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WebKit nightly vs Chrome Canary for rMBP?

S

smurray

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 12, 2008
133
4
Trying to figure out what browser will suit me best on my 15" rMBP. I've always been a fan of Chrome, but after the dev version started crashing earlier this week I decided to give the WebKit nightly a try since I heard in improved scrolling performance. So far I've been pretty impressed. It looks like the Canary version of Chrome fixed the crashing issue I was having, but I'm trying to figure out what reason there is to really switch back to Chrome. The only two extensions I used with Chrome were Adblock and Lastpass, both of which are available on Safari. Looking for some insight as to why people prefer Chrome over Safari, especially when the scrolling performance has been improved with the webkit nightlies.

Thanks!
 
The only disadvantage of Safari is the behavior when swiping back - the site is then refreshed. I was also a fan of chrome, but i can't resist the smooth scrolling experience in Safari.
 
smurray said:
Trying to figure out what browser will suit me best on my 15" rMBP. I've always been a fan of Chrome, but after the dev version started crashing earlier this week I decided to give the WebKit nightly a try since I heard in improved scrolling performance. So far I've been pretty impressed. It looks like the Canary version of Chrome fixed the crashing issue I was having, but I'm trying to figure out what reason there is to really switch back to Chrome. The only two extensions I used with Chrome were Adblock and Lastpass, both of which are available on Safari. Looking for some insight as to why people prefer Chrome over Safari, especially when the scrolling performance has been improved with the webkit nightlies.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Safari for me it's better than chrome in the rMBP, but there are some reasons I would rather use chrome.

1) I use windows, linux and mac, having the same history/bookmarks on all of them with only logging in with my gmail account is a big plus. Also this applies to my iPad/iPhone. Safari doesn't run in Linux (not that I'm aware) and is not getting updates to windows anymore.

2) Extensions
 
Safari is nice but I've always used CC - just down to the extensions and sync, makes it all that more seemless.
 
I tried out chrome canary but the RAM usage of this program is even worse than safari's!

WTH is up with all those processes in activity monitor that chrome uses?? I see a bunch of stuff chrome related that use a lot of ram 150-200 mb each. Just with 2 tabs open and chrome looks like it is already close to 500mb...

Is this normal or can you deactivate some of these processes? I was always hearing how great chrome is with ram usage, yet my experience is way different!

PS: I am not using any extensions whatsoever.
 
Valkyre said:
WTH is up with all those processes in activity monitor that chrome uses?? I see a bunch of stuff chrome related that use a lot of ram 150-200 mb each. Just with 2 tabs open and chrome looks like it is already close to 500mb...
Click to expand...

This is Chrome's much vaunted webpage<=>single process architecture, it means each page is isolated and cannot bring down the browser or access memory space of other pages. Great in theory, but yes this can cause huge memory allocations as open tabs increase (along with seperate plugin processes), and Chrome cannot share memory resources in the way single-threaded browsers do. A work colleague's Mac Pro with 12GB is often brought to its knees by Chrome, but he crawls along regardless as he likes Chrome...

----------
kittiyut said:
I agree, quite annoying!
Isn't there a way to turn that (refreshing) off?
Click to expand...

Neither Chrome or Safari are very good at history navigation, the long time champ for this has always been Opera, where they use a unique history cache for instantaneous history navigation. Sadly even they broke their cache over the last year or so, because non-deterministic Javascript onload events and are becoming more and more critical for page functionality. But Safari is particularly bad, it has no heuristics for any kind of cache use AFAIK.
 
Τhanks for the reply! I hear you, but then how come people keep mentioning chrome's amazing small ram usage? I am baffled! lol :)
 
chrome is better overall vs safari but its performance is still nowhere near the latest safari in terms of scrolling issues and optimization.

but seeing as chrome is webkit based, i would assume they can pull in some of the optimizations from the webkit nightly build.
 
The chromium nightly (the real one, not the "packaged" version that I've seen around) is getting very similar to webkit nightly for me. Although Chromium uses webkit, the backend graphics libraries are different, and the scrolling bug is Chromium specific and performance fixes in Skia are needed to really improve their graphics cache management (IIRC).
 
I admit I've had a phobia to chrome since my last computer, the Sony Vaio, got a HORRIBLE virus that happened whenever I opened up chrome. There'd be these random black squares of death on my screen, I uninstalled, reinstalled, put it through every anti-virus available, and still, whenever I opened up chrome certain pages would have these random black squares of death.
 
mankar4 said:
What is the difference between canary and the webkit nightly?
Click to expand...

Canary == beta build of Chrome
Chromium == alpha build of Chrome
Webkit == alpha build of Safari (also confusingly the name of HTML rendering engine for both Safari and Chrome)

Chrome and Safari use the same rendering engine, *but* the graphics, javascript JIT, whole user interface and threading system is different.
 
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