Chrome for Mac Beta Nearly Matches Safari in JavaScript Benchmarking

[Mac.]

Of course Chrome for Windows is the fastest, the Windows version of Safari sucks. Like OS, like browser.



CMD-Z?

although cmd-z does the job 😉 (honestly, I'm not sure if it's a default command or came with glims) there are plenty of missing 'peanuts' which makes you wonder if apple engineers are really focused on the customer's needs 🙄 if every amateur developer can build an addon which enables such features, why does apple refuse to do so??

I just tried it, and it doesn't work for some reason 🙁

 

[jmj]

I just tried it, and it doesn't work for some reason 🙁

You have to install Glims for it to work.

 

[goffredo]

Keep in mind Chrome is in beta

Chrome is in its first open beta. As in, not yet Release quality, still need to nail down some features and optimize / tweak stuff.

Safari has been in Release quality (non-Beta) since June 2007 as far as I can tell, which means the product has had almost 2.5 years of fine-tuning.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see the released version of Chrome run laps around Safari.

-J

 

[Povilas]

This doesn't take into account the horrible sluggishness of Safari's interface, nor is it representative of Safari's ludicrous memory usage. To date, I've never seen Chrome or Firefox use over 1GB RAM, but Safari is atrocious.

Honestly, just look at this memory usage from a WebKit nightly. How is this acceptable?

Do you think about what post before posting it? It's nightly build it almost always has bug. Some minor and some very serious bugs. Why? Because it's a work in progress.

 

[0098386]

And its only in beta. I'm interested to see where this goes. I wont be switching from Firefox on Windows or Safari on OSX, but anything to get either the Firefox people or Apple to make a better product is fine by me.

 

[Mac.]

You have to install Glims for it to work.

Thanks.

 

[greatcaffeine]

Do you think about what post before posting it? It's nightly build it almost always has bug. Some minor and some very serious bugs. Why? Because it's a work in progress.

Okay, just to prove a point, I went ahead and did essentially the same thing with Safari 4.0.4. Here you go:

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.5; en-gb; HTC Hero Build/CUPCAKE) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1)

Let's see what optimization they can perform.



I've fallen out with FireFox lately as it seems a little too crash happy for me. Safari and Chrome are fine for me now.

 

[Povilas]

Okay, just to prove a point, I went ahead and did essentially the same thing with Safari 4.0.4. Here you go:

And you are sure that's Safari fault? No plugins? How many tabs and what sites you are loading to achieve such memory usage? Because I have no problems with Safari Snow Leopard.

 

[Chilz0r]

This doesn't take into account the horrible sluggishness of Safari's interface, nor is it representative of Safari's ludicrous memory usage. To date, I've never seen Chrome or Firefox use over 1GB RAM, but Safari is atrocious.

Honestly, just look at this memory usage from a WebKit nightly. How is this acceptable?

Dude, I've got no idea what your doing with YOUR Safari but I never get that much mem usage happening. Maybe check your plugins + it's a nightly build something could be astray.

 

[*LTD*]

Chrome is more of a novelty for Windows users, which are used to crappy browsers such as IE...it adds little real value over Safari for Mac, which is still the fastest browser on Earth.

As of May, at least, yes. Even on Winblows.

 

[greatcaffeine]

And you are sure that's Safari fault? No plugins? How many tabs and what sites you are loading to achieve such memory usage? Because I have no problems with Safari Snow Leopard.

I don't have any plugins in Safari. This is as close to a clean installation as you can get. The trick here is Google Wave - Safari uses a metric **** ton of RAM on Wave, and it just doesn't clean up after itself when you're done. In similar situations with Chrome and Firefox, both of those browsers were using approximately 400-500MB RAM.

So yes, this is clearly an issue specific to Safari. I really hope it can get optimized at some point, because it can be pretty snappy when it's first launched or when you aren't doing much at once. Chrome easily wins out when you've got some pretty heavy pages working in background tabs (like Wave). Most browsers grind to a halt in those situations, but Chrome's multi-process design keeps everything snappy and allows for easy trash cleanup.

