Web Browser Grand Prix: Chrome 20, Opera 12, Firefox 13

[safan80]

It includes the horror known as Internet explorer and Apple's Safai.


The test is from july 5th.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...a-12,3228.html

How do the latest Windows 7-based Web browsers stack up? Chrome and Firefox each have three wins under this operating system; can one become our champion? Or will Opera clean house here, as it did under Windows XP? We set up a new test system to find out.

..
Our Core i5 test system was upgraded from Intel's old Lynnfield design to a more modern Sandy Bridge-based chip, and the Radeon HD 4870 was recently replaced by a Radeon HD 7770. The benchmark suite also receives significant upgrades. We're removing five of the older benchmarks, adding ten new ones, and implementing composite scores for nearly every category of testing.

[AliG]

Huh, looks like IE actually deserves some credit now.

I wish these tests would also include Maxthon. I think it's pretty comparable to chrome speed wise, but has a lot of nifty features not to mention google doesn't know everything about your search history lol

[safan80]

Don't you know google is already in the drinking water

IE is getting better but I still only use it when forced to by lame corporate web sites that still code for it. Opera is my number 2 at the moment. Chrome is just starting ...


For those using firefox and wanting to see a breakdown of memory usage of the browser type "about:memory" to the address bar. If you don't see anything you need to run a newer version of the browser.

Also there's a web site the tracks firefox's memory usage. https://areweslimyet.com/

[zanzabar]

why is memory usage of any importance now? and i do not see how chrome and safari are high in security, webkit based products are generally the ones who give way to much information. accept tracking that they should not, and tend to allow access to the HDD through HTML5, and plug ins like flash, adobe reader. chrome also phones home alot with things like history and usage that it should not.

[safan80]

why is memory usage of any importance now?

Because people tend to stick to their old adages regardless of what the facts are.

[masterg]

i dont think opera 12 should be used for this. its been out a week and theres alot of bugs and issues that wont be fixed til next update

[Spectrobozo]

i dont think opera 12 should be used for this. its been out a week and theres alot of bugs and issues that wont be fixed til next update

I don't even know why they released it as a final version the way it is, I've been using Opera for almost 10 years, and was forced to go back to a older version for the first time after upgrading to 12 and experiencing so many problems,


memory usage for me is important in some situations,

[Pontos]

For a second i thought the "Grand Prix" was about who gets to have the highest version number out

Considering that, unless Mozilla realizes their current numbering scheme is as ridiculous as Chrome's and changes it, we'll have Firefox 26 by the end of 2013...

[masterg]

I don't even know why they released it as a final version the way it is, I've been using Opera for almost 10 years, and was forced to go back to a older version for the first time after upgrading to 12 and experiencing so many problems,


memory usage for me is important in some situations,

im still using 11.52 because of so many changes that i don't agree with, in particular the address bar. now add the icons, memory, stability, unite, and opera_plugin_wrapper bugs and its a mess

[SEA]

I'm using 12.50...

[Generic user #2]

Considering that, unless Mozilla realizes their current numbering scheme is as ridiculous as Chrome's and changes it, we'll have Firefox 26 by the end of 2013...

the reason Mozilla adopted their new versioning system was because consumers equate bigger numbers with superiority.

until that fact of human perception changes, they'll be keeping their system

[safan80]

memory usage for me is important in some situations,

Add more ram it's cheap now a days.

So what's the problem with version 12? It runs like version 11.5 for me.

[Stevethegreat]

the reason Mozilla adopted their new versioning system was because consumers equate bigger numbers with superiority.

until that fact of human perception changes, they'll be keeping their system

Yeah, develop your products by the lowest common denominator, I'm sorry to say but that's BS.... I may hate Apple, but I actually love the fact that they simply don't give a f*ck, they're gonna release what they're gonna release and "force" the lowest common denominator to adopt it as well; for example without Apple's ballsiness we would still have feature phones and tiny resolutions on the desktop...

Shame on the Mozilla guys, I used to like them...

[Sparky]

Yeah, develop your products by the lowest common denominator, I'm sorry to say but that's BS.... I may hate Apple, but I actually love the fact that they simply don't give a f*ck, they're gonna release what they're gonna release and "force" the lowest common denominator to adopt it as well; for example without Apple's ballsiness we would still have feature phones and tiny resolutions on the desktop...

Shame on the Mozilla guys, I used to like them...

I disagree. Apple may have helped push the market, but I highly doubt that the market would have stagnated without Apple.

[zanzabar]

Yeah, develop your products by the lowest common denominator, I'm sorry to say but that's BS.... I may hate Apple, but I actually love the fact that they simply don't give a f*ck, they're gonna release what they're gonna release and "force" the lowest common denominator to adopt it as well; for example without Apple's ballsiness we would still have feature phones and tiny resolutions on the desktop...

