Internet Explorer 7 Vs. Firefox 2.0 Vs. Opera 9 Vs. Safari 3.0

[Guest Reimar]

A lot different meanings about Safari!! And who's right??

Apple has compared the performances of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0 and Opera 9 to its own browser transitioned to Windows Vista and Windows XP and has concluded that Safari is top dog. The Cupertino-based company made Safari 3.0 available for download as a public beta on June 11, 2007, following an announcement by Apple Chief Executive Office Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco. Apple has compared the four browsers and calculated the HTML and JavaScript performances and the time it takes its product to launch. In every category of the benchmarks delivered by Apple, Safari 3.0 public beta came on top.

By accessing the image integrated toward the bottom you will be able to access graphics produced by Apple indicating what the company refers to as the "blazing performance" of Safari. As the benchmarks come directly from the Cupertino-based company, the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, Apple also applauded Safari as secure from "day one" and in the browser's first day of availability on Windows Vista and Windows XP, independent security researchers dug up eight security vulnerabilities impacting the product.

"Performance measured in seconds. Testing conducted by Apple in June 2007 on a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based iMac system running Windows XP Professional SP2, configured with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB of VRAM. HTML and JavaScript benchmarks based on VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings. Testing conducted with a beta version of Safari; all other browsers were shipping versions. Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection, and other factors," Apple revealed.

And Apple goes on to praise Safari as the fastest web browser on any platform, not just Mac OS X. "Blazing performance. The fastest web browser on any platform, Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them," Apple added.

As you are able to see from the graphics on the left, Apple touts the fact that Safari handles HTML content in just 2.14 seconds in comparison with 3.67 seconds for Firefox 2.0, 4.63 for IE7 and 6.22 for Opera 9. As far as JavaScript performance is concerned, the beta version of Safari managed the content in 0.88 seconds. In contrast, Firefox 2.0 took 1.72 seconds, IE7 2.48 and Opera 9 just 0.98 seconds. Additionally Safari 3.0 launches in 1.74 seconds, faster than Firefox 2.0 with 2.22, IE7 with 2.34 and Opera 9 with 1.82 seconds.

Edited June 13, 2007 by Reimar

[Mid]

Apple snip has concluded that Safari is top dog.

no major surprise here .

[Florin]

This may seem weird, but at least in Vista, it does work that way! Feels much faster than IE/FF, even for initial start-up. Opera may still have the speed edge in some cases, but it's too incompatible to be a viable power-user browser imho.

[Naam]

Apple snip has concluded that Safari is top dog.

no major surprise here .

just testing Safari. result = lame duck!

[cdnvic]

Put Lynx in there and it'll be even faster. But as with Safari, not nearly as useful.

[Beardog]

Apple snip has concluded that Safari is top dog.

no major surprise here .

just testing Safari. result = lame duck!

Thanks Dr. Naam save me a download to delete!

[dave_boo]

And yet an objective website has this to say.

Than again, Safari is based on KHTML. It's therefore a close (kissing?) cousin of Konqueror. Anyone who uses Linux will tell you how much that sucks!

[Kyosuken]

How come you don't speak about the 8 (yes 8 ) zero days exploits that works on safari 3.0 betas with one of them can do remote attacks even on mac os x ?

[britmaveric]

Took 2hrs to exploit Safari - me thinks its a waste of time. Firefox best browser hands down.

[sjaak327]

Safari isn't even the best alternative on their native OSX, firefox wins hands down. I myself prefer IE7 on Vista, but that's just personal preference. And indeed konqueror isn't a very good browser either, on Linux it's firefox as well.

[southbot]

I downloaded Safari a couple days back.

I use two monitors, if you open Safari on the second monitor, then double click the title bar to go full window, then the whole shebang dissappears off to the extreme right edge of the second monitor and there is no way to get it back other than closing from the task bar or using task manager to close it.

Just one harmless bug out of the dozens they are finding.

Mind you, Safari is only in Beta so one would expect such problems AND they even put a BUG button on the browser so you can report issues.

Seems a fast browser to me.

I prefer FF or MSIE.

[wpcoe]

Why is Firefox considered to be better than Opera? I've used Opera for years now, so inertia just keeps me upgrading it. Now that I tinker in designing web sites, I've installed Firefox to check for compatibility, and can't see anything that would make me want to switch from Opera.

It's little things in Opera that I like: Being able to quickly hold down <ctrl+shift> and go click-click-click down a list of forum topics and have them all spring open and download in background tabs.

And, when people talk about one browser being fast than another, what do they mean? Faster to start the browser? Faster to load pages? What? I read someplace that Opera years ago claimed to be the fastest browser because it would display table data onscreen before the entire table structure had been downloaded. Is that still the criteria?

One negative about Firefox I noticed when I loaded the lastest version after doing a clean install of Windows Vista (after installing Opera and making it my default browser): without prompting, Firefox installed itself as the default browswer.

