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

[adamovera]

@the_man
I have gone back into the test environment and run Acid3 on Chrome and Opera. I ran the test with the methodology for the article: 5 iterations each, averaged to get the final time. I recorded the Total elapsed time.
Chrome - 0.74ms
Opera - 0.98ms
No failures occurred on either browser. Chrome takes around 50ms to clear Test 26 and 2 attempts to clear Test 69. Opera takes about 120ms to clear Test 26.

 

[adamovera]

So close. So very, very close. I think this has got to be the closest that two browsers have ever come. One quarter of one millisecond! Well, I for one can't wait until Opera 10.50 comes to Linux. Then I can really put it through my own real world test in daily use - compared against Chromium.

 

[Tomtompiper]

[citation][nom]m2pc[/nom]@tomtompiper: "Chrome records everything you type in the search bar and sends it back to Google. If you want big brother get Chrome."All browsers with a "suggestion" feature do this. It's impossible to get a list of suggestions without sending what you've typed to a server to retrieve a list of possible choices!Try running a packet sniffer on any browser with this feature, and I'm sure you will see similar activity. Not all "phoning home" is bad.[/citation]

Do all browsers hold this information and disseminate such information to third parties? I didn't think so. Also it is possible on a good browser to switch off this feature and there are search engines that don't record your information. Try doing some research before posting facts,

http://www.ixquick.com

for example. Not the best search engine if you are looking for porn or adverts, but hey what is peace of mind worth?

 

[nightVzn]

The problem with a lot of these browsers is that many of them try to reinvent the user interface paradigm to varying degrees. I realize visual appeal is a subjective matter, but a consistent look/feel is supposed to be a core philosophy of modern graphical operating systems; so if you're going to create software that looks outlandish or overly "pretty" in some way, the look should at least be user-defeatable such that the application can be set to use OS-standard layouts and GUI elements.

With an open mind, I downloaded Chrome a while back, but was immediately horrified by how bizarre and non-standard it looks. That's great if you like it, but I couldn't find any configuration option to make it look/feel like a standard Windows app. Instant fail, in my book, no matter how fast it runs.

But even Microsoft is going somewhat against, er, Microsoft's standards with the layout of IE 7/8. I much preferred the look of IE6, and that was the sole reason I held out for ages before "upgrading" to 8; but no matter how you look at it, sandwiching navigation buttons and the URL box between the window title bar and the menu bar is non-standard in Windows, and just plain weird. And worse yet? You can't change it (as far as I can tell). And why can't the tab bar be configured to disappear when you only have one tab open, like in Firefox? Why waste the screen real estate?

Ironically, Safari has a more Windows-ish layout than IE, but the actual design of its GUI elements is unmistakably Apple. No thanks. If I want an Apple look, I'll get a Mac.

I haven't used Opera so I can't comment, but among the others, Firefox is the *only* browser that still looks like a Windows web browser is "supposed" to look. But for me at least, it feels slower. Personally, then, I'm left torn between IE and Firefox, and I can't find true love for either.

Chrome may be fast, but its non-user-defeatable, non-standard look is a GUI no-no.

Another thought: the way IE stores bookmarks as discrete files/folders makes maintenance a lot easier, since you don't have to use IE's proprietary bookmark manager. Also, you can create a lovely taskbar toolbar to quickly access any Favorites folder. I don't believe this is possible with these other browsers (sure, they will launch in whatever your default browser is, but it's still IE's bookmarks). Personally, I'd like to see all browsers move towards a standard way of using a shared bookmarks repository, since this would make life a lot easier for people who use multiple browsers and would like their bookmarks uniform from one to the next; but at the very least, using standard filesystem files/folders (like IE does) would be a huge enhancement.

Some of the factors I've brought up are subjective, but some are about clear usability violations, and none of these browsers are totally innocent. But Firefox seems to come out on top of IE, Chrome, and Safari in this very important, but often overlooked, category.

 

[dupaman]

[citation][nom]zak_mckraken[/nom]Also, an interesting, already known fact came out publicly with this review : Your page is slow Tom's. Take the hint.[/citation]

I was surprised to have to go thru 3 pages of comments until the first mention of this. I know Tom's has more content than most of the other pages tested, but to render over 10x slower? For shame!

