Web Browser Grand Prix: Chrome 20, Opera 12, Firefox 13

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[citation][nom]adamovera[/nom]Bottom of .[/citation]
FFS. What I meant to say (and link to) was "Bottom of page 13." ...of this article.
 
@ adamovera :

AFAIK, in opera 12 that you used, "hardware acceleration" is disabled by default but webgl is enabled. Can you please check?

steps to check :
1. in the url bar , write "opera:config"
2. in the search bar opened, write "hardware", it should show the option. if its "0", HWA is disabled. to enable it, make the option "1".

3. similarly for webgl, write "webgl" is the search box. if its 0, make it 1.
 
IE9 placed at the top of the charts in almost all of the benches but due to an unfair bias against and a dubious wieghting system of course it finished badly
if you just gave 1 point for first two points for second and so on
the IE9 would have the lowest score and won this contest
There is a massive bias against IE9 because every wanna be hacker always thinks it is cool to hate on Microsoft.
as a computer user since 1981 and a professional in the computer field I will tell you that Microsoft puts out good if not great products.
Heck the business world runs just fine on Office and Windows Server
Thank you Mr Gates
 

Then what do you call Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows Vista, IE6, etc.? If those are good/great products, you need to be fired. There isn't any unfair bias against IE, it genuinely sucks. If anything, it was given an unfair advantage since the dead Silverlight took importance over the thriving HTML5 and WebGL. In the world of actual productivity, you'll find Linux and other open sourced software are dominant, particularly in engineering and the sciences. The business world may run fine with Windows, but it runs better with Linux, which is also why Linux has such a large market share in servers.
 
[citation][nom]king smp[/nom] and a professional in the computer field I will tell you that Microsoft puts out good if not great products.[/citation]

agreed IE9 is good.
and IE8 was better.
And ie7 was the best browser ever.


and we dont need more than 640K RAM.
and win7 phone outsold SGS2+iphone4s previous year.
and METRO UI is the best thing invented for desktops since the mouse
 
Great work! I like the new WBGP. It's a lot easier to go through than before, but you do still leave the option to look at the more specific charts. I hope your new choice in benchmarks are more accurate than before, though even if they're not, I can't blame you. Good work and I'll be looking forward to the next WBGP! :-D

BTW, I'm not trying to offend anyone, but I'm saddened to hear of all the people that use ad blockers. I don't mean to be preachy, but sites are free for a reason, and even if the sites themselves aren't the ones at a loss, the people who partially or wholly fund the sites are. I know that it might not even be indicated to be against the rules/TOU, but still. Even if you say that those ads aren't relevant to you, you wouldn't know since something may catch your eye one day and provide business for the advertiser, but it won't happen anymore because of ad blockers. Sorry for pointing this out.
 


The problem is abusing ads. Everyone does it. Ads are often intrusive, distracting, and sometimes laced with malware. Also, ads are usually for profit, not maintenance costs (depending on what the site does). This can be demonstrated by Wikipedia's total lack of ads and Facebook's minimal ads. I often run ABP along with NoSrcript for this very reason. However, I'll happily donate to a project worthwhile, such as Wikipedia. My other problem with ads, particularly true with Flash and low-end hardware is that they are resource intensive. Legitmate ads in a reasonable amount is ok, but thats rarely the case on the internet. Same with TV for that matter, which is why I never watch it. That and the fact that there's never anything good on.
 

It took me a while to figure out that this was total sarcasm. I actually thought you were being serious. :lol:
You should probably denote sarcasm (especially with the amount of trolls on the web) with a >.> or /s or /sarcasm or this guy :sarcastic:
 
I heard that theres going to be an update for current google TV sets (LG & sony) that will include this browser as well. I am very exciting.
 

It's just sad though that legitimate ads get wiped off as well. I mean, here on TH, I believe that most ads are legitimate and if I blocked out the ads, I might've not ever known (or at least taken special note of) TigerDirect where I buy a lot of stuff for example.

