Comments on: Firefox, Google's Chrome speed past IE, Opera

Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome, plus the WebKit developer project included in Chrome and Safari, are dramatically faster than proprietary browsers, according to recent tests.

[rbz275]

you didnt use a final version... beta's/rc's arent always full optimized yet

[TheReaperD]

Yes, but they used beta/rc browsers across the board. This helps keep the tests more fair. It's amusing that the product labeled as being ready for prime time, IE 8 RC1, fared the worst. To be fair, Opera 10 is in alpha stage, thus the least ready for prime time so, it needs to be given the benefit of the doubt until it is closer to release.

[t8]

I am not surprised at these results. Chrome is lightning fast for me. I use to be a Firefox user and now Chrome is my default. When I use IE and Firefox now, they seem clunky.

[twolf2919]

That's because you haven't used Firefox 3.1b2.

[ggusta]

funny. i switched from chrome to firefox, chrome lacks some intuitive functions and firefox seemed a little quicker and much more consistent. to each his own.

[loose_screw]

Interesting.

[imbng]

Hmm, a test written by WebKit shows that WebKit performs well. If this had been a Microsoft test and showed IE performed better I'm sure we'd be reading about how this is a conflict of interest and doesn't mean anything.

I agree WebKit has a fast JS engine but to run a WebKit test against it and others and claim it's the fastest isn't much of a victory.

[feranick]

Firefox doesn't use WebKit (but Gekko), still it comes on top.

[pithenumber]

did you enable Tracemonkey in FireFox?
With Tracemonkey, it feels faster than Chrome.

[pjk0]

Just because some miscellaneous journalist labels Sunspider "the industry standard test" does not make it so. There are a bunch of javascript benchmarks out there and they often give wildly disparate results.

If I recall correctly, one of the problems with these sorts of benchmarks is that they only test a narrow aspect of what it takes to render content. For example, if the javascript engine in browser A gets a javascript task done 50 ms faster than browser B, but browser B renders/displays the result of that script 150ms faster, then the user experience will be faster on browser B.

I am so damn tired of these crotch-grabbing, narrowly-focused benchmark-fests that masquerade as "news" to tech journalists - particularly when they aren't even testing shipping code. Please find something more substantive to write about.

[Seaspray0]

If you are going to complain about Sunspider, then atleast provide alternate benchmark tests that you think are better and explain why.

[theorz]

I am not the original poster, but any DOM intensive benchmark will do.

Like: http://www.jsballs.com/benchmark.html

And personally DOM manipulation is a much better test of how fast the javascript engine will feel to users since DOM manipulation is common practice on all AJAX sites.

[viper396]

Unless, of course, you work for IE, Firefox, Chrome, or Opera these browser wars are stupid, especially when random end-users start fighting them. When your argument is dealing with times in milliseconds it only makes it more absurd.

Browsers are free, nobody really wins or loses and it's completely asinine for any one person here to be concerned about which browser everyone else is using. Use whatever browser you want but the content on the webpage you are viewing is still the same.

[twolf2919]

It is asinine for people to be concerned about what browser other people are using. It is perfectly legitimate to inform people of which browser is the fastest. How else can people make an informed decision on which to use?

It is asinine to state that because all browsers deliver the same webpage, the speed with which those pages are rendered is unimportant. Unless you had your head buried in the sand for the last couple years, you'd realize that vast swaths of delivered Web pages are "dynamic" in nature these days - they're no longer static content. Javascript speed (as well as applet speed, flash speed, etc.) matter! It is easy to see the difference between IE and Firefox 3.1 (or Chrome) on such web pages - so the difference isn't just some academic milliseconds. Try them! Check out things like Google Docs (or even just "iGoogle" is perceptibly faster under Chrome/Firefox than it is under IE8).

[lil-yankee]

twolf2919,
I agree with you all the way. Information should be out there for people to see and to make better choices.
of course milliseconds are not the prime factor here, they are barely noticeable, but like i said, we need to know.
Because when you push to the limit, every advancement is a milistone, if we didnt care, science would not exist.
I consider this a very legitimate test, and also consider you (viper396) someone who should hate less and embrace more.

[Clarious]

You shall see how long those 'miliseconds' are when you try to scroll around in gmail.

Ut oh. The Opera elite Fanbois won't like this at all. LOL

[Seaspray0]

I wouldn't worry. The EU will baby them, wipe their tears, and listen to their BS.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 is molasses as it is, I hope they get it figured out by final release

[Super2online]

One of these days the open source folks are going to figure out that speed, features, and tests a winner do not make. Momentum, familiarity, and good enough to make you comfortable and happy can carry you a long way with customers. Yes I know what I'm about to be crushed with: Yes BUT having the brower included doesn't hurt either! Very true, however I think Microsoft is on the right path in that regard, they have removed a lot of apps: Movie Maker, Outlook Express/Windows Mail, Windows Messenger, Windows Photo Gallery and put them into Windows Live Services.

My guess is that Microsoft will get sick and tired of every company and their brother using goverment intervention to dictate business to them and finally remove most of the rest of it in Windows 8 moving forward. Internet Explorer, Media Player, and anything else that is not required to run the system.