 

[pelowell]

Ok, why do I have nothing but problems with Chrome. I read the article, downloaded, ran it for a day. Every other site I go to, slow download. Streaming media...glitchy, not supported, slow to load....what am I doing wrong here? I found it performed well only on a very limited number of media light websites.

 

[1kpc]

[citation][nom]pelowell[/nom]Ok, why do I have nothing but problems with Chrome. I read the article, downloaded, ran it for a day. Every other site I go to, slow download. Streaming media...glitchy, not supported, slow to load....what am I doing wrong here? I found it performed well only on a very limited number of media light websites.[/citation]

I can totally understand your problems. It is erratic is some websites. I don't understand why don't bring it up. The benchmarks completely ignored the fact that some websites don't work well with some browsers which for me is most important

 

[alexcheng]

Google Chrome and Opera for the win LOL! Turns out to the the only two browser I've been using all along. As much as I respect Microsoft, really, Internet Explorer sucks!

 

[mike fe]

To award something the "Best of Toms Hardware" while focussing only on one aspect is, well, sorry, plain stupid. You say: "What these benchmarks do not reveal is the usability (or overall end-user experience) of these browsers. ... Security is also a major concern, and something that was not tested for this article." How can a browser be BEST, when you don't take these things into account? Or are you just hoping that Google will put you higher in their searchlist if you are friendly towards them? This article is, at best, incomplete and therefore the endresult is meaningless.

 

[Guest]

I am sure that, would you use the same system specs, but from another hardware manufacturer, you'd get completely different results.

What I'm trying to say that these tests should probably be performed by every user individually. And, also, you don't know what really matters until you face a certain situation. On my Debian Squeeze I run Midori, which is awesomely fast in startup and loading pages BUT it is pretty bare-bones. Most of the time Flash sucks on it. So, while Iceweasel (Debian's version of Firefox) might be slow on start-up and a bit sluggish in the first seconds, it sure has a lot of functionality, some of it being

Download helper, FlashGot and others I just love to use. Sincerely, if Midori had all that and if it was patched by many people, I'd probably ditch Firefox any day.

 

[Guest]

PS.: But I guess Midori, Safari, Epiphany, Arora, Konqueror et al. were actually made for ppl like my mum who just like to do some Facebook and mail, and maybe Youtube. It's not for those who edit 20 different forums at once, watching a Youtube clip, playing a browser game and refreshing last.fm. I don't even want to try that in Midori

Features come at a cost I guess, and, as long as these Features are built into a GTK/QT interface and are to support UTF-8 and what not, performance is going to be a pet peeve.

 

[NAVYGASSER]

I'm glad to see this article confirm what I have noticed in my own use. I switched from FireFox to Chrome about 6 months ago because of speed. While there are a few drawbacks as pointed out in this article I don't see myself ever going back to FireFox.

 

[DalaiLamar]

Addons, I need addons like Recipefox, AI Roboform and Form History Control to make my web surfing whole.

Firefox forever!!!

 

[Guest]

how many people do you know, which are using completely clean FF or chrome ?
and how many people use lots of addons? adblock, mouse gestures, greasemonkey, sidebar, bookmark manager ...
so why the hell do you test browsers without plugins? no-one use them!

and it could make huge difference in startup time (especialy FF) or memory usage.
make this tests again, with few most popular addons. the results could be a lot different. and more objective

 

[plazma1]

Not to burst a bubble. But I dont think Opera is just claiming that the new javascript and rendering engine makes it the fastest browser.
If you turn on Opera turbo on a bad wifi connection you'll see the page load speed difference (yes you might sacrifice some image quality, but this is much less frustrating than a slow connection).

Their claims to fastest browsing take into account these extra technologies, you can see this hits a chord in a country like Russia, where dial-up connections are not a thing of the past but also where Opera has great market share.

Also, out of the box features, gui, privacy and security should all be concerns here. I think speedtests shoud be thrown out the window as a comparison factor especially as all these browsers are finally coming to meet the high demands of ajax sites.

