malware protection?

And did he actually open up a packet sniffer and see those URLs go to Google? Or is it possible this was a coincidence, seeing as it's only really happened once?

Re:Evil Overloards

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Iron, then.

Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[David Gerard]

on Unix, anyway. Exit Firefox, then do:

for i in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/*.sqlite; do sqlite3 $i "vacuum;" ; done

FF3.x does everything in sqlite. Some of the tables fill with crap 'cos deleted rows are marked "deleted" rather than actually being deleted and compacted. I hope future versions will run a vacuum automatically every now and then.

On this Ubuntu 9.04 box I had to apt-get install sqlite3.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[mindcorrosive]

Or use the Vacuum Places Improved (what kind of name is that anyway) addon from AMO:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13878
Available for FF 3.5+. Labelled experimental at the moment, but works just fine. Works magic with the "awesomebar" suggestion speed: fetching suggestions has never has been so snappy.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[David Gerard]

Yep! Until someone suggested this (compacting the tables), I'd assumed the only way to fix this was to delete my profile. An extension is a good place to put it, with a view to it going into the base.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[Anonymous Coward]

MY HERO!

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[ChienAndalu]

Thanks. I won't ever do this, but thanks for giving me one more reason to stick to chrome.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[David Gerard]

*cough* indeed. I was somewhat disconcerted. I'm writing this from Chromium 4.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[BitZtream]

Just for reference, theres no need to exit Firefox, sqlite can deal with multiple processes accessimg the same file.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[David Gerard]

Exxxxcellent! Then there's NO DAMN REASON this shouldn't be in the main program ...

Memory usage vs. memory efficiency

[johnnysaucepn]

Why do people insist on saying 'X browser is using memory more efficiently' when all they can really conclude is that 'X is using less memory'? If that memory is being used to appropriately cache resources, speed up history navigation, etc., etc. then it's not being wasted. Freeing up memory that you're going to be wanting to re-allocate and re-fill in a couple of minutes is truly wasteful. When you only test how fast a page is ON INITIAL LOAD, you get no idea about how effectively memory is being used.

Site preference in Opera laggy

[improfane]

My computer has 3GB memory and that dialogue takes ages to disappear and appear.

It's very slow for some reason. The Opera preference panel sometimes freezes when I press Ok. ...wonder if having 100s of tabs open has anything to do with it.

Re:Site preference in Opera laggy

[Sancho]

Nope. I used to have this problem with just a couple of tabs open. This problem is what drove me from Opera back to Firefox.

Re:Site preference in Opera laggy

[sznupi]

...though ususally, even if only with few tabs, after some long browser usage? (at least for me) I'm not sure if it's anything more than a lot of things this dialog needs got swapped out in the meantime.

Re:Site preference in Opera laggy

[Sancho]

Maybe.

I just tested Opera 9.something on OS X. I cleared out everything and added a couple of site preferences. Adding things was quick, but once I hit OK, the dialog froze for 10 seconds.

More importantly, use of this dialog probably won't be under these circumstances. You'll probably be browsing along, come across a site which needs Javascript, decide to allow it, and then hit this dialog. So if the number of tabs or length of your browsing session increases the wait, it's still quite the issue.

Then there's the fact that NoScript does much more than just whitelisting Javascript, and that functionality is not duplicated.

Re:Site preference in Opera laggy

[sznupi]

I don't know...in vast majority of cases you won't visit that site again, you don't have to whitelist it permanently - Quick Preferences/F12 is suffiecient (and not laggy under any circumstances)

As for more funcionality - disabling inline frames gets you closer I guess.

Re:Site preference in Opera laggy

[richlv]

ok, so it's not me. opera dialogs are SLOW. i use opera as my primary browser for years, and i don't understand why is it so awfully, incredibly slow.
simply opening makes you think it missed the click. clicking 'ok' makes you think they make it so slow deliberately.

it's not the only dialogue that is dog slow - opening and closing tools->advanced->cookies both take 9 seconds.

i would imagine web developers would be mighty pissed off when debugging cookie related problems.

Re:Site preference in Opera laggy

[jp10558]

I just tested. In Opera 10 for me, it appears instantly. In older versions there were some painful dialog delays, but for me, they seem to be mostly solved in 10, at least in the dialogs I have used since it's been out in Final.

How incredibly important!

[Opportunist]

We don't care about security. We don't care whether the browser hogs half a gig or more. We don't care whether it can render a page correctly or makes CSS look like a 5 year old had a field day with some sharpies.

We care whether a page renders 0.223 seconds faster.

Sorry if that sounds like flamebait, but do I care about speed in a time when speed difference is measured in fractions of seconds? Even if it's seconds. Does that really matter? I'm not too convinced that the browser speed plays any significant role in the loading speed of a page when you have crappy servers crammed into farms that oversold their capacity hundredfold and ISPs doing the same.

Re:How incredibly important!

[Hurricane78]

Let' *again* calculate why your browser "hogs" half a gig of RAM:

How many tabs do you need for that? Well, Let's say your average tab has 4 pages. With 1660x950 pixels (without the window borders & co) in uncompressed (what you need in memory) full color they are coming to 18 MB. Now add the uncompessed source files in the cache, the DOM/parse tree, the JavaScript instance, and the other tab object data, at, let's stay low and say 2-10 MB. And we get to 20-30 MB. Then add Flash (which is leaking all over the place itself) for another couple of MB per tab.

Now we're getting to 25-17 tabs, when leaving out the Flash.

So how many tabs do you have open usually? Does it fit?

What do we learn: Don't expect that because the page, stored on disk, is only a couple of kilobytes, that it won't take up much RAM or CPU. After all it's highly compressed!

