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Is one web browser faster?

TuffLuffJimmy

TuffLuffJimmy

macrumors G3
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
9,036
181
Portland, OR
I use many different web browsers, including firefox, camino, safari, opera and shiira, but my main browser would have to be Safari. I don't want to be lulled into using any browser I'm simply wondering if one Browser loads pages faster than the others. This is for a class discussion so I don't want opinions or "safari seems snappier than the others". I want facts on whether or not a web browser is faster than the others. (This is for school and so it would be best if the browsers in Question are windows based, but if their speed carries over to the Mac that would be great, too)
 
That's really not what I am looking for. All web browsers seem about the same to me. I'm simply asking IF one web browser is faster at loading pages than all others.
 
total loading time is similar in all browsers.
however. there are some thing you need to keep in mind

1. opera load text before CSS style, so opera will show more readable content faster than any other browsers.

2. firefox disables pipeline by default, which might increase the downloading speed by up to 8 fold once enable.

normally, I would recommend opera to anyone who just purely care about speed. firefox to those who cares about flexibility and expandable functionality. safari or IE for people who just need simple experience.
 
clevin pretty much covered it.

Personally, I look at feature sets and overall ease of use. I went with Omniweb because it has a lot of nice features without seeming too bloated (which is how Firefox feels to me).
 
Thanks this is a big help. Does anyone have any numbers, like the ones that Steve gave at the keynote when he introduced Safari for windows? (I don't think I want those numbers though, as it was a study conducted by apple and so it's obviously very biased)
 
tuffluffjimmy said:
Thanks this is a big help. Does anyone have any numbers, like the ones that Steve gave at the keynote when he introduced Safari for windows? (I don't think I want those numbers though, as it was a study conducted by apple and so it's obviously very biased)
Click to expand...

im sorry, there is no absoutely good numbers, every number is made this way or the other, the method they used to measure are the method that favors the browser they like.

most famous numbers are from http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html which is created by an opera fan......
but is sure more accurate than SJ's BS numbers
 
So is there anything I could bring to the class discussion? That goes one way or the other, because my teacher is adamant that Internet Explorer is the best browser, and he says that people only think that Firefox is faster because it was marketed telling people it was faster.
 
Internet Explorer is inferior not due to speed but because Microsoft likes to ignore standards (and previous versions are worse due to ActiveX opening a huge hole in your system). Webkit, Mozilla, Opera, iCab, etc... all follow standards while Microsoft just does their own thing (admittedly they're getting better but it still isn't good enough).

Arguing about browser speed only when deciding the best browser is like arguing which computer looks better on your desk.
 
tuffluffjimmy said:
So is there anything I could bring to the class discussion? That goes one way or the other, because my teacher is adamant that Internet Explorer is the best browser, and he says that people only think that Firefox is faster because it was marketed telling people it was faster.
Click to expand...

Is this a university professor or high school teacher?

I suppose one way Firefox may be improving speed is by being less likely to catch malware.
 
It's a high school class. It's really not that important as it has very little to do with the class and the teacher knows nothing about technology (although he thinks he's right about everything). But for some odd reason he has gone on a rant about it for the past two days.
 
Eh, just ignore him. Most high school teachers I've talked to about technology are just mouth pieces for one group or another. Now if he was a comp sci prof at a university I might pay attention to him/ask for an explanation.
 
I think I might not have to ignore him actually, as I am unsure of how much longer he will be a teacher at my school. Today he went on a tirade against a student, because the student made a comment about how the teacher's favorite football team lost.

It was pretty harsh, the speech lasted an hour and ten minutes (a full class period) and he basically said that the student wouldn't graduate college and that he would amount to nothing and he would always need his parents to support him.

Thanks for all the input, everyone. (I now have a better understanding myself)
 
clevin said:
safari or IE for people who just need simple experience.
Click to expand...

Could someone somehow give me IE for mac because some MSN pages don't work in other browsers and IE isn't available for download because Microsoft says we should use other browsers (they should know about the MSN pages not working considering THEY OWN MSN!![(MicroSoft Network ])
 
dstearns96 said:
Could someone somehow give me IE for mac because some MSN pages don't work in other browsers and IE isn't available for download because Microsoft says we should use other browsers (they should know about the MSN pages not working considering THEY OWN MSN!![(MicroSoft Network ])
Click to expand...

ies4osx is worth a look
 
Actually browser benchmarking is done quite extensively by browser makers. You might check out Apple's SunSpider test (javascript), HTML iBench (sadly somewhat difficult to set up), or a few others. Recently I've been building my own benchmarks for getElementsByClassName, since now that it's been committed (HOORAY) it'd be cool to speed it up.
 
dstearns96 said:
Could someone somehow give me IE for mac because some MSN pages don't work in other browsers and IE isn't available for download because Microsoft says we should use other browsers (they should know about the MSN pages not working considering THEY OWN MSN!![(MicroSoft Network ])
Click to expand...

I have IE 5.2.3 for the Mac... and it won't help you. First, it uses a different rendering engine than the Windows versions. Second, it is more broken than pretty much anything else on the planet.
 
Opera.
Quote the website:
"The coolest, fastest, and most secure free Web browser available"

So obvously its the fastest. :)

Honestly, I'ved use them all and Opera does APPEAR faster for me. I've been using opera since version 8.2 or something.
 
May I ask why Opera is faster? Technically?

Whats the difference in rendering? How is CPU usage for Flash media? What is the memory footprint? and is there a memory leak like everyother Mac Browser?
 
iBunny said:
May I ask why Opera is faster? Technically?

Whats the difference in rendering? How is CPU usage for Flash media? What is the memory footprint? and is there a memory leak like everyother Mac Browser?
Click to expand...

opera has multiple server-request open by default. and opera displays text before the arrival of CSS.
 
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