Web Browser Grand Prix: The Top Five, Tested And Ranked

[LORD_ORION]

Maybe it's me, but page load times means more then all the other categories combined. Even a half second is the difference between my impatience and satisfactorily scanning the content I am looking for.

Also, google is way too creepy and invasive to trust any of their software. Use chrome now, 10 years later get denied medial benefits when they make and sell a health profile of you.

 

[nebun]

chrome all the way, i love it, fast, secure and reliable

 

[Tomtompiper]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]chrome all the way, i love it, fast, secure and reliable[/citation]


Define secure.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

God, seriously, who cares about browser performance? Most people, including me, really don't give a rat's arse. If it displays pages ok then that's good enough for me. If I'm using Windows, I'll use the default browser, IE. If I'm using OSX then I'll use the default browser, Safari. If I'm using Linux at work then I'll use the default browser, Firefox. They all seem to display web pages just fine.

 

[Guest]

I'll still choose Firefox, since it is the most open-source and free of the bunch...(Chrome still means signing your privacy away). The web browsing is still satisfactory, which is why most people left IE for it.

I'm all for a review of Linux browsers, but if so, you should include the gold standard for browsers: Lynx

 

[yoy0yo]

I feel that someone should spray a cross over the word HARD and tag the word SOFT so it'd read BEST OF TOM'S SOFTWARE

 

[Tomtompiper]

Maybe instead of pushing a browser they should be at CE-BIT bringing us news of things like this.

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/3/3/sapphire-ready-to-launch-radeon-hd-5990-4gb.aspx

 

[Tomtompiper]

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/3/3/sapphire-ready-to-launch-radeon-hd-5990-4gb.aspx

 

[Guest]

Internet Explorer is the only browser that allows me to fully customize my security settings. Using IE8, I only enable activex/scripts on my trusted sites.........no other browser gives that option......i rest my case.....

 

[sloug]

chrome is my no. 1 for some time already - speed and sandboxing. no mouse gestures as far as i know tho' - i always liked that in opera (my prew browser)

 

[rhino13]

This makes me feel bad about still using IE.
I guess I should switch to Chrome.
I just don't understand how IE is so much slower but loads Facebook faster.

 

[Tomtompiper]

[citation][nom]Dennis 111[/nom]Internet Explorer is the only browser that allows me to fully customize my security settings. Using IE8, I only enable activex/scripts on my trusted sites.........no other browser gives that option......i rest my case.....[/citation]


Could that be because they don't use active-x? Best laugh I have had today;-)
IE8 is a pale imitation of a browser, my guess is you haven't tried any of the others.

 

[hebe]

It is a bit frustrating to see that several of the sites you picked to load as part of the Page Load Times test randomly load heavy flash content as a part of the ads on the site. A few unlucky ads in the 5 page loads you do would lead to some very bad results for Safari, Chrome, and Opera. It'd be nice if you let us know whether the pages had to load extra flash content, but I see you didn't document that at all. It is a likely reason for Safari's extremely divergent page load times.

 

[Guest]

Until there is a browser that can block ads as easily and thoroughly as Firefox with AdBlock, I'm staying with it. I don't care if one browser loads a page a few hundredths of a second faster. Who cares.

 

[Guest]

Am I the only one noticing that the startup speed test gives really weird results? Both Safari and Firefox start up faster when they have to load more tabs, compare the result for 5 and 8 tabs! Or do I understand the test methodology wrong?

 

[hebe]

I tried NonTroppo's tests using Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE. I was unable to replicate the results for Opera, which loaded considerably faster than the results here would suggest. My machine, a laptop with 35+ tabs open in Opera, should not have been able to average better than yours by such a wide margin in every NonTroppo test listed. Firefox also did significantly better, and I tested both Firefox 3.5 and 3.6... Surely your results should be easily replicated, and certainly not exceeded on an inferior machine. I'd invite others to run these tests as well and see if their scores for Firefox and Opera exceed those in the article.

