Google Boosts Chrome 6 Speed Into Dead Heat With Leaders - PCWorld

Google Boosts Chrome 6 Speed Into Dead Heat With Leaders - PCWorld

Google Boosts Chrome 6 Speed Into Dead Heat With Leaders

The newest version of Chrome 6 is 17% faster, putting it in a virtual dead heat with the speed leaders, Opera and Safari.

Gregg Keizer

Tuesday, September 07, 2010 06:33 AM PDT

Google's Chrome 6 is 17% faster than the version it replaced, putting it in a virtual dead heat with the speed leaders, Opera and Safari, according to benchmark scores.

When Google celebrated the second anniversary of Chrome's launch last week, Brian Rakowski, the browser's director of product management, said: "A lot of things have changed in the last two years [in browsers], but the one thing we've learned is that speed matters."

Tests run by Computerworld support Rakowski's claim that speed matters: Chrome 6 is Google's fastest browser ever at rendering JavaScript.

But although Chrome 6 is nearly 17% faster than May's Chrome 5 , it's still slightly slower than both Opera 10.61 and Safari 5, the No. 1 and No. 2 browsers, respectively.

The speed race is tighter than ever, however; the SunSpider times of Opera, Safari and Chrome are within 12 milliseconds each other.

While that trio was essentially in a photo finish, Mozilla's Firefox remained out of contention for the title of "Fastest Browser." Firefox 3.6.9 beat only Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in the JavaScript trials, and was two-and-a-half times slower than Chrome 6.

Mozilla will have better luck later this year when it ships Firefox 4. The newest preview, Firefox 4 Beta 4, was much more competitive than its production-level cousin: Chrome 6 was only 29% faster than Firefox Beta 4.

Firefox 4 has already met its JavaScript speed goal, according to Mozilla's public plans. The firm's developers have said they want their new browser to be "near or even to" Chrome 5, and score within 20% of Google's now outdated browser on SunSpider. That's almost exactly where Firefox 4 Beta 4 is: Chrome 5's SunSpider score was 19% faster than Firefox's.

As usual, IE8 brought up the rear, taking between five and 12 times longer to complete the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite than its rivals.

Microsoft should be able to get back into the game next week when it releases the first public beta of IE9 on Sept. 15. The four developer previews shipped since March have been competitive with Chrome, Safari and Opera in JavaScript trials.

To peg browser speed, Computerworld ran SunSpider in Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) three times for each browser , then averaged the scores.

Chrome 6 is in a dead heat with speed leaders Opera and Safari on Windows. Smaller results are better. IE8 is not shown.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com .

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The Best Web Browser: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari? - PCWorld

Image via CrunchBase

The Best Web Browser: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari? - PCWorld

Not too long ago the job of a Web browser was simple: Get the text from the Internet and pour it into the window. If a tag like comes along, change the font. Now the challenges are greater because the browser is becoming the home for almost everything we do. Do you have documents to edit? There's a website for that. Did you miss a television show? There's a website for that. Do you want to announce your engagement? There's a website for that too. The Web browser handles all of that and more.

Choosing a best browser is an impossible job. On one hand, the programs are as close to commodities as there are in the computer industry. The core standards are pretty solid and the job of rendering the document is well understood. Most differences can be smoothed over when the Web designers use cross-platform libraries like jQuery. Many websites look the same in all of the major browsers, a testament to the hard work of the developers and their desire to get their information out to the largest audience.

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For me and many others the answer is Google's Chrome 5. Nothing else come close. The worst is easily Internet Explorer. The current versions of Safari and Firefox are good but Chrome 5 is simply better. It is very fast, stable and flexible.

John H. Armwood

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Browser Wars Enter a New Round - PCWorld

Browser Wars Enter a New Round - PCWorld

Apple released version 5.0.1 of its Safari browser last week. It fixes one major security vulnerability. More pleasantly, it turns on support for extensions, which Apple is now collecting in its new Extensions Gallery. The quantity of available add-ins is skimpy compared to Chrome or (especially) Firefox, but there's already some good stuff -- I like Gmail Counter, which adds a button indicating how many e-mails have arrived since you last checked your inbox, along with a banner that rotates through recent subject lines. And Safari extensions have the most seamless installation process I've seen to date -- one click, and you're good to go.