Re:How incredibly important!

[SanityInAnarchy]

We don't care whether the browser hogs half a gig or more.

I have four gigs of RAM. What else am I using it for?

And of course, see Hurricane78 for an explanation of why that's "hogging" half a gig of RAM. Keep in mind that these are sort of theoretical maximums -- anything the browser does for you above and beyond just rendering a page is going to want its own RAM, too.

We don't care whether it can render a page correctly or makes CSS look like a 5 year old had a field day with some sharpies.

Do any of the browsers in question look like a 5 year old with sharpies?

Chrome was the overall winner, and it uses Webkit, which has historically been pretty good with web standards.

crappy servers crammed into farms that oversold their capacity hundredfold and ISPs doing the same.

So you're saying, why not slow it down even more?

I have fiber. Some sites are going to be slow, but some sites will be fast. On the fast sites, the difference between a page loading instantly, or some script executing before I can blink, is nice compared to "a few seconds".

Re:How incredibly important!

[rolandog]

To Google, it IS important. It's important to them because the faster the browser is, the more search queries they will get (check the "Understand users better than they understand themselves" section).

Re:How incredibly important!

[coryking]

That is actually a good argument for using the google/yui hosted versions of things like jQuery. Wonder if modern browsers read the shared jQuery.js into memory and share it among all the tabs? Kind of like how all operating systems will keep a shared library (.dll/.so) loaded for all to use or how something like mod_perl will load all your CPAN modules once and share the memory on every apache fork.

Re:How incredibly important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Web pages aren't stored in system memory as rasterized images, so your 18MB figure is both inaccurate and incredibly stupid.

Poor tests

[mariushm]

It's obvious Chrome would be faster becuase of its simplicity...

What always bothers me is that these "testers" don't test the browsers after some "normal" or "not quite so normal" use.
People don't just start a fresh install of a browser and open eight tabs, people have lots of bookmarks, passwords, saved forms in browsers and after a time, these affect the speed and performance of a browser.

A good tester should bookmark about 200 sites in various categories, save passwords for about 20-30 sites, have some forms saved, and then he should see how much latency browser has from the moment you start typing an URL in it's address bar and bringing URL's or suggestions from its separate SQLite databases that hold bookmarks and previously accessed websites history (it shouldn't matter but in reality users usually stop from typing when they see something changing on screen and check the url and suggestions and time is lost)

Also, in my case I work with various web apps that basically make me access hundreds of url's like site.com/page.php?id=[number] , so all these are saved in the history and after about a week, I basically have to clear the database because Firefox becomes too slow to load, it takes up to a second from the moment I start typing a website in the address bar and so on, I have to empty the history to make it work properly again...

I use Firefox and it's not perfect and not the fastest, but I still prefer it over Safari or Opera simply because of extensions like Firebug or Live HTTP Headers or even Screengrab, which make my life way easier.

Re:Poor tests

[SanityInAnarchy]

A good tester should bookmark about 200 sites in various categories, save passwords for about 20-30 sites, have some forms saved,

How do you do that scientifically? Even eight tabs is going to raise questions of fairness -- maybe one of those pages lagged during the test?

And, you're talking about some tech journalist writing an interesting article. Where are you going to find someone willing to actually do the test you're describing? Sounds like a lot of work.

Re:Poor tests

[mariushm]

No, I'm talking about other things besides just opening eight tabs and eight pages. That's doesn't mean anything for users.

Start using the browser... each time you access a page, the url is saved in the history, the favicon is also cached, some part of the 64-128 MB of cache is getting filled, use it as a regular person would use the browser for a few days, when logging in let the browse save the passwords and so on.

Then have 10-25 random people from the street site at the computer and tell them to go to a site that you previously visited and watch when they type the URL
* if they type without taking eyes off keyboard keys
* if they type watching only the screen
* if their attention is diverted when the drop down menu appears so they lose focus and check the URL again before typing
* maybe they use the mouse to click once on the address bar and then leave the mouse pointer an inch or so below the bar, so when they start typing they may accidentally move the mouse on the table and an entry from the drop down list gets selected and they end up with junk in the address bar because they keep typing and don't notice the address is now wrong

The idea is - how much time is wasted because the user is interrupted by the drop down list, how much time does it take for the suggestions to appear when the history and bookmarks databases have a lot of entries? This time over the course of a work day starts to gather up.

Then you have users who don't even know "Open in new tab exists", so they keep clicking on the left mouse button, thereby using only one-two tabs.

Other users (like me for example) got used to clicking the middle mouse button so all new pages are opened in new tab.

How much time is spent by the browser to create new tabs, reorder the tab list, and then load the page?
Users in the first category may wait until the page is fully loaded until they start reading it and then they click on the next page and wait again so they waste time...

On the other hand, users on the other category keep reading the first page while next pages are opened using middle mouse button, in different tabs, so when they end reading the first page they just click on the next tab and they're ready to go.

How about modern features like session restore - when a power failure occurs, you reboot the computer how much time it takes when all programs compete for resources for the browser to reopen those tabs that were previously opened?

Scientifically, it would be relatively easy to write a software that would know where all the buttons on the browser interface usually are, would know to maximize the browser windows and type addresses in the toolbar, analyze how much time is spent on various locations and so on, bookmark sites, try typing previously opened sites to see how fast the browser suggests stuff (when it's only the browser open or when there's something like an antivirus accessing the drive) and so on and so forth).

So overall for me at least it doesn't mean anything that a browser is a few ms faster to open eight tabs and a page in each tab when users don't work like this almost anytime. I don't even care about memory usage when I have 4GB installed and can very well add about 4 GB of swap file... but I care about responsiveness and the browser not making me waste time while working.

