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Firefox 3 and Safari 4 in browser speed race

tgdaily.com — An interesting look at next-generation browsers and the technology how speed gains are achieved. I wonder what Microsoft will do?

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 12, 2008

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  • Omek, on 06/11/2008, -9/+290Bye bye IE... Web designers and developers will throw one Hell of a party the day that IE bites the dust.
  • BrendanSheehan, on 06/12/2008, -1/+183Gimme some graphs!
  • dougvfr750, on 06/12/2008, -5/+135I haven't used IE for years
  • mattus, on 06/12/2008, -0/+97So that was quite a sloppy article.

    "According to Net Applications, Firefox 3 captured almost one fifth (18.41%) of the browser market in May"

    Firefox 3? No it didn't.
  • inactive, on 06/12/2008, -5/+76What the hell was that? Just a giant wall of text that contains no REAL information. No tests, no nothing. Absolutely useless article. Buried without hesitation.
  • nshady, on 06/12/2008, -8/+55I wish they'd compare Opera in these articles.
  • twoboxen, on 06/12/2008, -3/+46functionality race between firefox and... ? anyone? buehler?

    Opera 9.5 (which btw should have been included in the article, since it preaches its speed) would be appealing, but I can't see myself leaving firefox 3 and its flexbility and huge add-on library. adblock plus FTW.
  • vault, on 06/12/2008, -9/+50Sadly I don't see that ever happening. Most people just use the browser that comes with their computer and don't care one way or the other.

  • kevdotbadger, on 06/12/2008, -7/+47MS will still continue to bundle IE with Windows.
  • Dralite, on 06/12/2008, -5/+41very true... I try to put my dad on Firefox but he just clicks the button that says internet... saying I don't want montizilla, I want the internet

    old people
  • TheHayze, on 06/12/2008, -3/+37No mention of Opera 9.5? Really? I mean... it's kinda a strong competitor to Firefox3, and Safari.
  • magamiako, on 06/12/2008, -1/+34Since they refused to run any tests, I ran these after reading this article. Sorry, I couldn't find Safari 4 and I didn't feel like installing Firefox 2. All tests were run on a modern Core 2 Duo clocked at 2.8Ghz running Windows Vista x64 SP1 Ultimate Edition. Microsoft has made great strides with IE8, but it's not quite there with the other browsers yet. Keep in mind, they still have many months to improve upon this performance.

    I ran the Javascript SunSpider test available at: http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.htm ...

    FF3 RC2 Results:
    Overall Score: 2369.2ms
    URL: http://tinyurl.com/6zekxq

    IE7 Results:
    Overall Score: 18822.4ms
    URL: http://tinyurl.com/6chfp9

    IE8 Beta 1 Results:
    Overall Score: 6601.6ms
    URL: http://tinyurl.com/5eqhmw

    Opera 9.5 Results:
    Overall Score: 3442.4ms
    URL: http://tinyurl.com/64mh6t

    Safari 3.1.1 Results:
    Overall Score: 2886.4ms
    URL: http://tinyurl.com/57rpxk
  • JoaoPe, on 06/12/2008, -0/+32Well, that button that says Internet can be changed you know?
  • Radan, on 06/12/2008, -3/+35Don't worry, the first thing I will do when I become dictator over the world is to make all versions of IE illegal of the pain of death to even mention.

    Seriously, I don't care what browser people use. As long as it renders my freaking CSS correctly, I'm happy. The second IE gets down to under 15% userbase, I'm dropping my support for that god forsaken browser.
  • PeterNorton, on 06/11/2008, -3/+33No kidding. It looks like Ms may be late to the party again.
  • Nenb, on 06/12/2008, -0/+30I guess it is mostly for fun.

    They are all real animals:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrelfish
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_monkey
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspider
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fox (sometimes called the Fire Fox)

    Edit: I realise now that with all these animal names, Safari is quite an apt name as well.. ^.^
  • funktimus, on 06/12/2008, -1/+29You can even change the icon. Before you know it, he'll be loving montizilla.
  • webkami, on 06/12/2008, -0/+26In other news, IE 8 will be released in first half of 2008*

    * or a year thereafter, subject to T&C
  • AmaDaden, on 06/12/2008, -1/+25personal acid 3 test results for XP
    Opera 9.5 - 83
    Firefox 3 - 71
    Safari 3.1.1 - 75
    IE 7 - OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS GOING ON.(i'm not kidding. I can't see the score it's so bad)
    http://acid3.acidtests.org/ have fun
  • jenel, on 06/12/2008, -5/+28MS will probably make a fast browser eventually (IE 15) and boast about how innovatively fast it is, like they did with tabbed browsing.
  • Sonof8Bits, on 06/12/2008, -1/+24Only on a fresh install,

    To download Firefox..
  • saxreturns, on 06/12/2008, -0/+22They never BYOB either. Bastards.
  • DarkDx, on 06/12/2008, -1/+23Internet Explorer is the tool you use to download firefox.
  • setrajonas, on 06/12/2008, -10/+32Opera for the win. Fastest browser I've ever used.
  • gavin422, on 06/12/2008, -1/+23Browser developers, please let me know. Is there a reason people name JavaScript engines with two animals?