Shame on the Mozilla guys, I used to like them...

you do know that the iphone was a marketing campaign with a capacitive screen. windows mobile was better in every way but HTC/moto did not get the kind of subsidy that apple did, so they could not use a capacitive screen and get it to the consumer for $300. the entirety of the iphone was 1) to market it as a feature phone with apps and internet (what it really is), and 2) get a screen that was not resistive. the only ballsiness involved was to pay ATT to let them have a 1st party app store and not go through the carrier.

and apple is entirely on the lowest common denominator, they offer 2 options for laptops, one ultrabook, and 2 desktops. they have always tried to stop 3rd party programs and only work with second party devs, they market as it just works, it dose not get viruses (lawsuit city now for that one,) and try to ban hardware upgrades. if there was a computer that was designed for rednecks and grandmas it would be the mac since OSX. /rant

[BababooeyHTJ]

Add more ram it's cheap now a days.

So what's the problem with version 12? It runs like version 11.5 for me.

Opera 12 has been running like a champ for me.

[masterg]

Add more ram it's cheap now a days.

So what's the problem with version 12? It runs like version 11.5 for me.

they are removing their users servers such as Unite. IRC is being removed, bit torrent is being removed. the HTML5 is having alot of issues. alot of pages arent running correctly. Icons now scale drastically with added tabs. 10+ tabs cant see the icons anymore. address bar issues where you cant find bookmarks or history still exist, favicons don't exist in the same setting as being able to see address bar crap. alot of other things if you go to their forums

[Spectrobozo]

they are removing their users servers such as Unite. IRC is being removed, bit torrent is being removed. the HTML5 is having alot of issues. alot of pages arent running correctly. Icons now scale drastically with added tabs. 10+ tabs cant see the icons anymore. address bar issues where you cant find bookmarks or history still exist, favicons don't exist in the same setting as being able to see address bar crap. alot of other things if you go to their forums

and more than once I had opera_plugin_wrapper fully loading one core of my CPU without anything being used on opera,


adding more memory is cheap, but better utilizing the available memory is even cheaper for me,
also if you use a 32bit OS you really don't have a huge amount available (using a ramdisk pagefile helps, but...), it's not uncommon for me to see Opera using high amount of ram even after closing all the tabs.

[masterg]

and more than once I had opera_plugin_wrapper fully loading one core of my CPU without anything being used on opera,


adding more memory is cheap, but better utilizing the available memory is even cheaper for me,
also if you use a 32bit OS you really don't have a huge amount available (using a ramdisk pagefile helps, but...), it's not uncommon for me to see Opera using high amount of ram even after closing all the tabs.

my computer at work has 15 instances of Opera_Plugin_wrapper open in memory and they wont close. they have been open for a week even though opera claims they are automated to close after 2 minutes.

[Stevethegreat]

you do know that the iphone was a marketing campaign with a capacitive screen. windows mobile was better in every way but HTC/moto did not get the kind of subsidy that apple did, so they could not use a capacitive screen and get it to the consumer for $300. the entirety of the iphone was 1) to market it as a feature phone with apps and internet (what it really is), and 2) get a screen that was not resistive. the only ballsiness involved was to pay ATT to let them have a 1st party app store and not go through the carrier.

and apple is entirely on the lowest common denominator, they offer 2 options for laptops, one ultrabook, and 2 desktops. they have always tried to stop 3rd party programs and only work with second party devs, they market as it just works, it dose not get viruses (lawsuit city now for that one,) and try to ban hardware upgrades. if there was a computer that was designed for rednecks and grandmas it would be the mac since OSX. /rant

It's a strange position to be in, to seemingly have to defend Apple. What Apple has (and others don't) is a sheer force of persuasiveness. With such power they made few great things and even (a lot) more bad ones. Most of their computers are the lowest common denominators, overpriced cr*p, but they choose that to be so (for whatever reason). They don't do so following the market (qute the opposite in fact).

Their "ballsiness" lies in the fact that they would bully their way around to get what they want. It often lead to catastrophe and gave them their much deserved vilification, *but* it also lead to the modern smartphone, to the death of music industry as we knew it, to the high resolution desktop TFTs (starting with Apple 30' screen).

It's not that a single of those ideas are/were their own, quite the opposite they're quite shameless in stealing others' idea and do so w/t shame or regret; it is that they would *force* the world to look at them and if their idea happens to be a good one then they do what nobody can, aggressively push innovation. Of course when it's cr*p, then Apple is merely one more bad company out there selling snake oil, but then again most OEMs on the desktop were like that to begin with.

I don't like spineless, sheep like companies like Mozilla and Microsoft, I like those who take risks even if it involves bullying and/or general stupidity. I like that in both Google and Apple, despite their obvious "evilness" in other things...

And it's not that we wouldn't have the mouse, the mp3 player or indeed the smartphone without Apple, it's only that we would have them in a lot different form and in later era. In the end it's the unlikable (almost evil) people like Edison and Jobs that move the world forwards, NOT the Woz*s* and Tesla*s* of this world...

/end of the of topic (sorry)

[Particle]

I'm curious if they ran Opera 12 with hardware acceleration enabled to see how it compared. I know the Opera devs said it ships disabled because it's not always faster, but I'd be curious to know what the difference was like since it does have support for WebGL and HTML5 HW acceleration.