 

[Tomtompiper]

All in all it is down to preferences and what aspects of the browsing experience you rate the highest. All of the browsers on the test will allow you to do what they were designed for, depending on your Add-On's, browsing habits and system some will be faster than others. People should use the one they prefer, it's like cars, some will sacrifice comfort and or economy for speed and others will go for a comfortable easy to drive car. None of them are wrong, they are in the best position to know their needs, by all means try another browser and if you prefer it change, but there is no such thing as the perfect browser.

As a result of this story I have tried almost all of the browsers with the exception of Safari, not supported in Linux and substituted Chromium (Spyware free) for Chrome. After a quick look at them all I have kept Opera installed and will give it an extended test but at the moment I can't see myself moving from Firefox, it has everything I need and to be honest It will take a killer add-on from Opera to make me switch.

As to this review as a lot of posters have pointed out it is deeply flawed and I would treat the result with a pinch of salt.

 

[rachidfinge]

Opera's memory usage has been discussed at length at Opera's forums. Basically, the philosophy the developers maintain is: if you've got plenty of available memory, then why not use it? It would therefore be interesting to redo the memory tests on a system that has only 2, 1 or even 0.5 GB of memory. I'd like to see if Opera's memory usage will drop accordingly and probably below the competitor's memory usage. Considering Opera's core also runs on Nintendo's Wii and many memory strapped WinMo phones, it should perform well.

 

[rachidfinge]

Opera's memory usage has been discussed at length at Opera's forums. Basically, the philosophy the developers maintain is: if you've got plenty of available memory, then why not use it? It would therefore be interesting to redo the memory tests on a system that has only 2, 1 or even 0.5 GB of memory. I'd like to see if Opera's memory usage will drop accordingly. Considering Opera's core also runs on Nintendo's Wii and many memory strapped WinMo phones, it should perform well.

 

[Guest]

With 8GB RAM I find Opera's extensive caching to be an advantage.

 

[Tomtompiper]

Further to my earlier post regarding Opera, I was using 10.10 and was trying to configure it to suit my needs, but whilst looking for information I came across this site.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustom=Linux

The pop up window is incorrectly rendered and it is not possible to get rid of it due to the close button being hidden. I opened up FF and navigated to the site and everything was as it should be. I will try Opera again once version 10.5 is released for Linux, but at the moment it is not fit for purpose.

 

[Guest]

@tomtompiper: there's an easy way to close that popup: switch from Author Mode to User Mode (there may be a dropdown somewhere in the stock UI; if not View | Style | User Mode will do the trick). The page re-renders without all the original formatting and you can close the popup... when you switch back to Author Mode, the popup is gone.

The linked page also does not validate...

 

[Guest]

I'm supposed to switch why?

I run IE and on my computer with my internet connection it works fine. Pages load and render quickly. My secure pages like online banking work perfectly. I have never gotten a virus or had spyware install on my machine. None of he sites I visit have any problems (maybe they aren't rendering 100% correctly, but I can't tell as they look fine to me).

I have to laugh at the importance people place on browsing the internet. It's like the extreme overclockers who try and tweak that extra 0.1% out of their system vs the other guy. Sure it's faster but it doesn't mean a damn thing.

And this is what the general public will think as well. IE works so why change? Technically other browsers may be better, but who will ever use the extra features or notice the performance difference? People in Russia with dial-up? LMAO

 

[SlipUp]

I have to laugh at the importance people place on browsing the internet.

The browser is the most important application on any computer. Of course people care.

Also, who are you to ridicule people for their beliefs and/or interests? It's pretty pathetic that someone on a "hardcore" site like this denigrates others for having certain interests, just because he doesn't share them.

And this is what the general public will think as well. IE works so why change?

The general public doesn't even know what a browser is. They may be using IE, but they sure as hell didn't make a conscious choice to do so. IE is the default. People who actually look into it, switch to something else because IE is actually noticeably slower than other browsers, and has an extremely poor security track record. Also, having the highest market share, it's the primary target for malware and viruses, so you are much safer with a browser with a smaller market share anyway.

 

[Guest]

I would like to see a Linux browser showdown. I don't use Linux regularly (I use Mac OS most), but I would love to see it because I've always been interested in linux in general.

 

[chimney rock]

some modes like full screen are fairly important on smaller displays like UMPC's and netbooks, chrome and opera both lack it

???

Sorry I'm browsing on Opera 10.50 beta in full screen, something I've been able to do for a long time.