 

[bigbio2002]

I am a loyal user of Internet Explorer, despite all the problems and shortcomings I've experienced with it. I am not surprised that the benchmark scores were so low, but I did notice at least one erroneous score in the benchmarks caused by a buggy addon. The author stated that he installed Java on the browser before benchmarking, and subsequently IE8 experienced slow tab loading when there were a large number of tabs open. This is a known and well-documented issue when the Java SSV Helper addon is enabled. I think it would be appropriate to retest IE8 with the addon disabled to produce a more "fair" score (I know that you are testing a default configuration, but the bug lies with Sun Microsystems, not Microsoft). I have no idea whether disabling the addon would affect any of the other scores, but some were so ridiculously low that it may have been a cause for that, so if the tab load score improves with the addon disabled, re-running the benchmark suite may be appropriate. Then again, IE8 is also known for it's poor JavaScript performance...

I believe that by retesting with the addon disabled would produce a fairer and more informative article for readers of your site. Thanks for reading this, and hopefully you'll take it into consideration!

 

[Tomtompiper]

[citation][nom]lwi[/nom]Am I the only one noticing that the startup speed test gives really weird results? Both Safari and Firefox start up faster when they have to load more tabs, compare the result for 5 and 8 tabs! Or do I understand the test methodology wrong?[/citation]

"It's just the result that is important, don't let facts and figures get in the way."

Elbridge Gerry 1812

 

[kenjiuchimura]

I'll stick with FF. At the time, Firefox popped up as a solution to my constantly failing Netscape and IE. (Seriously, one would fail and I'd have to use the other one--it was back and forth quite a few times). At this point in time there's not really a reason to switch, I love the plugins and I'm familiar with a few hidden optimization tweaks for FF.

 

[sandrah]

What about user interface? tests of every other type of software always involves that, and to be perfectly honestly a couple more seconds of page load time is well worth the ease of use on a less cumbersome interface and some modes like full screen are fairly important on smaller displays like UMPC's and netbooks, chrome and opera both lack it and firefoxe's implementation is poor at best the way it handle the bookmarks and address bars both of which force a complete reformating of the screen which is very clunk vs IE's layered effect that just hovers over the page till you make your selection and then goes away.

Another down point of the other browsers is bars not going away when you don't need them, when I got to my bookmarks I want to click on the one I want and it to then go away and not hang around like an old senile duck like firefox and opera do shrinking my viewable area.

 

[memeroot]

I use them all, firefox is slow but its easy to make it your own (and so for some tasks is faster to use in the real world)
chrome is the fastest barest browser so great for brwsing - however it falls over on to many pages/apps
opera is best all round browser
explorer - because for some pages its the only one that works right off (yes I know I can change the encoding but...

 

[Sabiancym]

[citation][nom]manwell999[/nom]Chrome has a clumsy system to open bookmarks. Instead of a pull down menu you have to click a spanner then select bookmark manager which opens up a bookmark browser so you can then click the frequently used site.[/citation]

Uh...you may need to take a closer look. I have a pull down menu on my Chrome browser.

Been using chrome since beta and couldn't use another browser.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]tomtompiper[/nom]If you are going to do a cross platform test, I would be interested, however I suggest you do so on a variety of setups from Netbooks up. Not everybody surfs on the same system and I think some of these browsers might give diffrent results on low end systems. Allowance would have to be made for IE8 due to its lack of a native Linux app, but it's scores using wine would still make for interesting reading.[/citation]

You're absolutely right, I ran some test on a Dell Mini 10v with Win7 Starter (keep in mind, i ran them quick and dirty, and for me not the article) - Chrome and Safari didn't fare quite as well, making Firefox and Opera more attractive. IE is still a mess.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Alert me when other browsers have the extensibility and flexibility of Firefox. I mean really, I know Chrome is incredibly fast and has a lot of interesting features, but as a web designer I couldn't live without the Web Developer toolbar or Firebug and I couldn't live without NoScript, X-Marks and Adblock Plus in general. I also like changing themes every once in a while, so that makes me a Firefox fan for a while more. Chrome would definitely be my second choice however.

 

[mattijs123]

OPERA user for a long time. Seems little people know how much opera got copied. So many things that are now default (for some ) have been "stolen" from opera...browser tabs, download manager style downloads, mouse gestures !!!!!!! TRY THEM, ....

The mouse gestures is why i stay with opera even though some things just don't work well in it. The version which i run now for example is incompatible with GMAIL chat so i always have one IE page open which is gmail.