Re:Poor tests

[SanityInAnarchy]

Then you have users who don't even know "Open in new tab exists", so they keep clicking on the left mouse button, thereby using only one-two tabs.

That's why performance of a single tab was also measured.

Other users (like me for example) got used to clicking the middle mouse button so all new pages are opened in new tab.

So opening eight tabs is still a useful measure of how quickly it can open a new tab.

Scientifically, it would be relatively easy to write a software that would

So write it.

I think your definition of "relatively" is a bit odd, considering we're talking about the difference between that and just telling the browser to open eight tabs, and we're talking about a tech reporter, not necessarily a programmer, doing the measurement.

Chrome memory?

[Stooshie]

Although Chrome appears to do badly on the memory tests, they fail to mention that it is, effectively, a black box, has it's own task manager and garbage collector. To some that may seem a waste, but it means that if a page/plugin crashes chrome, then only chrome is affected. Very useful!

Re:Chrome memory?

[UltimApe]

Also, measuring by raw windows task manager avoids the fact that shared process memory is counted per-process even though it is technically only allocated once.

My metricts..

[Seth Kriticos]

Browser requirement checklist:
    * Comes with the distribution repositories and is stable, maintainable and patched
    * Has effective script control (white-listing, base-domain)
    * Has effective ad blocking capability
    * Does surf the web and performs adequately on my system

When the browsers have a check for all these features, than I will start to even consider these performance tests. Until then, there is not much choice except Firefox, ergo this is a complete waste of time.

/ 2ct

Re:My metricts..

[stompertje]

Browser requirement checklist:
* Comes with the distribution repositories and is stable, maintainable and patched

How is it then, that everybody and their aunt complains about the fact that the Windows distributions have included a browser for ages? Aah, you mean because of the stable, maintainable and patched part of the requirement...

Re:My metricts..

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'll apply these to Chrome:

Comes with the distribution repositories and is stable, maintainable and patched

Not yet, but working on it. In the meantime, Google has its own repositories.

Has effective script control (white-listing, base-domain)

Some of this could be done with a proxy.

But seriously, I have no idea how this is going to work, if they support it at all.

Has effective ad blocking capability

I wrote an adblocker for Chrome in two days. Sure, it was for the development version of Chromium, but you get the idea -- once the extension API is released, this is just going to be a non-issue.

Also, Iron (a fork of Chromium) has an adblocker built in. I'd be surprised if they don't have some sort of script control, also.

Does surf the web and performs adequately on my system

Is there a browser that fails this?

Google 3.0

[erica_ann]

After reading this, I went to Chromes site and downloaded the latest BETA which installed and shows 3.0. If 3.0 is Beta now, where is 4.0 at? I have to admit I did see a major difference between 2.0 and 3.0

Re:Google 3.0

[SanityInAnarchy]

The developer nightlies. From my about:version:

Chromium 4.0.207.0 (Developer Build Ubuntu build 25593)
WebKit 532.0
V8 1.3.9
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.207.0 Safari/532.0

Re:Google 3.0

[erica_ann]

ahh thats it. This is a windose box. I have not DLd Chrome to the Gentoo box yet. I bet that is where the 4.0 is. I had a blonde moment.

Firefox is unstable.

[Futurepower(R)]

The results about memory use were nonsense, as now mentioned in a revised version of the article.

Also, Firefox has bugs in its event handling, apparently. If you open a large number of Window and tabs, and keep opening and closing tabs over a period of hours, eventually Firefox will crash. Firefox has had that problem for many years.

Firefox also apparently has problems with its cache handling, apparently. For example, here is a comment to the Lifehacker.com story referenced in the Slashdot summary:

"Firefox 3.5 seems to get slower for me over time. It was really crawling the other day so I got the latest chrome and it seems blazing fast.

"I'll have to try some of the tricks to clean up FF. I'm sad to see it falling behind in speed because I like so many FF features."

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox. There seems to be no hope that Mozilla Foundation will ever be managed well.

(I like seeing ads, I just don't like flashing, moving ads. "Marketing" people are amazingly ignorant, in my experience; they often don't realize that annoying people is not a good way to get customers.)

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox. There seems to be no hope that Mozilla Foundation will ever be managed well.

And I would've never switched away from IE when i tried ff 0.6-or-whatever if IE had had the necessary features at the time.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[selven]

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Chrome + some privacy features and an adblocker.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[metamatic]

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox.

Yes. I'm sick of Firefox's crashing and periodically hanging for 30 seconds while it garbage collects or something.

I'm willing to switch to the first browser that gives me the equivalent of Firefox + CS Lite + NoScript + AdBlock. Personally, I'd have thought that a simple UI for allowing the current site to use cookies and scripts would be a basic feature of any browser, but it seems the browser makers are more interested in not annoying site owners who want to track users and show them ads.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Galactic Dominator]

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox. There seems to be no hope that Mozilla Foundation will ever be managed well.

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, it's performance will be on par with FF.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Without Firebug and Adblock Plus you would have to pry Firefox from my cold dead fingers.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[sznupi]

Opera has those features. You can have cookies/scripts/plugins turned off and enabling them in site preferences (or toggle them gobally on/off - it takes effect only on the side you're loading/browsing anyway). Adblock: http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ (yeah, it's also built-in, that's just a list)

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[sznupi]

You're really that sure the FF codebase is that very close to optimal, for what it does?...

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Marketing" people are amazingly ignorant, in my experience; they often don't
realize that annoying people is not a good way to get customers.)

