And the fastest browser is...

Which is the world's fastest browser? According to Zimbra, Safari runs fastest, though it didn't beat out Firefox by much. Both Safari and Firefox were roughly twice as fast as Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7.

Of course, Zimbra was testing for how these browsers perform with the Zimbra Web application. Your mileage may vary with other applications. In fact, I'd love to see a wide range of tests for different sites and applications. Who's next?

As an aside, I continue to be impressed at how Zimbra treats non-Microsoft platforms as first-class citizens (along with Microsoft). Firefox is the same way. Both allow you to run on the Mac, for example, without losing any functionality that you'd find in Windows/IE.

It's called great code. Weak developers write code that limps on anything but Windows. Great developers write code that ports well to diverse platforms.

[DKrudop]

[Maarek Stele]

Think again. Safari was tested on a MAC, when tested on a PC, it's slow and Firefox beats it.

[rcrusoe]

I missed that when I read the report. Where'd you find that data?

[Solaris_User]

How did Firefox do on that Mac?
What about webkit on windows?

Safari is a very quick browser, the slowness of it on the windows port is mostly loading and interface as it look to me, it renders very quickly on windows as well.

[Nunya Bidnez]

Amen to great, platform agnostic code. I wish all you tech writers would hammer this home all the time, and HAMMER THIS: any web site that relies on Active(he)X is GARBAGE.

[fortyonejb]

Up until the last generalization in the article I was with you. Its sweeping generalizations of developers that drives me nuts. Especially by writers who don't code. A developer can be an excellent developer but be constrained to the point he/she can't provide code which performs well on all platforms. I've seen multiple times where management didn't properly assess a product and as a result the developer had no choice but to "skimp".

Zimbra is fortunate to be in a position where they can develop with multiple platforms in mind, but for companies where the time and money just isn't there then they have to get it working for the majority, and that majority is on IE.

[ravirajparab]

the ever best browser is OPERA 9.51.........no other browser is better than this.........try and see the difference for yourself.......THE BEST BROWSER IS OPERA 9.51

[forensicmeteoboy]

...and what about Opera?

[FatalAce]

yeah where's opera....

[LEOPiC]

Opera? Opera is where they always will be, with less with 1% of the market share.

People get real, do you think Zimbra is going to do tests for every browser out there? They will only consider those with an acceptable share.

[knockeen]

Opera is up and coming and will be nothing but famous in a very short time. Opera 9.60 Beta is the fastest Web Browser on Earth and I have tryied them all.

[hankschmidt]

Opera has 30 million users out there. And its performance is as good as or better than Firefox's or safari's. If they only consider browsers with good performance, Opera would join the league. Another reason why is because Opera was the first browser to implement tabs. If you don't think that's revolutionary then you need to stop using IE6 NOW! If has the most advanced features out there (speed-dial, in built bit-torrent, fit to width, full page zoom(not only the text), mouse gestures and many many more). Opera will not be where it is right now, Mr. I know all. The downloads for the desktop version increased by 55% this year. Opera has been at the forefront of bringing the web to ANY device and of course people like YOU will choose to ignore it. WELL DONE.

[sassafrastic]

We had been using the Zimbra Firefox extension, but it seems to be at least temporarily broken with FF 3 and Zimbra 5.0.6, hopefully will be restored in 5.0.7. It's more than a fair trade, though, since my Zimbra login times have dropped to about 1 second since the upgrade to FF3, even though the servers we log into are with http://www.01.com in Chicago, and I'm often on the West coast, and recently in Europe. Fast is good!

[woderaider]

Opera deserves more than a mention. The new Opera 9.5 is fantastic! In fact it is the fastest and takes the least amount of memory than IE and Firefox.
Don't forget Opera pioneered tabbed browsing and mouse gestures - so its not just another browser!

[hankschmidt]

I agree with you 100%.

[ben::zen]

Yeah... I've started using Opera and I'd like to see the benchmarks. It's often been quite fast in other tests. @LEOPiC: Don't look down on Opera so readily, it's a fantastic browser and often shown in tests. It would be more consistent, after all.

[hankschmidt]

Here are some tests
http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/

[ti99_forever]

In my experience, Safari is fast - but not on a PC.

And the fastest browser I currently use is Camino - a Mac-only browser. Beats Safari hands-down...

[BlueToolsOne]

FireFox 3 hands down is the best and fastest browser out there. It just does not get any better. Mozilla really out did themselves this time,.

JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi

[novemberdobby]

Where is Opera? In all of the speed tests I've seen it in, the browser has outdone Firefox.

Not gonna read the article.

[hankschmidt]

Of course it did. CNET is just so Firefox biased.

[unknown unknown]

@ woderaider, Actually Opera's first release used MDI (Multi-document interface), not tabs. Also there were browsers before Opera that used tabs, such as InternetWorks by BookLink Technologies 1994.

[JadedGamer]

- Tabs is just a fancy, "maximized" sequel to MDI: At the point Opera used it it waas ridiculed for MDI - even though MDI was the "normal" way of doing things on Windows and the only reason the Mozilla-based browsers (Netscape and Internet Explorer among them) didn't was its Unix/X11 roots since MDI wasn't used there.
- If Opera is faster than Safari - and in my experience 9.5 is - then a statement that Safari is the fastest should have the disclaimer that this is among the browsers tested. I mean if e.g. I tested two gas-guzzling SUVs and said one of them had the best MPG of all cars I would be ridiculed for not considering other cars.
- How did people come to the 1% market share number? Was it the OneStat numbers? On mobile phones the share is way higher, but I guess those do not count. For some sites Opera also masks as other browsers in order to compensate for stupid authors who insist that browser detection is the way to go - those accesses will not be counted as Opera. But hey, I can turn off caching if it can help to show more Opera hits to sites...

[rashinal]

this was correct with the initial release "beta" of safari, but Ive tested the current version with much different results.
My unscientific impression is that it's pretty equal with FF3 , beats the pants off IE,
much depends on the website.
BTW, amen to Nunya's comment below. Anyone developing websites with IE only specific code should be banished.

[Sonuku]

This article is bias and uninformative.

Please discontinue writing articles in the future, especially about programming quality and porting to "diverse platforms", when clearly you have no idea what a compiler is.

[wellofsouls]

@ unknown unknown :
"@ woderaider, Actually Opera's first release used MDI (Multi-document interface), not tabs. Also there were browsers before Opera that used tabs, such as InternetWorks by BookLink Technologies 1994."

actually Opera always had true MDI, right to now, version 9.5, not the dumbed-down Tab UI. Tab UI is just a poor-man's MDI with constantly maximized windows. And Opera has true MDI first, and it also has Tabs first, since you can maximize all the MDI windows, and have the window titles listed in a bar selectable at the bottom, which means Tabs (albeit at that time the word "tab" still means something different from now). Even right now Firefox still doesn't have true MDI, as there's no way to un-maximize the tabs into windows and view them side by side.

So Opera has MDI first, and it has tabs first (you have to customize it first though), it just doesn't have a more restricted, less free, Tab UI, and it still doesn't have it, as it doesn't dumb down its true MDI. InternetWorks had "tabbed" windows, but the "tab" in this case is something completely different from the idea in our modern Tab UI.

[innamaze]

Flock and SeaMonkey, both based on Firefox are blazingly fast as well, like to see a comparison there. And work as you would expect a Mozzilla based platform to work, and open source...even IE 8 does not come close to any of the others, in my humble opinion. Inna

[manishkshwh]

Yeah I found the same thing while testing it on different Platform....