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How Do Browsers Scale?
An anonymous reader writes "Benchmarking browsers is a somewhat silly exercise, since scores cannot be replicated on a variety of hardware, and it is not uncommon for even the same system to fail to replicate benchmarks scores, especially in JavaScript tests in two succeeding runs. The guys over at ConceivablyTech have an interesting approach, running browsers through multiple tests on different sets of hardware (including an Android smartphone), and showing the scaling differences between browsers when you are using a dual-core netbook on the low-end and a six-core desktop on the high-end. They also tested HTML5 on Firefox mobile and found the browser has better HTML5 support than the current Firefox 4 Beta 6."
All browsers are slow, and heavy!
It's in dire need of being able to do HTML5 uploads like Safari and Chrome. Opera is also trailing behind on this matter.
As for IE.... fuck IE.
They scale fast enough for me, except for IE on JavaScript heavy sites. Once you hit a particular point, does it matter? OK, it matters in a "cycles spared cause your chips to run cooler, not saving you much but better for the planet" sort of way.
Am I missing something, or are people firing up 1000 browsers and running from screen-to-screen.
Sheesh, kids these days with their dual cores and 4 gig of RAM. In my day, low-end was an 8080 w/ 512k.
Beta 7 is waiting for these blockers to be fixed.
Firefox 3.6 scales best across cores
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Why, oh why did javascript become the defacto client-side scripting language for the browser
If you want to scale horizontally across multi-cores, you need a language that allows easy multi-threading and concurrency
About the only thing JS offers for concurrency is that horrid settimeout function
What we need is a better scripting language
Why not incorporate a Python interpreter into browsers, and develop a stripped down sub-set of python for use on the web
I see no technical issues in doing this, only trying to battle the inertia of JS
Seriously, if you care about your browser's performance, you care about it on a particular system. Maybe if you regularly use different system you can try different ones to see which works best and then you'd want such information.
More likely though, you will get used to a particular interface and just end up using it, regardless of any performance merits others may offer.
It's true, people are creatures of habit, and habits are hard to change, even for the better.
I find that Firefox gradually slows down with use, requiring me to re-start it at least once per day to avoid second-or-more delays when scrolling or typing.
So I'd like to see benchmarks that test a browser's speed after several hours of simulated use, benchmarking while many other windows and tabs are open. This can also be done in several different memory-restricted VMs to see how the amount of memory affects the speed.
Perhaps my problem is due to one or more of the plug-ins I use. So Mozilla should make it easy for plugin developers to test their releases on a benchmark like the one described above.
Nope.
The only takeaway you need is:
Chrome 8 had the smallest gain, which, however is due to coding flaw in the Sunspider benchmark that holds back the processing horsepower of the Phenom II X6 processor in general.
Translation: Our results are totally bogus because our tool was broken but rather than fix that, we are just going to shovel these results out there anyway.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Wouldn't surprise me. The folks doing the development have spent a lot of time working on it and have avoided the temptation to just make each tab a completely different process.
Except their data doesn't actually show that, and Firefox 3.6 has far worse absolute performance than the other browsers. So, the effect they're seeing is probably just the other browsers (including Firefox 4 beta) performing much better, but hitting a wall due to cache pressure and/or IO bottlenecks. Whereas Firefox 3.6 is slow enough that it appears to be scaling well, but really just runs slower than the system can perform.
That's NOT low end. Funny how marketing is so skilled in manipulating peoples perceptions.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nope. The only takeaway you need is:
Nothing is as fast as Links.
-and-
Chrome v. Firefox Browser fanboys today are as silly as Atari v. Commodore fanboys back-in-the-day.
-and- :-)
I like Netscape/seaMonkey.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
They also tested HTML5 on Firefox mobile and found the browser has better HTML5 support than the current Firefox 4 Beta 6.
Um, yeah. The first beta of Firefox Mobile is based on newer code than FF4b6, which came out a WHILE ago. Beta 7 hasn't been released yet because of a lot of crashes as well as it being considered the "feature freeze".
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Not just because the benchmark program was broken, but because there are no absolute numbers. If Browser A completes benchmarks in 50% of the time browser B does on a netbook, B is going to need a hell of a scaling advantage to win on the 6-core machine. These graphs are mildly entertaining, but on the whole worthless without the actual data.
Another meaningless benchmark that claims to replace all the previous meaningless benchmarks. Yawn.
No, Links.
Dilbert RSS feed
Hold CTRL and scroll your mouse wheel to scale your web browser...
Is 64 bit versions of browsers. Proper session management. Proper Adblocking. An extension framework. Configurability.
At the moment, IE and Firefox are the only ones with their head in the game. If Chrome and Opera want to get ahead, then fix what lacks.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
sparkbrowser is going to be the next web browser for download, if you currently have both firefox and chrome, why do you have both?? Sparkbrowser Uses both Gecko and Webkit Elements for the fastest and best browsing experience, it will be available for download on http://sparkbrowser.com/ in the coming months it is significantly faster than forefox, and google chrome,
In Soviet Russia, JavaScript FUCKS YOU!