As a matter of fact, that is not true. Why do you thing we keep seeing stupid ads for shampoo, toilet paper, cleaning utensils, etc.? Because they work. You notice and when presented with 100s of choices you go after choices you know. At least a large enough percentage does that annoying people does pay.

Why do you think, you still receive spam mails?

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Unlikely.

Firefox addons run in the same process as Firefox, likely in the same thread. Firefox tabs are similar. All it takes is one slow extension to slow down the entire experience.

Chrome, on the other hand, is implementing addons as just privileged webpages. This means that, except for the very small part of an addon that might be interacting with the current page, the addon won't block the browser -- it's mostly going to be running in a separate process. And even the content script that's running on the current page, well, there's one of those running per tab, so an extension being slow in one tab won't block another tab.

Not to mention, if you're going to implement a nice, cross-platform Firefox addon, you're doing it in Javascript/XUL. Chrome addons are Javascript/HTML. Thus, Chrome's faster Javascript engine does count here.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Firebug is built-in as the Chrome Development Tools.

Adblock is available in a fork of Chrome, called Iron. It's also trivial to create an adblocking extension to Chrome itself -- and someone's done this, it's just not maintained.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, it's performance will be on par with FF.

So you say you wan't ads in your browser?
Jeff, is that you?

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[MsGeek]

Die Iron ist nicht fur Macintosh, ist fur Windows only. Scheisse!

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Check this Fx bug, for instance. Fx has been unstable and unresponsive since 3.0. It's got problems with its database (grows huge, too many accesses, etc). There are many Fx bugs related to responsiveness and crashes.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[selven]

There's a linux version too.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[metamatic]

Yeah, but the interface is a PITA compared to CS-Lite + AdBlock + NoScript.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[sznupi]

Adblock is actually better - when the list is not suffiecient, you can use nice point & click Content Blocker from context menu. The other...yeah; though that depends how you use them - I typically don't bother with micromanaging (except for sites like Youtube which have flash permanently turned on), just toggling on/off globally with quick shortcut as needed.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[BitZtream]

If Chrome gets addons like Firefox it will perform like Firefox, addons, like so many ActiveX controls used in IE are the #1 reason browser perform like shit.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[NotBorg]

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, it's performance will be on par with FF.

What do you base that assumption on? I haven't seen any benchmarks that compare the difference between Firefox without and without add-ons running.

In fact it's standard practice to benchmark products "out of the box" and note any changes from the out-of-box state (i.e. anything you've done to it beyond the install process from the manufacture). A Firefox vs Chrome (or whatever) benchmark wouldn't have a Firefox loaded with add-ons. So how can you conclude that Firefox's benchmark performance is suffering from add-ons? Do you mean something else by "performance"?

Even if add-ons slow Firefox to some extent, if Firefox still gets its ass handed to it without extra add-ons installed... what the hell is the point in bringing them up?

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[massysett]

Have you tried Privoxy? Then you can get adblocking on any browser.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of those, plus an equivalent to down them all, are built into Opera!

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[jeff_epstein]

> Also, Firefox has bugs in its event handling, apparently. If you open a
> large number of Window and tabs, and keep opening and closing tabs
> over a period of hours, eventually Firefox will crash. Firefox has had
> that problem for many years.

Because we all spend our time in Firefox opening and closing large amounts of tabs for hours on end.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[c23gooey]

as always xkcd has this one covered: http://xkcd.com/570/

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[jesser]

Firefox does have a built-in UI for controlling whether the current page can store cookies, in the Permissions tab of Page Info (Cmd+I).

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[rdnetto]

If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox. There seems to be no hope that Mozilla Foundation will ever be managed well.

(I like seeing ads, I just don't like flashing, moving ads. "Marketing" people are amazingly ignorant, in my experience; they often don't realize that annoying people is not a good way to get customers.)

Chrome 3.0 has support for GreaseMonkey scripts, such as FlashBlock. It takes a little effort to get it working (since I'm in the beta channel - note that this is not the dev channel, it's more stable), but it's definitely worth it.
And for all those suggesting that addins will slow it down, FlashBlock certainly hasn't, and I'm guessing that the builtin Task Manager will keep it that way - the main reason I installed FlashBlock was because I saw how much memory Flash ads were using.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[halfnerd]

There's AdSweep for chromium (it doesn't work on stable chrome afaik) http://adsweep.org/

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[Anonymous Coward]

(I like seeing ads, I just don't like flashing, moving ads. "Marketing" people are amazingly ignorant, in my experience; they often don't realize that annoying people is not a good way to get customers.)

Knowing how an ignorant person thinks (about your product), is the very essence of marketing. It's a very fine line, and one that's exceedingly tempting to cross, between intelligently analyzing what ignorant customers think, and just being ignorant yourself.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I prefer a browser I can easily extend myself to one that has "everything" built in, where "everything" might not include something Opera hasn't thought of.

Re:Firefox is unstable.

[DirePickle]

It's a crappy adblocker, though. It leaves broken image links and blank space all over the page, when it manages to block the stuff at all.

Memory hogs

[Theovon]

Firefox still has lots of problems. (For instance, preventing sleep on the Mac and using excessive CPU for completely idle tabs.) But the first reason I keep using it is memory. It uses less memory than any other browser for the same set of open tabs. Also, it has PROPER built-in crash protection and session restore. Safari doesn't unless you install Saft, and Saft costs money and keeps breaking every time Apple upgrades Safari.

Re:Memory hogs

[sznupi]

Hm, from my experience (when I give a chance for a ~month after every major release) FF is the only browser with built-in session restore which ISN'T PROPER (it corrupts its session file when it becomes "broken" (UI, reponsivness...) after heavy usage - btw, you do chceck its used memory after heavy usage, right? 100+ tabs? Few weeks running?)

