Web Browser Grand Prix 2: The Top 5 Tested And Ranked

[hebe]

Opera may be ever so slightly slower in some areas, but it also has everything you could ever want... Standard. Yes, they have "widgets" if you want them, but why bother? I much prefer Opera to any other browser, but I cannot deny that Chrome gives it a good run for its money in speed.

The main issue with Opera is that many pages don't recognize it properly, and you must force Opera to identify as FF to render or to render properly. Wachovia's site doesn't let you do online banking in Opera unless you tell it to identify as FF, but there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for this. Simple bias based on market share.

@batkerson - The numbers in the article are from local page loads.

 

[adribhel]

Changed from FF to Opera a month ago: really, REALLY satisfied with it.

Only thing I miss is Noscript (FF addon.)

 

[wolfram23]

Would be nice if they took more than pure speed tests into account, like functionality. Addblockers and such. I'm going to give Opera a try, but I hope it's as easy to manage as FF. I like FF's add-ons.

 

[ohim]

[citation][nom]rossirobi[/nom]ok screw that :|when any of the competition will have bookmarks like thishttp://img715.imageshack.us/i/topsites.png/or history like this http://img411.imageshack.us/i/historya.png/http://img411.imageshack.us/i/history2.png/than we can talk :|safari may indeed have memory problems or it may not be the fastest but those 3 pictures make me wanna stay with safari[/citation]
Besides the 3D-ish look it has nothing above opera`s quick dial

 

[knickle]

I agree with some of the comments here. Some of the graphs are deceptive if you don't look close enough. Please start the graphs from 0 please.

Aside from that, it was an interesting read.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Moved to FF4b1 and never looked back here. It's got Chrome's minimalistic UI with Firefox's insane customization options, and it's already surprisingly fast despite not even having the new Javascript engine. Plus, ~128mb isn't bad at all for RAM usage, considering the number of plugins and add-ons running.

 

[cadder]

This article misses one of the most important features of a browser- security. I have browsed to questionable sites with IE and had my computers loaded with spyware. I have browsed to similar sites with Firefox and it protected me from the malware. Are the other browsers susceptible to malware or do they protect you from it?

I would take the absolute slowest browser in existence if it offered better protection against malware.

 

[Guest]

opera is far better than firefox or chrome. firefox always crashes!!!!!!! i hate it

 

[cutterjohn]

It's been a while since I bothered with, which was during the slowdowns in ff two releases prior to current(IIRC) and the lack of usable plugins(because of design) in Chrome drove me straight back to ff, which fortunately just had a version update that speeded it up GREATLY ATTM.

I haven't tried Opera in years, as it was just clunky and not fast at all compared to other browsers, and as I haven't used a recent Apple product in years, I also haven't bothered with safari, but even back then I generally preferred ff to Safari, and aeons ago I used omniweb both before and AFTER they switched to webkit. (You back in the day when it was vogue to use Apple's version of webkit to build the browser of the picosecond... also flip-flopped between iCab and Mozilla for OS9, neither was really great...)

Time to go have a look at Opera plugins again I guess, but if they don't have similar functionality to plugins in ff it'll be a deal breaker for me. i.e. noscript, adblock, greasemonkey, etc.

 

[kanedaj]

Aside from wondering how FF pulls of 3rd w/ 10 4th place finishes vs Safari's 10 2nd place finishes, there looks to be a problem with your results chart.
Chrome, FF, and IE each have a total of 30 results, yet Opera has 28 and Safari has 31. (Total the number of finishes from each column).
I know Opera had the 1 invalid score but that doesn't explain this completely. Would you care to re-examine your results table (and thus your results).

 

[itadakimasu]

Good review for Opera... maybe I'll dl it

 

[hebe]

@cutterjohn - Noscript and adblock functionality have been standard in Opera for many years. There is a way of doing what greasemonkey does in Opera, but it is considerably less user-friendly.

 

[m3kw9]

The way the bar graphs are shown makes it look like 11.5 is 50% less than 11.9 Is really biased review. If you start the bar from zero, every browser would look similar speed. This is called glorified stats. You lose respect for doing stuff like that.

 

[knowom]

I'll stick with FF until their is a legitimate reason not to I tried chrome and was disappointed so like the saying goes if it ain't broke don't fix it and FF is far from broke.

 

[Xatos]

I'm not surprised Chrome won. Fire Fox is a thing of the past and most savvy people have already realized the difference on their own.

 

[iulianx]

What's funny is that when you add up the numbers from the Total Placing table, not all the browsers get 30 tests. Opera for some reason gets 28, although you said you invalidated only one test, and Safari gets 31.
Other than that, a pretty good review.

 

[Honis]

@eddieroolz

I agree with your points. The youtube, facebook, google, MSN, and yahoo load times are what 99% (made up %) of internet users are worried about. After that they're worried about it looking right (the gui and webpages) followed by how fast the porn sites can load and if they work right.

Lets be honest, most internet users don't know the difference between HTML5, Flash, Java, memory usage, or coat hangers. It's about the interface and load times. A GUI can be reviewed but not benchmarked so a few more real world load benches would be better than the plethora of synthetics. (Sites like Hulu, Farmville, etc.) Making a distinction of Synthetic speed winner, real world speed winner, and overall speed winner would give us (tech savvy individuals) a better idea of what to recommend to our friends/family based on their expected internet usage as well as satisfy our need to become fanboys of anyone browser.

Not to be completely negative: The testing looks good and does paint a clear winner for the tests that were ran. Thanks!