So, I'm not overly defensive about Opera, and am bracing myself for a potential assault from Firefox fanatics, but what exactly makes Firefox a better browser?

[Florin]

So, I'm not overly defensive about Opera, and am bracing myself for a potential assault from Firefox fanatics, but what exactly makes Firefox a better browser?

From my point of view, what makes Firefox a great browser (though not my prefered one) is its infinite expandability through addons, spurred by a VERY active development community.

[SoMeOnEnUlL]

So, I'm not overly defensive about Opera, and am bracing myself for a potential assault from Firefox fanatics, but what exactly makes Firefox a better browser?

From my point of view, what makes Firefox a great browser (though not my prefered one) is its infinite expandability through addons, spurred by a VERY active development community.

Agree!

[quiksilva]

I have heard lots of complaints of safari crashes

[Plus]

I've just moved my Opera installation to another hard disk, took me less than five minutes to copy ALL the settings exactly like they were before, including feeds and e-mail.

Customisign FF is a formidable task precisely because there are those damned add ons, thousands of them, you wouldn't know where to start. Then you have to download them all separately and restart FF a dozen times.

I also recently installed Opera and Firefox to be "ghosted" to a dozen of computers. I didn't even consider customising Firefox for other people - you can't just tell them click here and here and change that back if you want. Opera works out of the box.

I like the latest "speed dial" feature - when you open new page/tab, there are up to nine icons whith your most popular websites, no need to type URLs or nicknames. Looks cool, too.

As for Safari - I tried it, was NOT impressed in the slightest. I couldn't even find a place to change the skin, and their "add ons" are actually what other browsers call preinstalled plug-ins - Flash Player and the likes.

Opera takes time to start, maybe because it checks your mail boxes and updates feeds (when I delete all the junk it speeds up considerably), but from then on it beats Safari by a mile. Safari actually reloads the whole page, with hundreds of advertising links, when you click on "Back" button. In Opera it's instantaneos - you can read through five pages of topics on TV and then get back to topic list or find an old quote on page two in nanosecond. Don't try than on Safari.

Safari is nothing special, it won't dent IE7 or FF popularity at all. Wait until I-phone flops and that will be the end of Apple ambition to get a foothold in mainstream markets.

[Gary A]

Safari is number one? What a joke. Yes, I downloaded it and played with it for a while and came to the conclusion that it is the absolute saddest browser that I have ever tried.

[nikster]

Safari seems OK to me. It feels very fast but then again not so much faster it would make me switch from Firefox.

It's also somewhat unstable. In the olden days this might have passed as "beta" - I would definitely call it beta as a sofware engineer. But in the Web 2.0 days where everyone and dog releases perfectly stable software as beta, Safari falls short. It's much rougher than, say, a new Firefox beta.

Conclusion: Try again when it's a release candidate.

One thing I love - and others hate - is the font rendering. It's done properly, like on the Mac. That makes Safari stick out in a Windows world, but I do miss proper anti-aliasing. This is under XP, Vista has much better font display and so Safari probably doesn't stick out as much there.

On a side-note, I usually use Firefox on the Mac - it's less quirky than Safari. And I can't stand Safari's RSS implementation, I much prefer the Firefox-style RSS dropdowns from bookmarks. And

Tip: Try Safaris search feature (Ctrl-F) to see something cool. They took what Firefox was doing and made it way better. Best search implementation by a far margin.

[nikster]

PS: The "move tab to new Window" function is also pretty useful. I always thought that should be in Firefox, but for some reason it isn't. Right click on a tab to do this.

[Paulbangkok]

I think as it's in Beta it's far too early to write off Safari but for me the best of the bunch is Definitely Firefox. IE just makes me uncomfortable when thinking about security and Opera (for the limited time i tried it) was just too fiddley,

Firefox for now but watch this space i'd say!!!

[Gary A]

I'm back using Sea Monkey again. I really like Firefox but lately it has some glitches that I haven't been able to correct. I have to re-sign in for most sites and my Yahoo home page always gives me some message about being out dated and that is a hassle. Sea Monkey is fast and remembers how to sign me in for all favorite sites. Adblock and IE Tab also work fine with Sea Monkey.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

This may seem weird, but at least in Vista, it does work that way! Feels much faster than IE/FF, even for initial start-up. Opera may still have the speed edge in some cases, but it's too incompatible to be a viable power-user browser imho.

Incompatible?

If there is a problem with a website, go to; Tools- Quick Preferences- Edit site preferences- Network and then change the Browser Identification to whichever is compatible with that particular site.

[Florin]

I know about the User Agent concept, but it's not that...for some things (the back-end ASP administration at my workplace, my university's website, etc.) an IE engine browser is REQUIRED for it to work properly, and Opera just doesn't cut it.