Web Browser Grand Prix 7: Firefox 7, Chrome 14, Opera 11.51

[adamovera]

Mozilla released the hotly-anticipated Firefox 7 two days ago. Does it deliver on the promise of speed and memory improvements? Does Firefox 7 have what it takes to dethrone current Web Browser Grand Prix champion, Google Chrome? Read on to find out!

Web Browser Grand Prix 7: Firefox 7, Chrome 14, Opera 11.51 : Read more

 

[gerchokas]

Well done Mozilla!
Now they could change their famous icon to a more minimalist/modern style and we're done. Speedy AND classy, just like a fire fox.

 

[shiftmx112]

Enjoy it while you can Firefox fans

Indeed. I have been quite content with FF8 though.

 

[soccerdocks]

Until another browser beats Chrome in the speed/performance benchmarks I'm sticking with it.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

im sticking with IE, its perfectly fast enough and stable and why should I have to install another browser when it works perfectly fine?

 

[JOSHSKORN]

I'm on FF10. Nightly 64-bit!

 

[compton]

I have to say, I do really like chrome. I stopped using Firefox as much one I tried the chrome beta, and now I use IE9 and chrome all the time. I used opera for a while, but Netflix streaming doesn't work with it, nor do many other sites I use.

Now that IE is good again, I can't fault anyone for using it in lieu of the others.

 

[makaveli316]

"Until another browser beats Chrome in the speed/performance benchmarks I'm sticking with it."

lol people still think they can feel the difference in terms of speed in real world performance and there's still people that doesn't use a browser for their needs and preferences, but just because they have seen some silly benchmark.
Ridiculous. I bet those are the same people that are always complaining in the forums about crashes, viruses and blue screens.

 

[killik]

Even better yet,if you use FF7 with the MemoryFox addon,Firefox simply obliterates the competition.try it for yourself.

 

[killik]

Even better yet,if you use FF7 with the MemoryFox addon,Firefox simply obliterates the competition in the memory management department.try it for yourself.

 

[frostmachine]

I noticed firefox will use progressively more memory. Even if it's just refreshing the same pages. I use firefox, opera n chrome, keeping them open 24hr/day. It can go from intial 100mb to over 500mb. I don't see this in the other browsers.

 

[Guest]

The only test that matters to me is whether i can play zuma blitz on facebook. Firefox still loses there. I shoot a ball the screen hangs til all acclerated movements stop. IE9 runs smoothly no problem; still wont use it unless im trying to plan that game. I'm just sayin

 

[Guest]

The Encog Silverlight result is wrong. In the graph IE9 comes third with Firefox fourth, but your conclusions are,
Firefox 7 shows significant improvement over version 6, moving up to third place. As a result, IE9 drops to fourth.

 

[Guest]

How on earth can Firefox be winner in memory manaegment? Chrome and IE are much better....

 

[buzznut]

Firefox 7 is supposed to be better at memory management but I am still getting the same messages from AVG telling me Firefox is using too much memory. This only started with 6 so I think they still have work to do here. Maybe if they had longer than 6 weeks between versions...

 

[jdwii]

give it a week and my favorite browser will put firefox in their place.

 

[Guest]

This article (as well as the preceding series of articles) is a great example of how amateur journalism can be misleading, or just downright wrong.

On the surface, everything looks good - the author sets out a methodology, clearly presents the results, and draws conclusions based on them. Unfortunately, in doing so he reveals his severely lacking knowledge of testing methodology, the browsers themselves, as well as how one interprets the results of benchmarks.

To aggregate across criteria such as "performance" and "standards compliance" (never mind the fact that HTML5 hasn't yet been drawn up), using an arbitrary weighting system, and then conclude that one browser beats other "overall" is nonsensical.

Nowhere has the author talked about relevance (this is critical) or statistical significance of his tests. I'm sure he put in a lot of effort into the article, and that it was written out of the best of intentions; however, this article remains a jumble of random tests clumsily grouped together. For example, can the author explain to the readers why the removal of SVG fonts in the ACID3 test is important? Should browsers have support for SVG fonts? Should one test for it? If he can't, he's just mechanically running benchmarks that he's found on the internet.