Live Services will then host a wealth of integrated software plus services through Azure and Mesh so it won't matter if they are included or not. You will still want to use the OS that creates all the pieces for a polished fit and finish experience. For those that aren't interested in that, there is everything else.

Ok, I'm ready, break out the clubs, knives, guns, granades, and lazers to shred me to pieces- it's ok, I'm already cloked, shields up, and light years away!

[Seaspray0]

Matt, what kind of connection were these tests run on? A T3 connection? DSL? Dialup? I'd be interested to see this test run on a variety of connection speeds to see what kind of difference it makes.

[Clarious]

No, this is Javascript speed test, it don't need a internet connection.

[MSSlayer]

Not that we didn't already know it, but this just shows your technical illiteracy. As already stated, the connection speed is irrelevant.

[flickrz]

Waiting for chrome to release for Mac. So far, Webkit nightly builds are the fastest. They are faster than Minefield(upcoming version of Firefox) nightly builds by 1.58 x in sunspider test. None of the other browsers for OSX even come close.

[OldTenor]

IE7, Chrome, Opera, & Firefox are all in use on my PC. Different browers for different types of access.
So I have a basis for access speed for all four. IE is the slowest for anything. The other three are very
close, but ..... Chrome is slowed down by the doubleclik accesses and all the similar things so much,
that it's basic speed is negated. Firefox not so much so a little faster. Opera, not at all, so is the fastest
of the four. At least on my PC(s), all four. I also have Maxthon2, which appears to be an IE lookalike,
but is about as fast as Firefox. I only use Maxthon2 to access Hotmail on the internet.

[dream_fly]

Same here. I used all 4 (FF, Chrome, IE, Opera) and when a page takes forever to load, I use Chrome. When I need to browse a list of items like in Ebay or email or many other sites, I use IE 'cause all others (except Opera) suck when you click the Back button. As a result I used IE the most. Also when others fails to render the pages correctly, IE will succeed most of the time. So the overall usability is more important than the narrow raw speed test like this.

[eltoro2827]

stupid article....beta dont count.

[Hunnter2k3]

Browser speeds for as long as i can remember have been tested during betas.
Betas and nightly builds are a good thing to test, because then there is a record of progress being kept.
Without doing such a thing, people probably wouldn't even care to advance stuff.
Benchmarks are good for everyone.

I just hope Opera and Microsoft spend more time getting JavaScript up to speed.
I suggest they go look into V8 and learn something, Google sure encouraged others to do so.

[slecalvez]

Is speed your only concern???!!!!! I think browsers should offer more functionality than just beeing millisenconds faster.

[iff2mastamatt]

I used to use Avant, but now I love chrome. It's the fastest & simplest, Go Google!

[MSSlayer]

Avant isn't a browser.

It is just a shell around IE to try and hide the fact that it is a turd.

[JuggerNaut]

Not surprised, IE has always been slow compared to other web browsers and Opera hasn't been lightening fast since version 3. The fastest web browser I ever experienced was Net Positive that shipped with BeOS, but it didn't have CSS support and javascript support was a little dated, but it'd kick the tail out of any web browser it faced when it came to rendering.

[Hunnter2k3]

While Chrome is pretty fast at JavaScript, it wasn't the best when i was testing something the other day there.
Basically, it was a test to see how fast the browsers would render a 32x22 grid of tiles 25 pixels squared with a grass HTML "texture".
The grass was made of divs with 1px widths, random position and heights.
The method of drawing them all was using the innerHTML property of a parent div. (drew them all separate, rather than store in variable and draw them all at once)

Ran the test across several browsers, all failed pretty badly in time, some going on past a minute. (some hung..)
I lowered the density to 1 bit of grass per tile, better speeds, but not quick enough for web use, needs to be quicker, 15+ seconds isn't acceptable anymore.
I lowered it even more to only draw the divs on every 7th tile, Firefox 2 done it within half a second, Chrome within around 3 seconds, not sure what IE7s time was again.
I decided to add in a little man that will move up automatically, then wrap to the bottom when it reaches the top, moved fairly fast across them all.

I replaced all the HTML textures with images instead... strange thing now is Firefox 2 is the slowest with the man test, AND it was using incredibly high CPU to do it, whereas every other browser tested (Chrome, IE7, IE8, Safari, Konqueror,Opera 10) was barely hitting the 5% mark (dual-core 1.6GHz)
Never tried Firefox 3 because Mozilla seriously annoyed me with the stupid SSL thing, don't even want to install it anymore...

It was a pretty interesting test, i should do a better test with actual times some day, and test the other browsers with the HTML "textures".
Mainly researching it for AJAX-based animation.
This site has some interesting projects on that actually, found it the other day there http://osflash.org/ajaxanimator

[kudos2uguys]

I'm testing IE8 and can I say it's not slow......it's S L O W. I also have Firefox and Chrome. Chrome is now my default because of the speed... There are some small bugs here and there in Chrome and I'm using the latest Firefox 3 beta client and it's still not as fast as Chrome. Leave it to Microsoft to bring out something as slow as IE 8 and think that it's an improvement, what's wrong with those people?

[MSSlayer]

Chrome may be fast, but it is also spyware.