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
This post is proof that there is no lower age or lower intelligence limit on who posts on Slashdot.
Why is Snark Required?
Lynx is rather nimble!
What makes you think that somebody who remembers what gopher was would be young? What makes you think that someone who thinks that mixing content with code is a bad idea is of lower intelligence?
If these two posts were all that I were to go on, then I'd be forced to conclude that the GP is older and more intelligent than you. Your UIDs only help to reinforce my conclusion.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
as a long time user of firefox, and for a number of years now, chromium, let me say: chromium appears to work much better than anything else on the low end - largely due to its sane memory utilization when not much is available.
ironically it would appear that chromium/chrome's current limitation is actually one they inherrited from firefox. the cache engine slows firefox, and chrome, to a fucking crawl. ironically, google just took ff's engine and scaled it way out - to the point where it's architectually poorly suited. apparently, this is being fixed - and has been fixed in firefox 4.
Try Links2, now with Javascript and graphics support (no X11 needed, it even has framebuffer support)
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
-and- Chrome v. Firefox Browser fanboys today are as silly as Atari v. Commodore fanboys back-in-the-day.
No, not as silly. With ST vs Amiga, they at least run different software, so there's some sense in trying to advocate the chosen platform. With Chrome vs. Firefox, not so much...
Now 'age' can refer to chronological age or mental development age. Here on Slashdot, as far as I have observed, the mental development age is around 12. I have no idea what the chronological age average is, but I assume that it skews to a younger demographic. Certainly under 40 and most likely under 30. But you can't tell that just by reading what people type.
Take me, for example. I have been programming since 1968, and I have been paid to do it full time since 1974. I have programmed every thing from what used to be called minicomputers (with teletypes and paper tape) and main frames (with punched cards) to what used to be called supercomputers (Cray-1/TM-2 from Thinking Machines). I predate the internet, and I actually remember hearing about the IMP going on line at UCLA for one of the first few nodes on what was then know as ARPA-NET. It is extremely likely that I have been programming longer the you have been alive. So when I hear you say that I must be a newbie because of my UID, it is just another one of those judgment problems that seem to be so prevalent here on Slashdot.
Now take a look at my SIG and if you think about what you wrote you might understand why I chose it.
Why is Snark Required?
I just want my browser to render a large table with hundreds of thousands of rows without having to wait forever.
Very convincing, but you made one mistake - only newbies say 'newbie'.
tl;td;dr (too long, too drunk, didn't read)
your point is invalid.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
After Mosaic, it's been all downhill.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
Underlying methodology was also curious, to say the least. All the browsers were judged based only on their own improvement when going from slower to faster setup. Well...what if, hypothetically, some browser is already fabulous on the slower one, already close to some ceiling fundamentally limited by factors external to its code? What if some other is absolutely horrible on slower machines and it essentially relies on much faster hardware for improvement?
All the while ignoring huge architectural and clockspeed differences between the two CPUs. With such testing scenario, going from 2 to 6 cores can have a negligible impact for all we know.
Generally, who cares about the improvement on a monster of a CPU? (except for "does getting it make sense at all already? Oh...") That's not what vast majority of people use, shouldn't be targeted, generally isn't and hence provides performance way in the area of "good enough". Performance on real low end, like some machine from 5 (or more...) years ago, is where this makes a huge difference. How well it scales down, how long it remains pleasant and usable.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Exactly.
Well said. This measures nothing useful about the browsers themselves because we are told nothing about current performance. (Although we already know that from other sources).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I think this might be the one and only joke within this meme that was actually funny. Thank you.
It's a shame they didn't bother to mention what the coding flaw is. If I were to hazard a guess it would be that the flaw is that the test is written to make Safari look good, not Chrome. The V8 benchmark fixes this.
The test makes Opera looks worse than it is, because while they added the brand spanking new Chrome 8, they ignored Opera 10.70, which has been available for some time now. If they can include pre-releases of other browsers, why not Opera? And unlike Chrome 8 which seems to be slower than the previous version, even these unfinished builds of Opera 10.70 are noticeably faster than the latest stable version.
Clever signature text goes here.
Links? Did you mean Lynx? Seriously, if you are going to start your argument frofrom there I see no point in continuing, since you seem trapped in the prior century.
Epic Fail.
Or Epic Redface?
Or Epic Pie-on-face?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
From wikipedia:
"The resulting browser is very fast, but it does not display many pages as they were intended". Obligatory grain of salt.
If displaying pages correctly is not important, I can make a browser that shows pages faster than any other - I'll just skip all the javascript, css and dump the text to the screen.
Sparkbrowser, a new web browser drawn from components of Gecko and Webkit will be available soon, currently i am adding security features and tabs features, i would like it to be more connected to users rather than a method of displaying data, i may add a built in borwser chat feature from facebook or a twitter feed so that your bowser incorporates all of the social media features be sure to check out pics, videos and the beta version on http://sparkbrowser.com/
He seemed to mean Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_(web_browser)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.