Performance comparison of Web Browsers

[milspec]

http://sixrevisions.com/infographs/browser-performance/

[Kym]

Interesting.
Bottom line ANYTHING is better than IE

Chrome has bugs and has been known to mess up AP ... but its also the newest and they will fix it eventually

[TUN35]

I'd say this will more than likely always be the case in comparing open source products to Microsoft. I'm surprised at the results for Safari and Opera though.

Would be interesting to see a more up-to-date test with the latest versions

edit: here's a slightly more updated version http://w-shadow.com/blog/2010/04/20/...ce-comparison/

[Kym]

Firefox 4 is due late this year (and more likely early 2011 as Mozilla have a 'she'll be ready when she's ready' policy rather than a deadline policy).

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osr...-4-Roadmap.htm

[Kym]

AP browser usage May 2010

Firefox 49.3 %
MS Internet Explorer 36.1 %
Safari 8.4 %
Google Chrome 3.7 %
Opera 1.6 %

IE Breakdown...

Msie 8.0 25.4 %
Msie 7.0 8.7 %
Msie 6.0 1.9 % <<< Still very scary

[TUN35]

Those IE numbers would be so much lower if it wasn't pre-packaged with the OS. I'd say IE6 numbers would likely be from crawlers.

[Tannin]

That "test" is the biggest pile of steaming donkey turds I've seen in a long, long time. Their figures are a mile out. I mean seriously, hopelessly wrong. Best to just ignore them completely.

Oh, but even their useless so-called "test" couldn't miss discovering that IE is a complete dog - as if everybody with half a brain didn't know that already.

[Kym]

That "test" is the biggest pile of steaming donkey turds I've seen in a long, long time. Their figures are a mile out. I mean seriously, hopelessly wrong. Best to just ignore them completely.

Oh, but even their useless so-called "test" couldn't miss discovering that IE is a complete dog - as if everybody with half a brain didn't know that already.

Please enlighten us... What test system should give more 'correct' results.

Seriously... These sort of tests are a tad pointless ... it gets down to a browser that you are comfortable with and is not embedded (IE) and leaves you security vulnerable.

[Tannin]

One that gives more sensible results. Opera is so much faster than Firefox at both starting up and rendering most (but not all) actual real-world pages that the difference is immediately obvious with the naked eye, never mind when you measure it. The same applies to Chrome - or seems to to a casual eye, I don't much care for Chrome and don't use it much. Whatever tests they used for this "comparison", it is rigged. Nothing more certain. Presumably by some Firefox zealot with an agenda to push. Hey, there are lots of good reasons to like Firefox, but superior speed isn't one of them. Oh, it's faster than Internet Explorer, but what isn't?

But with that said, I agree about comfort and security being far more important.

[TUN35]

One that gives more sensible results. Opera is so much faster than Firefox at both starting up and rendering most (but not all) actual real-world pages that the difference is immediately obvious with the naked eye, never mind when you measure it. The same applies to Chrome - or seems to to a casual eye, I don't much care for Chrome and don't use it much. Whatever tests they used for this "comparison", it is rigged. Nothing more certain. Presumably by some Firefox zealot with an agenda to push. Hey, there are lots of good reasons to like Firefox, but superior speed isn't one of them. Oh, it's faster than Internet Explorer, but what isn't?

But with that said, I agree about comfort and security being far more important.

Opera may be fast but it's also fantastic at incorrectly rendering pages as well!!

[milspec]

That "test" is the biggest pile of steaming donkey turds I've seen in a long, long time. Their figures are a mile out. I mean seriously, hopelessly wrong. Best to just ignore them completely.

Oh, but even their useless so-called "test" couldn't miss discovering that IE is a complete dog - as if everybody with half a brain didn't know that already.

Your welcome ??

[Tannin]

Opera may be fast but it's also fantastic at incorrectly rendering pages as well!!

Examples please.

[TUN35]

Examples please.

I'm not sure how they are on a PC based system these days.

http://novafm.com.au/
http://www.nrl.com/
http://www.neowin.net/

[Tannin]

http://www.neowin.net/ Works perfectly, so far as I can see.

http://www.nrl.com/ Looks just as ugly, cluttered, and horrible in Opera as it does in every other web browser. I have posted before (possibly here, may have been elsewhere) asking other members if they agreed with me that the AFL site (essentially identical to the NRL site and also designed by ... sorry, I mean "also vomited by" .... Telstra) that this is the worst major, big-budget website that there has ever been. Some agreed with me, some did not, but no-one ever suggested that it wasn't well and truly up there with the all-time champions of bad. Terrible website, I grant you, but it is no worse in Opera than it is in any other browser. I.e., it renders happily enough ... which is, on the whole, a pity. Most people with a sense of visual design would prefer a blank screen.

http://novafm.com.au/ This site is riddled with coding errors. Even this very basic check - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0 - comes up with 72 HTML errors. It is not possible to render garbage code correctly. The poor browser must simply guess at what the designer wanted, because he was too incompetent to specify it. Rendering of broken sites is very much a hit and miss thing. They will pretty much always work using whatever browser the incompetent hack who wrote them happened to test with - because he keeps on fiddling with the code, not understanding how it works or why it is broken, until he just happens to fluke something that seems OK on the browser he is looking at it with.

[Kym]

The worst looking web site is ... www.msy.com.au

[Calxoddity]

The worst looking web site is ... www.msy.com.au

Seconded! Even makes conspiracy sites look well-structured (although this one goes close - http://www.timecube.com/ )

[Tannin]

On a visual design level, no question - that is truly horrible. The code, however, is merely very, very bad - it's written with Frontpage, which is a very, very bad program at the best of times - as opposed to the Telstra/NRL/AFL code, which is the work of truly demented genius. No computer program, however dreadful, and no individual human being however incompetent, could write code as bloated and horrible as Telstra. Only a committee could do it.

[TUN35]

I have issues with the Neowin slider on Mac OS X 10.6.3 with Opera 10.53.

Would be fantastic if all pages were coded to work across all browsers. We all know that Opera doesn't hold enough market share for web designers to really care about putting in css fixes to negate these issues.

For now what's the point in dealing with a browser that is only the slightest bit quick than Chrome/Firefox only to have certain sites that don't work? All the time saved is a complete waste when you need to fire up another browser to access whatever site you are having issue with.

In the end it's all personal preference. I personally use to use Opera for about 3years in the early 2000 days. These days Firefox is the only browser that I have no issue with, with my current browsing habbits. I've been giving Chrome a run but it's really not doing to much for me.

One day I hope they've got that little bit more market so web designers stand up and pay attention as I'd love to go back to using it!!

ps. x3 on the MSY site.

[Kym]

BTW MSY make their site ugly for two reasons

a) They are really lazy and just want to move stock quickly, Web site design is for wusses

b) Its keeps Mum and Dad away - which is not their target market (This is closer to the truth than you realise

[Kym]

For now what's the point in dealing with a browser that is only the slightest bit quick than Chrome/Firefox only to have certain sites that don't work? All the time saved is a complete waste when you need to fire up another browser to access whatever site you are having issue with.

FYI (At this time)
I develop and test any site changes in Firefox 3.6.
I then test in IE 8.
If I feel like it I may fire up Opera and see if anything breaks.

I've only ever built one fix for Opera and that was to ensure the site adverts showed 4 x random rather the 4 x the same in Opera.

The fact that I needed to put special Javascript into the Advert system just for Opera is
why I don't like it. It seriously failed at a basic level, it has overly aggressive caching.