 

[rachidfinge]

Please see this blog for some details on Opera's slow page loading. It is a bug in the way Opera reads files from cache. The blog also explains why Opera is so fast in Dromaeo and why Opera uses more memory than others (the quick answer: if you have 4 GB of empty memory just sitting there, then why not use it?).

http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/07/13/toms-hardware

 

[idolon]

To clarify rachidfinge's comment a little further (and for those that can't be bother to click the link), the caching bug only affects pages loaded from disk, so pages loaded from the web shouldn't experience such slow performance.

Opera also optimizes away loops in the Dromaeo test because they don't produce any data, so Opera's massive lead is explained because it simply doesn't run code that it recognizes as doing nothing.

 

[enzo matrix]

Why did the chrome page in their video load from bottom to top instead of top to bottom?

 

[adamovera]

Hello Everyone,

Sorry I'm late, this publishes in the middle of the night where I am, so I'll try to catch up all in one post.

@swilhelm - The article you linked states that in XP, Windows Task Manager (WTM) causes double counts with Chrome/Chromium, but that in Vista it causes undercounts. Meaning that, if anything, the Chrome memory usage numbers in the article (we used Win7, which is closer to Vista than XP) are lower than they should be, not higher. But it looks kosher to me, the total is right in the middle of the others usage.

@Mark Heath - I don't know if monthly is warranted just yet, but if these companies accelerate releases ANY MORE, it just might be RE: placing - Your pretty much on the money, for the past few months, well ever since Opera 10.50, it's been Opera and Chrome for the top spot. Less than a week after the first Web Browser Grand Prix, Opera pushed a minor version change that did just enough to push it past Chrome in a few tests. Google is known for doing the same (especially after a Firefox release, almost like clockwork), they always seem to have a minor version change waiting in the wings in case somebody else gets fast on them. I wouldn't be surprised if a minor version change came along for Chrome that just happens to boost performance in the next week or so.

RE: In-Development Browsers - See Page 2. That being said (and read), do you guys REALLY want to see how unstable apps perform? One of the draws about this article is that anyone can grab these apps RIGHT NOW - stable, done, ready-to-go. IF I were to test in-development browsers, I wouldn't compare them to the stable ones, just the other in-development apps. I also wouldn't be giving out any awards or naming a 'winner'. But ya'll are the boss, so if you want to see what's on the bleeding edge, sound off and we'll see what we can do in a different kind of piece.

RE: The Charts - The charts in this article are version 1 of an OpenOffice.org template, v2 (not yet used live) corrected some placement issues. Whenever an outcome is very close, O automatically re-adjusts the scale to emphasize differences (Excel does this too, though it's probably been disabled in our Excel chart template). If ya'll want a static scale begining at zero for ALL charts, I'll change that setting for the next one.

RE: Final Results - As a few of you have noticed, the final placement doesn't add up, I believe that I counted Acid3 twice, once with all 5 browsers and once with just 3. This would explain the odd totals. I have since corrected the tables. The final outcome and placing remains unchanged due to this typo. Chrome still has the edge on Opera in all tests, but Opera owns for speed-only. Firefox is just barely ahead of Safari in third and IE8 is last. When totaling, keep in mind that one Opera result was thrown out, so Opera will have one less score, this also means one less 5th place entry. Also, Acid3 is ONE score, not two like I accidentally counted - The Pass/Fail puts IE in 5th and FF in 4th, the Speed results place the top 3. There is also a tie on the CSS3 Selectors Test - 2 3rd place finishers, no 5th.

@cadder RE: Security Tests - We're looking into it, got any good suggestions?

 

[fearphage]

Good job Opera!

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]rachidfinge[/nom]Please see this blog for some details on Opera's slow page loading. It is a bug in the way Opera reads files from cache. The blog also explains why Opera is so fast in Dromaeo and why Opera uses more memory than others (the quick answer: if you have 4 GB of empty memory just sitting there, then why not use it?).http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2 [...] s-hardware[/citation]
RE: Local Pages - I'll have to look into the web server, can't promise it'll be here for next time though.
RE: Dromaeo JavaScript - Only Opera or Mozilla can fix the Dromaeo bug, I'll make some calls and see what's up. We might have to scrap that test or disqualify Opera again if one of them doesn't change something in time for WBGP3.
RE: Memory - I suppose I can rip out one of the 2gig sticks to see what happens, or add a 1st-gen netbook to the mix. What you have to understand about Roundup/Shootout articles is the logistical nightmare that they can be. All of these are free software downloads and ANY of them can update at ANY moment. We use a single test system to get the results concurrently for the current versions of them all in time to publish together. I'll just have to see what kind of crunch I'm under next time, but I'll try to add some variation for that test if time permits.

 

[jjchmiel78]

I am going to sound like an Apple Iphone user in regards to liking Firefox better. I don't care there is faster better/faster browsers out there. I am just a lazy f--- that does not want to re learn to do what I want to do. Adblock and Noscript are great! I use Downloadthemall suprisingly often and the ability to download embeded images that a simple right click will not allow comes in handy. Don't get me wrong, I use Chrome alot at work and for general browsing, but if I had to choose just one browser to use and no others, it is Firefox.

 

[kd0frg]

Does anyone know if opera or chrome has something just like fox cast (for weather updates and alerts, current temps.. etc) and also , i cant live without my tv-fox .. if there is an equivlent of those 2 plugins for either opera or chrome ill switch right away