Re:Memory hogs

[SanityInAnarchy]

Regarding memory: First, in these tests at least, the measurements of Chrome were wrong. And second, does it matter? I have 4 gigs of RAM. It's hard to remember the last time I went into swap, and I certainly can't remember it being because of a web browser.

Regarding crashing: I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my whole browser not crash than have it be able to recover my tabs when it does. Chrome does keep a "last closed" set of tabs, but I can also comfortably run a development release -- seriously a nightly build -- as my primary browser, and I haven't seen the whole thing crash yet. I've only been able to make tabs crash with the developer tools and/or my own badly written extensions -- not that it's an excuse, just pointing out, tabs don't crash a lot.

That's more than I can say for Firefox -- Firefox (stable) crashes less often than these Chrome tabs (again, development release, lots of hacking around on my part), but I've seen the whole browser go down, taking all my tabs with it.

Unscientific = useless.

[Hurricane78]

'Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, [...]'

That's where I stopped reading TFS. Because it's now not only clear, but proven, that the whole point is, to pull out another "VS." story of useless dichotomy, to create page views.

Apropos: Who cares for some little speed difference? Any browser that hasn't got AdBlock, Greasemonkey, DownloadHelper, mouse gestures, TagSifter, (and for me FireBug and the Webdev toolbar), is not winning any contest anyway. ^^

Re:Unscientific = useless.

[sznupi]

Interesting how you use "trademarks" of specific add-ons, available only for one browser, not the names of their functionality... (hint: most of what you list has been copied from Opera, and everything is in it)

Re:Unscientific = useless.

[tenco]

'Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, [...]'

That's where I stopped reading TFS. Because it's now not only clear, but proven, that the whole point is, to pull out another "VS." story of useless dichotomy, to create page views.

I also almost stopped there, too. I really should have. Later on in TFS (which made me stop):

We run each test three times and average the results, tossing out any obvious irregularities.

So this basically means: we were to lazy to take the one or two hours of measurement time to have at least 6 data points before applying statistics. That's just embarrassing.

Chrome dev version vs. FF/Opera release versions?

[MikeUW]

I don't know about Opera, but as far as I am aware, FF has preview versions 4.0 already. So if we're going to be testing the not-even-beta version of Chrome, isn't it fair comparison to do the same with the other browsers? I realize that TFA has results for FF 3.5.99 and a beta of Opera, but these are relegated to a less prominent position in the results...in contrast, Chrome's 4.x dev version is highlighted with the 2.x version is being downplayed in the results, and no mention is made of the (perhaps more relevant) Chrome 3.x beta. Not that I really care, it just seems like a bit of favouritism is playing into the presentation of this analysis...

My own anecdotal rating

[Ralph Spoilsport]

on a MacBookPro...

FF 3.5 is a crashy mess. I have NO plug ins. It regularly refuses to render a page. I click try again and BANG, it renders. I'm pretty sick of FF doing that. It also crashes a lot.

Opera works fine - its quick and has never crashed. I don't care for the UI much. It has a built in Torrent client, so I like using it in te background sometimes.

Chromes is not on the mac. Boo.

Camino is also lightweight but not super snappy, and sometimes things render completely wrong and ugly.

Safari sucks hairy donkey balls.

So, as a consequence, I tend to run FF or Camino. If Chrome was on the Mac, I'd certainly give it a solid run. I am very serious about FF's screw ups. It's very disappointing.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[pknoll]

There's a Chrome build in the dev branch for OS X. You can get it here:

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=mac

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[NuShrike]

Sounds like you need to run NoScript and Adblock at least to stabilize your FF experience.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome is on the Mac. I had to do some searching around through dev builds and stuff, but I found it and it works flawlessly, despite Google's dire warnings of instability.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief,

Reinstall your OS, stop running KeyCue or remove Unsanity hacks. I've used Firefox with 18 extensions for forever and don't have the issues you do.

I'm not saying you're exaggerating or lying but it would be unreasonable to believe Firefox is as popular as it is if it behaved this way as the norm - especially with no extensions and using the 3.5 release. 3.5 is much better on the Mac than it ever was before.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

on a MacBookPro...

Chromes is not on the mac. Boo.

I'm pretty sure I have Chrome 4 on my hackintosh... wait I'll go and check that I didn't just dream it up, yup it's there.

Your just not looking in the right places, have you tried under your bed?

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome Mac nightly builds available here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/

It's actually quite nice even in these non-release builds.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, bro.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Joe Tie.]

And it's actually pretty good. Seems to be lagging in performance a bit behind the linux builds for me, but it's still shaping up really well.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

weird. i use ff 3.5 on my hackintosh all day long with really no issues. every once in a great while it gets stupid, but i've never seen it fail to render, then render on a retry. i wonder if you have some underlying issues with the network (dns would be a first guess) that FF can't deal with very well, and the other browsers do better at handling.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Princeofcups]

on a MacBookPro... .....

Firefox is perfectly stable, and I have no problems with it at all.

Safari however blows it away for speed, reliability, and features.

Strange how one person's experiences can be diametrically opposed to another's.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Hallow]

Chrome is coming to the mac soon. I'm running a nightly snapshot of Chromium (http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/), from a couple of days ago. They've got a bit of work to do on it, but it's good enough I'm using it as my every-day browser now. Only major problem I've run into is that the java plugin on snow leopard doesn't seem to work yet.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Ralph Spoilsport]

thanks! I'll look into that...

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[ramjambam]

All browsers are bad on Mac? Sounds like the platform is at fault, not the browser.

Re:My own anecdotal rating

[Anonymous Coward]

Typing this on Chrome on a macbook pro.

