g-smooth2k
February 13th, 2005, 01:26 AM
Source: DSL Reports (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/60244)
Slashdot points to an independent browser speed comparison that compares CSS rendering, cold and warm starts, table rendering, script execution, as well as multiple image display times. The result? Opera is the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox and IE are similar, though the former gets the edge on security.
Source: How to Create (http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html)
What is this about?
There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.
Many organisations and users try to claim that their browser is the fastest. The Opera site claims that Opera is The Fastest Browser on Earth!. The Mozilla site claims that Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster (faster than what?). Mozilla itself is quoted as being an alternative to Microsoft IE and it's faster to boot. Apple's Safari pages claim that Safari loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser (although they failed to show any results for Opera, and their charts fail to show results for pages that contain images). Internet Explorer users often claim that they use it because of its speed, as the alternatives take longer to start and load pages.
Opera and Firefox users are quite vocal on the subject, but none of them can actually show any research to back up their statements, ususally just saying "X takes way longer than Y to start" or "my friend uses X and it is much slower on his computer than Y is on mine". Those that did try more than one usually say "X just felt faster than Y when I tried them" (although this may refer to familiarity with the individual user interface - something that I do not cover here). I have even heard people comparing Firefox and Opera, then realised they were referring to Opera 6 (even though historically, Opera 6 is about equivalent to Netscape 4), something that was replaced with a completely new engine long before Firefox even existed.
Well, I've had enough of these unfounded arguments. I present my research. This is an honest, unbiased view (or as unbiased as I can be). Unlike most people, I not only test all the browsers, I test them all on the same computer as each other - grouped into Linux, Mac and Windows (using the same or equivalent hardware for each). This, I hope, gives an accurate comparison, not only of the browsers compared with each other, but for those that work on multiple platforms, it also gives a fairly accurate comparison of the different optimisations for each platform.
Summarise
So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.
On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.
On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino is fast to start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.
On Mac OS 9, no single browser stands out as the fastest. In fact, my condolences to anyone who has to use one of them, they all perform badly.
These results are drawn from my tests as shown above, and are confirmed by my personal use. Please do not send me hate mail saying I have insulted your browser or whatever. If you get different results, try doing what I did. Perform a set of tests like these that cover the major areas of use. Make sure you do it unbiased, cross platform, using the same or equivalent spec on each (make sure you use the same amount of RAM in each). Once you are done, don't tell me about it. Publish your own results, as I have done, with a discussion of why you did each test and what it represents. Facts and figures are everything. Oh, and don't just say "I couldn't get it to install so I didn't bother" - you have no idea how much work I put into getting all these browsers to install on these operating systems (as my wife and the IRC community would be able to testify to). If you can't get it to install, then that is your problem, it says nothing about speed, and simply makes your results incomplete.
Slashdot points to an independent browser speed comparison that compares CSS rendering, cold and warm starts, table rendering, script execution, as well as multiple image display times. The result? Opera is the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox and IE are similar, though the former gets the edge on security.
Source: How to Create (http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html)
What is this about?
There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.
Many organisations and users try to claim that their browser is the fastest. The Opera site claims that Opera is The Fastest Browser on Earth!. The Mozilla site claims that Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster (faster than what?). Mozilla itself is quoted as being an alternative to Microsoft IE and it's faster to boot. Apple's Safari pages claim that Safari loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser (although they failed to show any results for Opera, and their charts fail to show results for pages that contain images). Internet Explorer users often claim that they use it because of its speed, as the alternatives take longer to start and load pages.
Opera and Firefox users are quite vocal on the subject, but none of them can actually show any research to back up their statements, ususally just saying "X takes way longer than Y to start" or "my friend uses X and it is much slower on his computer than Y is on mine". Those that did try more than one usually say "X just felt faster than Y when I tried them" (although this may refer to familiarity with the individual user interface - something that I do not cover here). I have even heard people comparing Firefox and Opera, then realised they were referring to Opera 6 (even though historically, Opera 6 is about equivalent to Netscape 4), something that was replaced with a completely new engine long before Firefox even existed.
Well, I've had enough of these unfounded arguments. I present my research. This is an honest, unbiased view (or as unbiased as I can be). Unlike most people, I not only test all the browsers, I test them all on the same computer as each other - grouped into Linux, Mac and Windows (using the same or equivalent hardware for each). This, I hope, gives an accurate comparison, not only of the browsers compared with each other, but for those that work on multiple platforms, it also gives a fairly accurate comparison of the different optimisations for each platform.
Summarise
So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.
On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.
On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino is fast to start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.
On Mac OS 9, no single browser stands out as the fastest. In fact, my condolences to anyone who has to use one of them, they all perform badly.
These results are drawn from my tests as shown above, and are confirmed by my personal use. Please do not send me hate mail saying I have insulted your browser or whatever. If you get different results, try doing what I did. Perform a set of tests like these that cover the major areas of use. Make sure you do it unbiased, cross platform, using the same or equivalent spec on each (make sure you use the same amount of RAM in each). Once you are done, don't tell me about it. Publish your own results, as I have done, with a discussion of why you did each test and what it represents. Facts and figures are everything. Oh, and don't just say "I couldn't get it to install so I didn't bother" - you have no idea how much work I put into getting all these browsers to install on these operating systems (as my wife and the IRC community would be able to testify to). If you can't get it to install, then that is your problem, it says nothing about speed, and simply makes your results incomplete.