And of course ads seem to be mostly for profit. Again, like TH, I'm not sure where else the writers and others would get their salaries from. With the pressure put on them, most if not all of them must have this as their main source of income. Wikipedia, is meant to be an open-source community type where you contribute out of generosity, and I applaud any legit open-source contributor. Facebook does have nice minimal ads, but they do still stand out and "distract" you or better put, catch your eye which is the point of ads.

I'm not sure what NoScript is, but based on context and guessing, it's to filter out script-based ads, like Flash ads, while sparing those that aren't. Correct me if I guessed wrong. 🙂 If that's the case then I'm happy that you're one of the ones that still care. I'm also glad you'd donate to support good causes. 🙂

That would be nice, if browsers or websites could take into account your hardware capabilities to show more resource-appropriate ads.

Again, I don't mean to conflict for the sake of conflicting. I'm the one who +1'ed your reply since you brought up reasonable points.

P.S. I usually watch TV if I'm just lounging around. Hehehe... :-D
 


Well, I know ABP realized this a while ago and started to white-list legitimate ad sources, which was voluntary, but I haven't heard about in a while. Regardless, you can manually white-list ads as well, or disable ABP entirely on a site by site basis.

Profit is money left over AFTER salaries have been paid. Increase in profit doesn't necessarily mean increase in salary.

NoScript blocks ALL scripts, not just ads. There are pre-made filters that you can subscribe to though. You'd be surprise at all the crap that's running on these websites. Even on TH, the list of running scripts is one of the longest I've ever seen.
 

Oh, you meant the economic definition of "profit." I went for the general definition, as in just plainly making money. But (economic) profit isn't bad either. It can be used to increase salaries, though like you said, not always, and/or expansions, in this case, hiring more employees maybe or getting better/more servers/hosting. If it's a business, it's business, and not everyone works for free.

Alas I do wish ads were better and cleaner, and if this is the case, people would actually take notice and not block these good ads. Maybe more use of Javascript, HTML5, and/or NaCl (for Chrome users and maybe in the future, if supported, other browsers) might help with the performance problems. I still think it would be better to not use an ad blocker and just discern for yourself which ads are legit or not, but on really low-end systems, maybe blocking out resource-intensive ads might just be justified, especially if you really can't use the site properly. 🙂
 
What about using memory with 10+ tabs opened? Chrome is very memory hungry in my experience.

Opera tries to keep closed tabs in memory and unloads them depending on how much memory is available in system. So if you have plenty of memory you can ctrl-z cosed tabs without loading anything in a blink of an eye.
 
[citation][nom]csf60[/nom]Opera is the only browser without any "weaks" in the essential tests. I guess Opera is a jack of all trades, master of none.[/citation]
Those tests show synthetic performance for the most part. In everyday use Opera is the most convinient browser. Chrome is a bit faster in page loadings, but not much. But it uses too much memory and is not as responsive with many tabs.

Not to mention Opera is all inclusive browser so if you try to install extensions to make Chrome or FF be as useful as Opera you'll see how crippled they are after that.

Personally I like Chrome and Opera. Chrome is a great alternative to ex-IE users that need basic functionality. That's why I recommend it to my mom and some inexperienced friends.
Opera is amazing for an experienced user with lots of functionality out of the box and even more customization. And it doesn't suffer from Extensions Hell.
 
@cherubic: extensions in Chrome always gave me trouble, while in Firefox it last caused me trouble when version 3.5 was the new kid on the block - that's going back quite a while.
Nowadays, since Mozilla overhauled the extension system with version 4 and made it more stable in 7, extensions hardly cause problems. As long as you update them regularly and do check where they're from. And, I'm an open source proponent - which pretty much reduces my ethical choices to Firefox and Chromium.
I'm not dissing Opera, it's just that I don't find it that practical. But, given a choice between Opera, IE and Safari, I'd take Opera any day.
 