Until now, when folks have asked me how the major browsers stack up, I've mostly praised Safari but noted that the lack of extensions made for a less customizable working environment. Now it's got ‘em. One more reason to consider using Safari, one less major distinguishing characteristic for the competition.

Which got me to thinking: It's been a long time since the race for best browser was this close. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are all really good -- and they're growing more and more similar. (Internet Explorer still lags behind, although everything we know so far about IE9 is promising.) The overarching goals are mostly industry-wide ones, such as more minimalist interfaces, zippier performance, cutting-edge HTML5 support, and slicker frameworks for extensions and other customizations.

An embarrassment of excellent browsers to choose from is great news, of course. But on some weird level, it leaves me blasé about the whole topic. A few years ago, I was practically going door-to-door urging strangers to use Firefox. Today, I'm more likely to explain that most of the major browsers are roughly comparable. And I can't always remember which browser I'm using at the moment. (At the moment, I have Safari, Chrome, and Firefox open -- I'm writing this post in Firefox, but I had to check.)

We seem to be in a period of equilibrium, but I don't think it'll last forever. At some point, interfaces will get as sleek as they're going to get, it'll be hard to eke any more speed out of JavaScript engines, and HTML5 will be everywhere. Browser developers will need to latch onto fresh ideas -- and when they do, their products might once again feel more distinctive than they do at the moment.

Okay, I'm not claiming that there's nothing unique in current browsers. A few examples of fresh ideas currently on display: Safari's easy-reading mode, Firefox's "Tab Candy," Opera's Turbo browsing, and all the social features in my favorite underdog browser, Flock. I'd love to see more stuff like this, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we're headed for a new era of browser inventiveness rather than an age of stasis...

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As far as I am concerned the choice is clear. Chrome 5 is the browser of choice on any platform. I regularly use it on my Mac and on my wife's P.C. I uninstalled FireFox after using Chrome 5, when it was released for Mac. It is so much faster than FireFox and more flexible than Safari 5. On a PC it is much faster than FireFox and Internet Explorer is not even in the running. It is slow, there are no extensions and it is buggy. Safari 5 now supports some of the Asian sites that you used to need Internet Explorer to use. Enterprise I.T. departments need to get off their rusty dusty and switch to chrome 5.

John H. Armwood

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Firefox Falls Further Behind in Browser Wars - PCWorld Business Center

Firefox Falls Further Behind in Browser Wars - PCWorld Business Center

Linux user, how many different Internet browsers do you have on your system? You have Konqueror if you use KDE, Iceweasel or Epiphany if you use GNOME, and optionally, you might have Firefox, Chrome or Opera. You might have all of those.

You need so many browsers because none of them is perfect. And, Chrome comes closer to perfection than Firefox does. Since Google released the Chrome browser, Linux users have converted to it by the hundreds of thousands. Although Firefox claims millions of downloads, you can bet that its usage is not close to the number of downloads.

Maybe you’ve seen stories declaring, as Keir Thomas did on this blog last year, that Firefox is dead while Chrome looks increasingly like a better choice. But why is Firefox taking all this abuse? In short, because its alleged strengths are its greatest weaknesses.

Firefox fans tout the browser’s use of extensions, or add-ons, as one of its many boastworthy features, but if you’ve ever connected to a site that uses some new Web feature that Firefox doesn’t support, you’re out of luck. Those same extensions often break other extensions on the way in during installation.

Further, why should a user constantly download and install extensions for such common Web gadgetry as Flash or PDF? Why aren’t those extensions included by default if their inclusion is necessary for a rich Web experience?

How often has Firefox notified you at startup that there are updates for one or more of your extensions that result in no updates, or that upon updating, you'll have to restart your browser only to find that the extension update broke your browser. This exercise is time-consuming and tedious. It’s almost as bad as patching and rebooting a Windows system. You find that simply opening your browser to check stock prices becomes so involved that you forget why you originally opened it.

But Firefox extensions aren’t the only problem. Firefox is also so notoriously slow that on older systems, it’s almost unusable or it takes so long to open that you find yourself clicking the icon multiple times, thinking that your original launch didn’t take for some reason.

Chrome, however, is usable and responsive. Now you understand why Firefox might not survive the browser wars. Its extension model is annoying to use, it’s slow on older systems, it’s slower than Chrome on any system, and its extensions break other extensions.

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