IE has been VERY vulnerable.

[Futurepower(R)]

That doesn't make sense. IE had had a long, long, long list of very serious vulnerabilities. Literally billions of dollars have been lost because of sloppy coding in past versions of IE.

Features

[KamuZ]

I prefer the features from Firefox, but sometimes there are pages a little heavy with JavaScript and Firefox just can't keep up. For example there are some web applications like the WoW armory which is better in Chrome. Also in Ubuntu when using Firefox and the new feature from Gmail called "Task List" or when having chat windows open, it is really slow, CPU almost at 100% and if you mousewheel, well totally laggy. On the other hand, using Chrome in Linux (unstable) is really fast. You can say is because Chrome+Gmail should work together but again this is an example as it happens in every page using a lot of Javascript like Slashdot.

Boring

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the MHz myth has found a new host from whom to draw life.

You are on slashdot...

[coryking]

Slashdot is a technology website dedicated to of people who take great pride and joy in disabling every new bit of technology in their stack.

Personally, I leave all that stuff on. I used to disable javascript out of the same "spite" most of slashdot commenters seem to have--but that was before Kuro5hin came with their fancy dynamic comments in what, 1999? So far, my CPU's have never melted, my power supplies are still purring, and my mice haven't keeled over and died.

Wonder what rigs these people run? 386DX 40mhz's? Orange screen VT100's hooked up to the local time-share in the university basement? ... remembers when his public library still had those VT100's.

Re:You are on slashdot...

[evilviper]

So far, my CPU's have never melted, my power supplies are still purring, and my mice haven't keeled over and died.

Of course nothing catastrophic happens. You just get horrendous performance, and have to wait quite a bit longer to get anything done.

Wonder what rigs these people run? 386DX 40mhz's?

Me, I'm just trying to keep my 2GHz Athlon system working as well as it used-to. In fact, it's lightning fast for everything BUT web browsing. How did rendering a web page become more computationally intensive than brute-forcing crypto? What could possibly need hundreds of MBs of RAM? I'm anxiously awaiting Dillo-1.0, with all the necessary modern features for web browsing, to thoroughly put Moz, Konq, Opera, etc. to shame on performance, if nothing else.

Re:You are on slashdot...

[erple2]

Orange screen VT100's hooked up to the local time-share in the university basement? ... remembers when his public library still had those VT100's.

But if you had those Orange Screen VT100's, you'd be running lynx anyway, and your browsing speeds would be stunningly fast anyway.

Re:You are on slashdot...

[Bigjeff5]

Try Chrome, honestly. I don't care about the lack of addons, I've discovered I don't need them. Everything is lightning fast, you get the most actual browser window space of any browser, it's sleak and it works. I resisted for a while before trying it, and never looked back once I did.

Address bar searching (this is doable in IE, but slow as hell as it searches MSN to figure out the google search you want to run, what the hell?) is as quick as that stupid little search box in FF and IE, tabs on the title bar are brilliant, and it's just plain sleak and quick.

Apparently the linux version can't print yet, so that might be a deal breaker, but it's the best browser I've ever used, bar none.

Re:You are on slashdot...

[Bigjeff5]

Oh and apparently, Dillo is already at 2.1.1, but I don't know how the features compare to everything else. Should be quick if it's all C and C++ though.

Re:You are on slashdot...

[darpo]

Don't forget the obligatory rants about window manager "eye candy", 3D video games, cell phones that do more than make calls, and how there are never any good movies coming out anymore. I've never understood how there can be so many luddites on a technology news site. Maybe it's because this site skews older than most, and as one gets older, the nostalgia memory bias becomes a stronger?

Re:You are on slashdot...

[coryking]

I dunno, I've been here for probably as long as you (just registered a bit late :-) and I fall into the "older" group, I guess.

Are they like the new form of troll on slashdot? Or do they take the bad vibes from RMS seriously? I can't figure it out. It does wear very thin though. Very thin. But I've yet to find a place that is quite like slashdot--which is why I keep coming back :-)

Re:You are on slashdot...

[darpo]

I don't get the sense that they're trolling; they seem to actually feel the way they present themselves.

RMS is a different case. He's not so much a luddite as an idealogue. He has very strong views on certain political issues within technology.

Re:You are on slashdot...

[evilviper]

CSS support is basic and not very accurate. Javascript is nonexistent. Hence, not "1.0".

Yes, it is unbelievably fast.

Opera whips Chrome's ass

[EmagGeek]

FF is not a browser.. it's a crash generator with a web browsing applet built in.

Opera is faster and more accurate than chrome.

Opera >> Chrome > IE > FF

Re:Opera whips Chrome's ass

[SanityInAnarchy]

Opera is faster and more accurate than chrome.

Citation needed.

Not that it would particularly matter to me -- Chrome is pretty accurate, and it's actually open source and easily extendable (in the developer version).

Re:Opera whips Chrome's ass

[Anonymous Coward]

FF is not a browser.. it's a crash generator with a web browsing applet built in.

Could you provide a step by step procedure for enabling this crash generator feature? I can't seem to find it anywhere. Seems to be a little used, undocumented feature.

Re:Opera whips Chrome's ass

[BitZtream]

Lets see ... webkit gets 100% on acid now ... how can Opera be more accurate? FanboySaysWhat?

Web Developer and NoScript for Chrome please

[Anonymous Coward]

When Web Developer and NoScript are available for Chrome, I'll be all over it.

Unintuitive graphs

[anilg]

..insignificant the discrepancies are..

Mod parent up.