As I'm quite a newbie in this matter, I would appreciate if in this kind of test the author could add the human perception. For example I'm not really sure that a difference of 0.2 s can be feel without measurement by a standard human. I understand that in order to get a winner in this contest every details matter. But for me as an everyday user I would like to know until what point those details are important^^
 
if you have an i7 with 16gb of memory and IE9 recognizes the graphic card so you can use the acceleration in the IE9. Then IE9 does well.
If IE9 does not recognize the GPU , it is unstable.

I really hated the Msn live messenger until if was able to use set compact view.
 
Sincerely, the difference between Firefox and Chrome is minimal. I prefer to stay with Firefox which is from an independent foundation.

Also, this benchmarks clearly state that people having problems with Firefox should check their extensions.
 
I think it's pretty obvious that Firefox and Chrome are the best two on the block right now, at least until the next IE comes out. I would go with Firefox even if the performance gap were bigger, though. The extensions in Firefox make browsing the web a lot more worthwhile. With them, I can ensure privacy and security (Taco, Noscript, etc), safely browse the web without risk of running into scams or dangerous websites (Web of Trust), ensure that I am always getting the best deals when shopping online (Invisible hand), and never have to worry about ads intruding on my web browsing experience (ABP).
 
Do the next test in Win8?? I am using the Win8 release preview 32bit version to replace vista. It runs quite snappy even though I only have 2 gigs of RAM.
 
I'd love chrome and firefox even more if my isp didn't completely suck 🙁

50kB/s download speeds are ridiculous. Ah, oh well. Maybe centurylink will extend their services in the upcoming months...not holding my breath. :/
 
WebGL doesn't really exist outside of testing/demo sites?! Well, it's hardly true. I've encountered WebGL being used as a _tool_ (not as a demo or test) many times already. Random encounters during web-surfing from my experience I remember - WebGL version of Google Maps, Nokia Maps 3D in WebGL, in Blender Nation blog WebGL widget was used to demonstrate some 3D models. On the other hand, Silverlight is a dying technology that doesn't really exist even _in_ demos/testing sites, so how it can be more important than WebGL?

"Memory efficiency" is a total joke, a metric that has no sense or any real meaning at all. The difference between memory usage in the initial state and after opening/closing tabs is due to heap fragmentation, this memory is not wasted or leaked, it will be used again when you'll open new tabs. This metric important for the end-user at all, it doesn't mean that memory usage will grow indefinitely after opening/closing tabs or something. But what makes it a total joke is comparing of differences instead of comparing memory usage directly. Look:
Firefox uses 61 Mb in the initial state, and 188 Mb after opening/closing tabs.
Chrome uses 91 Mb in the initial state, and 185 Mb after opening/closing tabs.
Firefox gets 188-61=127 points (less is better), and Chrome gets 185-91=94 points in "Memory efficiency" test.
So Chrome wins, because it uses _more_ memory at startup. Make Firefox to consume more memory on the start, and it will win the benchmark! This test is a total joke.

Total memory consumption, on the hand, is really important, so I have no idea why it was dropped. There are numerous contexts when memory usage is important.
1) for people who use many applications at the same time. After all modern desktop OSes are multitasking. People can open browsers (many different browsers), games, graphics applications (huge memory hogs), IDEs -- all at the same time.
2) heavy tab users, people who like to open hundreds (100, 200, 300) of tabs. If Chrome uses twice more memory than Firefox with many tabs, it means that the user can open twice less tabs on the same system before swapping/making system unresponsive.
3) for users of old hardware. God, many netbooks (_net_ books, notebooks designed for Internet _browsing_) produced in the recent years have 1Gb of memory, and it's not possible to install more memory there. It's bloody important for them to use less bloated applications for comfortable web-surfing.
Granted, it's important not for everyone. But the same is true for any benchmark.
 
I might get tons of thumbs down for this, but: will you ever try Win7 32bits?? I'm curious to see how things fare there...
 
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