 

[mikes70mustang]

Ill keep my FF Beta- universities and their online class stuff doesnt play very well with safari

 

[dmelgar]

Its basically built on the same webkit as Safari. Why would anyone be surprised that they perform the same?

More importantly, why would anyone want Chrome? It seems like a gratuitously different version of Safari. Maybe on Windows, because Apple hasn't pushed Safari very hard, but on Mac I wouldn't dream of running Chrome. Firefox maybe, but no way on Chrome.

 

[retro83]

Its basically built on the same webkit as Safari. Why would anyone be surprised that they perform the same?

But it has its own JavaScript engine, no?

I personally couldn't care less how fast it is on benchmarks, Opera, Safari and Firefox _feel_ far faster than Chrome on the Mac. On windows it's great, on OSX it feels like there is latency between doing something and having the page update on the screen.

 

[*LTD*]

Running the latest Webkit nightly now. Looks and acts identical to regular Safari. All my settings and prefs are the same.

It's blazing fast.

Might as well just run Webkit, LOL.

 

[Povilas]

I don't have any plugins in Safari. This is as close to a clean installation as you can get. The trick here is Google Wave - Safari uses a metric **** ton of RAM on Wave, and it just doesn't clean up after itself when you're done. In similar situations with Chrome and Firefox, both of those browsers were using approximately 400-500MB RAM.

So yes, this is clearly an issue specific to Safari. I really hope it can get optimized at some point, because it can be pretty snappy when it's first launched or when you aren't doing much at once. Chrome easily wins out when you've got some pretty heavy pages working in background tabs (like Wave). Most browsers grind to a halt in those situations, but Chrome's multi-process design keeps everything snappy and allows for easy trash cleanup.

I'm using Google Wave 3 days now and Safari memory usage is normal. Right now Safari uses 198 MB with 2 tabs (MacRumors and Goole Wave) open.

 

[pellets007]

Lack of a Java plug-in that works means that I won't be using it.

 

[*LTD*]

I think I'm switching to Webkit nightlies permanently. Seems to update itself, too. Hmmm . . .

 

[Jayomat]

I just tried it, and it doesn't work for some reason 🙁

Originally Posted by Jayomat
although cmd-z does the job (honestly, I'm not sure if it's a default command or came with glims) [...]

😉 😛 as already said by someone, go get glims 😉

 

[greatcaffeine]

I think I'm switching to Webkit nightlies permanently. Seems to update itself, too. Hmmm . . .

You'll enjoy it until you get a bugged version. Just remember, the nightly builds aren't tested at all.

For the most part though, they do seem to work fine.

 

[*LTD*]

You'll enjoy it until you get a bugged version. Just remember, the nightly builds aren't tested at all.

For the most part though, they do seem to work fine.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but am I right in saying that there's really nothing faster on the Mac than Webkit (nightlies)?

The latest build just flies. I mean, Safari's fast, sure, but Webkit is nearly instantaneous.

 

[wesleyh]

Quite surprised to see opera 10 doing so badly. Anyway, at the level they're all at, it doesn't really matter all that much anyway. Can you even notice the difference?

 

[Ropie]

I switched to Chrome a few months ago and now when I (rarely) use Safari it seems quite a bit slower compared to Chrome, and my whites are whiter than white 😀 There are one or two very minor bugs in Chrome (some of the preferences don't do anything) but really the only thing I miss from Safari is the dictionary link option in the contextual menu when a word is highlighted. No reason to go back, though. I prefer Chrome's tabs, search/address bar/behaviour/text editing options/download manager/ etc.. And I don't use the built-in bookmark stuff as I keep all mine in a folder in Butler anyway.

 

[ski1ski1]

Running the latest Webkit nightly now. Looks and acts identical to regular Safari. All my settings and prefs are the same.

It's blazing fast.

Might as well just run Webkit, LOL.

Webkit is not the user interface you are seeing. When you run a Webkit nightly, it will always use the standard Apple Safari user interface with all the same preferences and options. When you install and run a webkit nightly, you are only changing the underlying rendering engine.