The Tab loading graph (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/09/500x_eight_tab_load.jpg) seems to suggest Opera takes 4X, and Firefox 2X the time to load tabs than Chrome.. however, the X-axis is drawn from 6.0 to 9.0

If the Graph was rendered from 0-9, it would look like below:

Opera
================
Firefox
==============
Chrome
============

.. which shows that page loading is pretty much the same everywhere.. blowing the OMG-Chrome-loads-fast!!!! myth.

Opera 10 Market Share...

[Xin Jing]

The link below provides a great snapshot of the current browser market share, with country-level weighting. In a nutshell, good luck to Firefox in the 43.99% climb to match IE's 66.97 marketshare. Trailing a distant 3rd place is Safari at a meager 4%, followed by Chrome in 4th place at 2.84% and Opera in 5th place at 2.04%. It's clear to me that the real battlefield is in the 2-4% range. According to this source, Opera has doubled their marketshare with help from users from eastern Europe and Asia. An interesting footnote is Netscape in 6th place at .49% and Opera's own Mini in 7th place at .31%. There's no mention in this rollcall of 20 browsers of Opera Mobile, which costs US$24.99 while the bulk of the other browsers are free. REF: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

Why all that testing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera has the highest number, therefore it is the best. Duh.

Seamonkey

[binarybum]

Shame they didn't include Seamonkey 2.0 (b1). If you consider the fact that many people have some sort of email app open or running in background to check emails, seamonkey really comes out ahead thanks to good integration of browser and mail client.

How about correcly rendered HTML?

[Otis_INF]

I don't really care about speed, all browsers are pretty fast. The main issue I have with for example Opera is that it doesn't always render HTML correctly (even in 10 RTM), and sometimes hangs when you resize windows. I rather like a correctly rendered page which is done in 0.012ms than a badly rendered page which is rendered in 0.003ms

Re:How about correcly rendered HTML?

[avandesande]

I have noticed huge differences in UI responsiveness in chrome compared to FF. The difference was enough to make me switch and I have been using FF for years.

Re:Wonder what rigs these people run?

[ibsteve2u]

Well, I've got a number of dual- and quadcores, all with at least four gig of memory...and all of those browsers are pokie.

I don't understand it; I even aggregate two 300-baud modems to give them a bigger pipe outta my basement...

Electrolysis

[Bj�rn]

Mozilla's Electrolysis project aims to change that. The first bootstrapping step was completed 15-July-2009.

"The Mozilla platform will use separate processes to display the browser UI, web content, and plugins. The working name for this project is Electrolysis. "

Re:Electrolysis

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm aware of that project.

However, Chrome exists now, and the extensions are usable in the nightlies.

Is Electrolysis in a similar state? That is, could I actually use a Firefox nightly with Electrolysis enabled as a reasonably reliable daily browser?

Which is the best car?

[slyborg]

These debates start to get sillier and sillier over time, or perhaps just more irrelevant. As the browsers' available features and performance exceeds what most people will veer use in practice, the "reviews" become a lot like reading Motor Trend or Car & Driver - which car has the coolest looks? Which car has the most massive supercharged 500 hp engine that will be mostly used driving to the local Starbucks?

Personal preference is of course valid, and perhaps the most valid metric - if you like something and you are happy with it, then there you go. Other than that, what I'm interested in these days is security and quality, and this "review" had jack on these topics. It basically was a typical fanboi-ish survey c. 2004 on which application has the biggest e-peen, and I just don't care anymore.

Re:speed opera linux

[rusl]

I'm interested in playing with opera more, and chrome. But both of those seem to be built only in WINE? If not, then they sure look that way with Gnome/ubuntu! I'm not usually so worried about superficial looks. But, using a browser is such a primary thing it needs to fit into the desktop and have nice fonts to read since you look at it so much.

Did you do anything special to get Chrome to look decent or are you just more tolerant of this sort of thing than I am? I'm just using default versions from repos on Jaunty. I'm pretty sure my FF (swiftfox actually) came with a default ubuntu skin theme so it looks good.

Any suggestions? I suppose I could look into prettying up the WINE fonts but that all sounds like work to get a browser to play with that won't have plugins I use. But i also get weird flash video issues and I'd love to use your method to get around that. Also you can't simply restart FF and have it save all the tabs in multiple windows, have to kill it from the command line then the crash protection kicks in. Kind of a messy approach imo.

Why the mod down?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject. I simply replied to another poster in sopssa. Sopssa spoke of UI response in Opera being superior and I agreed, noting the same in agreement that Opera's UI does respond a hell of a lot faster than FireFox builds do (even the 3.52 final).

I then later also supplied memory use data from a reliable tool in Process Explorer and what I see here is all.

(Hey - I had even offered that others here SHOULD try the same test on memory use, to see for themselves what is what here, and it clearly does not agree with the review (though different browsers were used by myself (not really, not much gets added via debug code blocks really, nothing hugely appreciable) in Opera 10 beta, Mozilla Minefield beta, & IE8 (always a beta)))

So, that all "said & aside"?

Well - Why was the post I did modded down?

Makes no sense guys... I am only putting out facts, & means/methods for YOU to try to do this yourselves (it's a very quick analysis)

APK

P.S.=> Then again, I have a "pack of fans" here, that mod my posts down regularly... lol, nothing like having a "fan club" of stalkers, eh? Especially ones that have nothing better in response than effete "mod downs" of my posts, but never any technical facts which are easily verified by them, in rebuttal to my points, disproving my points... that NEVER happens, & I LOVE IT, lol... apk

Re: Chrome on Mac

[Ralph Spoilsport]

got it rolling - WAY better than FF. Fast, crisp, no nonsense. We are pleased. Thanks for the url!