    SquirrelFish
    SpiderMonkey
    SunSpider (ok, that's not two animals)

    But seriously. Is this a tradition of some sort? I'm actually curious.
  • newbill123, on 06/12/2008, -0/+20I hope these benchmarks are inteligible to you after digg formatting may skew things. They are scores on the sunspider tests on webkit.org, and are ranked in order from slowest to fastest. Lower milliseconds = better. The comparison column compares the scores to Firefox 2.0.0.14 on an Intel Mac. The Webkit release should be roughly comparable to the Javascript engine in Safari 4.

    The last list of URLs are the actual test numbers if you want to see the full rundown of the stats (they should be in the same order as the test results, but check the millisecond number to be sure.)

    http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.htm ...
    10131.8ms +/- 1.1% ... 1.00x FF2 == Firefox 2.0.0.14
    04667.4ms +/- 1.5% ... 2.17x FF2 == Opera 9.50
    02744.6ms +/- 4.4% ... 3.69x FF2 == Safari 3.1.1
    02586.2ms +/- 2.0% ... 3.92x FF2 == Firefox 3 RC 3
    01632.6ms +/- 2.6% ... 6.14x FF2 == Webkit r34503
    Performed on an Intel Mac so sorry for no IE numbers.

    http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-res ...
    http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-res ...
    http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-res ...
    http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-res ...
    http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-res ...
  • Andrwmorph, on 06/12/2008, -2/+21I cant wait for Firefox 3 and Safari 4, Tokyo Drift
  • ocellnuri, on 06/12/2008, -1/+19Yeah, that must of been a typo. 99% of my Firefox using friends didn't realize a version of Firefox 3 was even downloadable yet.
  • jameshighmore, on 06/12/2008, -0/+17A good question, but I pose this to you: who DOESN'T like monkeys?
  • danielwsmithee, on 06/12/2008, -1/+16I'll believe that when I see it.
  • Utopian, on 06/12/2008, -1/+16https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/498 ...
  • dizzy113, on 06/12/2008, -0/+15Although I dont think IE will go bye bye, as a web dev it makes me happy for a moment in time pretending. But then I think, what would i do with all the free time that I would have from not having to hack up my pretty code to make it work in IE? Maybe start exercising or something? Hobby?
  • SAOSiN, on 06/12/2008, -0/+14I just renamed the icon on my parents computer, and took the IE icon off the desktop. And when i first did it I told my dad to just double click the orange thing. He knew what I meant instantly.
  • JonLatane, on 06/12/2008, -2/+15Safari has Adblock; there are numerous implementations, my personal favorite being Safari Adblock and another being SafariBlock. Additionally, check out Safari Stand if you want Flashblock functionality (and a lot more). I don't know about NoScript, but I never used that much anyway. The cool thing about Safari plugins is that they're integrated through Cocoa API calls, at a much lower level than Firefox's XUL extensions, so performance is fantastic even with loads of them. Having your browser integrate decently with the rest of your OS is worth it to me. Firefox can't even use the Keychain for passwords :(
  • Troy64, on 06/12/2008, -2/+15My son changed the Firefox icon and Internet Explorer on my wife's laptop as a trick, because she was always talking about how much she hated Firefox.(we use in on every other computer in the house) She never noticed, he finally told her 3 months later. She complained but she is still using Firefox.
  • dsmx, on 06/12/2008, -0/+12That's being a little optimistic I'm expecting at least a 2 year delay.
  • alakev, on 06/12/2008, -0/+12it's a dictatorship, you don't get to vote...
  • HomerPimpson4, on 06/12/2008, -8/+19Safari has adblock.
  • Appleologist, on 06/12/2008, -1/+11Just downloaded a nightly build of Webkit and ran SunSpider; results: (I think we have a winner)

    Overall Score: 1989.2ms +/- 3.7%
    *ran on 2.4GHz MBP with Mac OS X 10.5.3
  • inactive, on 06/12/2008, -0/+9Most useful post on this whole thread. Thank you.
  • MScrip, on 06/12/2008, -1/+10I've got Firefox on my flash drive for new installs.
  • greenamp, on 06/12/2008, -0/+9You should be using Safari 4 beta for the test, seeing as you are using FF3. You can get the nightly builds here: http://nightly.webkit.org/
  • Speaking, on 06/12/2008, -0/+9I just upgraded to Opera 9.5. Quick find kicks my ass it's so cool. Full text search of all past pages is ridiculously cool.
  • B3N3, on 06/12/2008, -3/+12They'll release IE Retro, a browser that affectionately remembers the all of the features of past browsers from the days before the evil standards compliance mantra wormed its way into the web development world. IE Retro laughs at alpha transparency support, works exclusively with JScript instead of JavaScript, and only renders .NET websites with SQL Server databases. Retro will uninstall other browsers by default unless conditional comments indicating otherwise are used in the user's homepage. Microsoft will not enforce upgrades to newer versions and they anticipate Retro to capture roughly 75% of the browser market.
  • kalidav, on 06/12/2008, -11/+20No opera, no digg.
  • mikephimikephi, on 06/12/2008, -0/+8JavaScript != Java
  • LeviTheSmith, on 06/12/2008, -0/+8This is what I got when I ran the Acid3 Test in IE.
    http://i27.tinypic.com/xnggas.jpg
  • zip000, on 06/12/2008, -2/+10Whenever I mention to someone that I use Firefox instead of Explorer, they pretty much never know what I'm talking about.
  • MtheoryX, on 06/12/2008, -1/+8If you call yourself a designer, and you can't make standards compliant, validated code work in Safari...you are failing hard.
  • pierrelourens, on 06/12/2008, -3/+10My favorite feature of Opera is available as a Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/481 ...
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