Obviously it's easier to criticise - but it's much more beneficial for people to actually try the browsers out for themselves (it is free after all) than to read this kind of poorly conducted "showdown".

 

[lassik]

FF7 was always my favourite, it had the best storyline.

 

[Guest]

http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/09/30/firefoxbeta8/

Firefox 8.0 Beta is now available.

 

[Onus]

Some add-in crash issues in FF a couple months ago forced me to use IE again for a while. Wow, I never realized how many sites had so many ads, and ways to show them! I'm glad FF is more stable again so I can use it once more, although there are still a couple of sites where IE9 is more compatible.

 

[eddieroolz]

Firefox 7 as the winner of Grand Prix!?! I gotta go check if hell has frozen over right now!

But on a more serious tone, I honestly thought Chrome had this one again. Looking at the charts my impression was that Firefox never really won anything by significant margins.

Also, I hope Internet Explorer 10 will arrive soon. My short experience with IE10 under Windows 8 was very pleasant, even better than that of IE9.

 

[adamovera]

Sorry for disappearing, I was up for a couple of days trying to get this in before the weeks end. Let me try to get caught up on all the questions/comments.

[citation][nom]soccerdocks[/nom]Until another browser beats Chrome in the speed/performance benchmarks I'm sticking with it.[/citation]
Good catch. Even though Firefox 7 is overall a stronger browser (by a hair) when looking at everything we're testing, it's Chrome 14 that holds the edge in pure speed trials.

[citation][nom]iam2thecrowe[/nom]im sticking with IE, its perfectly fast enough and stable and why should I have to install another browser when it works perfectly fine?[/citation]
First off, I apologize if your comment was sarcastic. You don't have to change, but from my personal experience I don't know how people deal with all those prompts. To me, using IE is like a Vista (pre-SP1) UAC experience all over again, but in your Web browser.

[citation][nom]compton[/nom]I used opera for a while, but Netflix streaming doesn't work with it, nor do many other sites I use.[/citation]
I just reactivated my Netflix account to check on this. I'm using it right now just fine - in a virtual machine no less.

[citation][nom]frostmachine[/nom]I noticed firefox will use progressively more memory. Even if it's just refreshing the same pages. I use firefox, opera n chrome, keeping them open 24hr/day. It can go from intial 100mb to over 500mb. I don't see this in the other browsers.[/citation]
Are your observations based on older versions of Firefox? The long-awaited memory fixes have finally arrived in version 7.

[citation][nom]pseudoscion[/nom]The Encog Silverlight result is wrong. In the graph IE9 comes third with Firefox fourth, but your conclusions are,Firefox 7 shows significant improvement over version 6, moving up to third place. As a result, IE9 drops to fourth.[/citation]
Doh! Working on fixing that now. It should read: Firefox 7 shows a significant performance drop from version 6, moving down to fourth place. As a result, IE9 moves up to third. I think I was looking at the WBGP6 and WBGP7 charts backwards when writing that part. Doh!

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]I'm on FF10. Nightly 64-bit![/citation]
what good does that do if you can't even see the page properly...most web pages are for 32bit not 64bit

 

[icepick314]

I don't get how Firefox keeps memory usage under 800MB...

I have one tab open and watching Mission:Impossible TV series on Amazon and after 2 hours, it's at 1.3GB...

it's probably more to do with that damm Flash messing up memory usage more than Firefox does...

 

[iamtheking123]

Give FF 9 a go. It's noticeably faster than 7 in regular browsing. Loads pages much more aggressively.

And it's pretty obvious the Maze Solver is a bullshit "benchmark" when Firefox is the only browser that somehow scores 1/10th the speed of every other browser. What obscure command set is it using that Firefox doesn't bother implementing because no one uses it in the real world?