Gave up FF after 5 years this week for Opera 10.0

[cenc]

I have been using FF since it was phoenix 0.6 beta or something to that effect. I have put up with its ups and downs, and strange behavior all that time. Regardless, it was still fast. Finally in the last month of 3.5 b.s. I had to give it up. It was crashing none stop on every computer in my office at a rate of about once every 20 mins.

Now I have finally made the switch to opera, and I don't think FF is going to get me back anytime soon. I am switching my entire office because of the lost productivity. Yes, I have test driven the 3.6, and it is no better. FF ruined FF.

I had been thinking about Opera for a while, but there where some strange things they did I could not stand. Now in 10.0 they seem to have cleaned them up a good deal, and it is a super browser.

Version choice

[Arancaytar]

Why compare Chrome's development channel with Firefox stable?

Particularly as Firefox 3.6alpha has improved performance, so it actually makes a difference which version you test.

Re:Version choice

[marcuz]

forget performance when you load all the tabs and run all the extensions in one thread.

Depends

[Ilgaz]

Make your homepage about:blank on a highly fragmented Windows (NTFS, FAT doesn't matter) and fresh start IE. Watch the HD light and same time, try to replace about:blank in addressbar, with typing

You will be surprised. Yes, "blank" is actually being loaded from disk and I think, it tries to render it same time!

Re:Depends

[zobier]

What's worse for me is if I try to click on a bookmark in the toolbar while it's 'connecting...' (IE8) to about:blank, it offers to save the bookmark to my desktop!!!

Opera is final too

[Ilgaz]

Correction: Opera 10 is stable final too and Opera really means beta/alpha when they call something that way. Their "Caracan" javascript accelerator isn't included in Opera 10 yet but it is obvious that they actually have it in hand, privately testing it.

One more thing: Firefox and Opera will be always a bit late to do mad javascript tricks since they aren't x86 only, especially Opera, same trick must run even under ARM processor as unmodified plain C code.

I was hoping this synthetic browser benchmarking stupid fashion ended but it seems it didn't yet... Using Opera 10 on this 720P for months, I know they aren't at "optimization" stage yet, they just passed stability stage. Similar thing can be said for Firefox 3.5.

Re:speed opera linux

[XnavxeMiyyep]

But both of those seem to be built only in WINE?

What? I used Opera in Linux with no problems, and I've never installed WINE.

Reliable demonstration of problems in Firefox:

[Futurepower(R)]

You missed the point. Opening and closing tabs and windows reliably demonstrates the problems in Firefox. Those problems cause a variety of symptoms. Event handling problems should be fixed, even if they don't cause problems for most users. Users have consistently reported those problems for more than 8 years!

People who do a lot of research about products to buy, like myself, often cannot make decisions in one session. We like to keep numerous windows and tabs open until we can resolve all the issues. That makes Firefox crash.

Some people use browsers much more heavily than others.

Re:Reliable demonstration of problems in Firefox:

[jeff_epstein]

You're right. I frankly saw an opportunity for a snappy comeback, and I took it.

Understood...your point, I mean.

Re:Reliable demonstration of problems in Firefox:

[jp10558]

One of the reasons I still use Opera, even though Firefox is the standard at work, is because I almost never close tabs until I am *done* with them. I don't bookmark things of trivial interest, I keep a tab open - for months at a time. I don't close the browser, even through a restart of the system, I just maintain my session and all the tabs, with state, come back on Opera startup. I usually have 80 tabs open at a time, with close to 40 of those open all the time as work systems such as WebUIs, reference pages, and reference documents.

From Slashdot posts, it's clear there is a market for this sort of browser use. I've even recently remapped my F4 key to open the windows panel and focus quick find so I can find the tab I need. There's clearly work that could be done for large tab sets in all browsers, but Firefox certainly has shown to be less than optimal in my use and in Slashdot posts.

Re:For gods sake

[plastbox]

Nerdrage, the best kind!

"Opera turbo"

[Kartu]

"Opera's turbo" - lets me browse sites otherwise blocked by company's firewall. Does kind of tunneling for it's own, to speed things up. Also degrading quality of pictures. (it was ment to be used on slow connections)
Now beat that!
P.S. Pardon my ignorance, does FF have "fit to width" feature?

unfortunatelly FF is crap

[marcuz]

I use mozilla browsers for years now. FF 3.5 crashes just occasionally, I can survive with this. However I can't survive with occasional lag like 3 seconds till I can scroll down, or wait a minute to get all my tabs opened so I can start browsing. Therefore I conclude FF is crap. I like chrome - but bring some extensions to it!

The flashing tries to substitute for creativity.

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes, but annoying an entire category of customers, a category that has plenty of money, is not good marketing.

The flashing tries to substitute for real creativity in designing the ads. There is a way to have a broader appeal.

What?

[improfane]

Whoever modded this troll is a very stupid person.

Re:speed opera linux

[rusl]

Hmm, your right. It does use ttf fonts though. I guess that is why I assumed it was like chrome and picasa... hold on, picasa doesn't use wine or ttf?... it just renders fonts crappy. On my system. I don't know all about this wine stuff that much and it is changing all the time. The 64 bit version of opera looks a lot worse on my home computer than it does now on my netbook i've just installed it on, also I'm sure this is a much newer version... It's actually looking pretty good in gnome. Though I'm not sure I like having the tabs in between the buttons and the menus. I suppose I could move it?

Anyway, I'll play with Opera more now that you forced me to test it to see that it isn't WINE. Good. Maybe I tried a very old version in 2006 using WINE? I can't remember anymore.

Personally I like Kazehakase when FF is getting bogged down.

Just wrong

[Ineron5]

I just can't believe they left out Netscape Navigator!