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Group Test: Firefox 3 vs IE 7 vs Safari 3.1.2 vs Opera 9.5

By Stuart Whitmore, 6/24/2008 4:44:38 PM

Speed is seductive: just ask an F16 fighter pilot, Formula 1 race driver or the marketing teams at Apple and Firefox. Both have been pushing the speed boosts that their latest browsers, Safari 3.1.2 and Firefox 3, have to offer. But which is the fastest, and how do they compare to Microsoft’s market leader, Internet Explorer 7, and niche player Opera 9.5?

Introduction
Our previous comparison test between Safari 3.1.1, Firefox 3 RC1 and IE 7 generated a lot of comment and opinion. One of the biggest criticisms was that we did not give Opera its chance to take on the big boys, so we’re redressing that here. Firefox fans also lamented that their browser of choice was still in beta (albeit a release candidate), but Mozilla’s now-finished browser gets a full run out this time, alongside a slightly updated version of Safari.

Internet Explorer’s supporters also put up a vigorous defense, criticising Safari’s long start-up times and suggesting that if we ran IE 7 on a better specced PC than our average and ageing office laptop then Microsoft’s browser would show its worth. So this time we tested all four apps on an HP Dragon entertainment PC running Windows Vista Ultimate on an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.8GHz with 4GB of RAM.

We remain committed to real-world testing, however. Benchmarking applications has its place in the industry, especially for programmers and developers, but when it comes to browsing the web, it’s the perception of speed, rather than any dry technical measurements, that counts at the keyboard.

To this end we ran two separate tests, using the same basket of five sites as in our previous review. In the first test we timed how long it took each browser to completely load all the page elements. In the second test we timed how long it took each browser to load the page until it felt complete and ready to read to the naked eye.

When it comes to browser speed it is this subjective measurement that matters most to the user, who couldn’t care less if the browser is continuing to download largely invisible page elements in the background as long as it instantly loads the images and text they want to see.

How we tested
We chose a basket of five sites to test: our own gadgetzone.com.au homepage, a typical news site in the form of smh.com.

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Comments

	Mark
	afl.com.au is littered with crappy javascript coding, now wonder it does not work... CSS - http://afl.com.au/ Inlined stylesheet Invalid value for property: height Line 2: .dnn_dnnadminmenu_ctladminmenu_spmbar {cursor: pointer; cursor: hand; height:16; --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/ Inlined stylesheet Invalid value for property: width Line 4: #333333 1px solid; border-top: #333333 1px solid; text-align: center; width: 15; --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/ Inlined stylesheet Invalid value for property: height Line 4: solid; border-top: #333333 1px solid; text-align: center; width: 15;height: 21; --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/ Inlined stylesheet Declaration syntax error Line 5: :DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color='DimGray', Direction=135, Strength=3) ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Invalid value for property: height Line 570: height:16; -----------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Invalid value for property: width Line 597: width: 15; -----------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Invalid value for property: height Line 598: height: 21; ------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Declaration syntax error Line 606: d:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color='DimGray', Direction=135, Strength=3); --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Invalid value for property: height Line 659: height:16; -----------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Invalid value for property: width Line 684: width: 15; -----------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Invalid value for property: height Line 685: height: 21; ------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/_default/default.css Linked-in stylesheet Declaration syntax error Line 692: d:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color='DimGray', Direction=135, Strength=3); --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/Portals/0/aflportal.css Linked-in stylesheet Declaration syntax error Line 3: l{filter: expression(document.execCommand("BackgroundImageCache", false, true)); --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ CSS - http://afl.com.au/ HTML style attribute line-heigth is an unknown property Line 1: 0px;top:83px;vertical-align:top;position:absolute;padding-left:65px;line-heigth: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ JavaScript - http://afl.com.au/ Unknown thread Error: name: TypeError message: Statement on line 359: Cannot convert undefined or null to Object Backtrace: Line 359 of inline#8 script in http://afl.com.au/ for (var i in def) Line 22 of inline#8 script in http://afl.com.au/ var args = utl2.findArgs(_TickerDef); Line 536 of inline#8 script in http://afl.com.au/: In function LoadFlipper var pb = new utl2.Ticker( Line 483 of inline#8 script in http://afl.com.au/: In function stateHandler fncCB(g_feedResponse.dataFeederResponse.req0); ... stacktrace: n/a; see 'opera:config#UserPrefs\|Exceptions Have Stacktrace' CSS - http://afl.com.au/ HTML style attribute Invalid value for property: font Line 1: width:0px;height:0px;overflow:hidden;font:0px; ----------------------------------------------^ JavaScript - http://afl.com.au/ Unknown thread Error: name: TypeError message: Statement on line 1568: Cannot convert undefined or null to Object Backtrace: Line 1568 of eval script for(var i in def) Line 1415 of eval script var args = utl.findArgs(g_addElDef); Line 7854 of eval script : In function initAltPanels pnl.body = utl.addEl({parent:pnl.container}); Line 7835 of eval script initAltPanels(); Line 607 of linked script http://afl.com.au/jspage/Core.js: In function checkScriptsLoaded fnc(); Line 219 of linked script http://afl.com.au/jspage/Core.js: In function stateHandler fncCB(xmlHttpReq.responseText, strURLCB, xmlHttpReq.status); ... stacktrace: n/a; see 'opera:config#UserPrefs\|Exceptions Have Stacktrace'
	6/25/2008 7:40:24 AM

	Red Panda
	Wow what inelgant java code -- that stacktrace slays me ;-) I think like the 99.9% of people who are consumers of the web rather than java programmers, I have no interest in whose fault it is. Like the article says, the result for the user is the same - if you use Opera and go to visit that site you can't see it. It can't be the only crappily coded site out there, and it works fine on all the others. That means the programmers have bothered to ensure it works on IE, FF and Safari but they didn't give a damn about Opera. I think Opera is a nice browser, but this kind of incompatibility gets annoying if it happens too often. When Safari first came out on the mac it was the same story (I use a Mac and a PC). I used it but kept having to use IE for certain sites I visited regularly. I switched to IE after a while and only went back to Safari once it worked better.
	6/25/2008 9:28:30 AM

	Stifu
	Red Panda: You're mistaking Java and JavaScript, which are very different. Also, JavaScript is handled by the browser, while Java is handled by the Java plugin (ie: not the browser vendor responsibility).
	6/25/2008 8:52:02 PM

	Red Panda
	Thanks Stifu. My ignorance kinda underlines my point though: Java or JavaScript, as a consumer I don't know and don't care. All I (and the rest of the 99.9%) see is that certain browsers fail to load certain pages. The why, how and who's to blame doesn't matter a jot.
	6/26/2008 10:16:41 AM