Test your browser

[James]

At the following link you can test your browser against the other browsers you have installed on your computer. The test lasts approximately five minutes so sit back and watch. Afterwards you can check on the details of the test. In my own tests of Firefox 9, Chrome 16 and IE9, Chrome turned in the best results by far. Here is the link:

http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7

[Fulvio]

Quite a site! I, never, saw anything rigged in that way. It says that Chrome is the greatest.
Then, when I tried to test Seamonkey, nothing happened for a few minutes. I walked out, and Seamonkey had crashed. Thanks a lot for that link! And, they call it Peacekeeper. What is it, really, supposed to do.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20111221 Firefox/9.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.6.1

[James]

Hmmm... sorry, Fulvio, but I did not experience any adverse effects from that site. In fact, it is one of the recognized sites from PC World, a reputable PC magazine. Try SeaMonkey again. If I still had it installed, I would try it myself. Once you have let it run its tests, click on the details to get a good picture of the strengths and weaknesses of your browser. Chrome out-performed Firefox quite handily on the site and Firefox, in turn, out-performed IE9 in rendering the pages thrown at it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1

[James]

Okay... I downloaded and installed SM to test it against the other three browsers I have installed on my computer. SM did not crash on the test. Here are the results:

SM: 1204
FF: 1312
IE9: 1243
Chrome: 2626

You can go into the details and check out the Rendering, HTML5 Capabilities, HTML5 Canvas and DOM and in all respects Chrome is by far the best browser. In fact in terms of rendering, it was almost three times better than SM.

Read up on this yourself. There has to be a reason why Chrome has risen so quickly and while advertising is certainly a factor, most would dump it if it were not as good as it is. Seriously, I believe Chrome will become the number one browser within the next year... two at most.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7

[James]

I added Opera 11.6 to the mix. It had even better rendering results than Chrome but fell behind in HTML5 capabilities and ended with a score of: 2301, making it (according to this website) the second best browser available.

PS: I should add that all browsers were the latest versions (non-beta... I won't use them).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7

[DJGM]

Read up on this yourself. There has to be a reason why Chrome has risen so quickly and
while advertising is certainly a factor, most would dump it if it were not as good as it is.

I think part of the reason why Chrome has risen so fast in popularity, isn't just because of the massive
amount of advertising cash Google has spent to promote it, and not just because under the hood it is
speedy thanks to the WebKit rendering engine, but about third party software bundling.

Over the last several months, I've seen Chrome appear as a bundled extra with the installers of other
software packages I've installed. Piriform's CCleaner system maintenance app is one of many . . .



Given the fact a lot of people click Next - Next - Next, on software wizards without paying very much
attention to screens like the one above, with the checkboxes checked by default, it's rather sneaky.
Although there's an increasing installed base for Chrome, I wonder how many of these users stick
with it beyond the initial "Oh, what's this Google Chrome thing on my desktop?" before returning
to the browser they were using before, be it Internet Explorer, Firefox, or whatever?

Of course, even if these users decide not to stick with Chrome, it's been set as the default browser,
so when click on a web link from another app, or open a local HTML document, Chrome is fired up.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20111221 Firefox/9.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.6.1 Lightning/1.1

[James]

Not according to this article from PC World and the tech site which it quotes, Net Applications which "calculates browser usage share with data obtained from more than 160 million unique visitors who browse 40,000 Web sites that the company monitors for clients." You can read the entire article here:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/247159/c ... slide.html

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1

[Fulvio]

I can buy that Google Chrome is faster and whatever,but I am having a problem with a site which proclaims that Google Chrome is the King of the Hill.
I redid the browser test with Seamonkey. It looked fine to me, but the score was 178. I then tried Chrome, and the score was 581, with a bunch of Mac items, such as iPad and iPhone in the 300 range.
Both Seamonkey and Chrome could not do one test, after the initial part.
These tests annoy me, because they are no better than than wasting time with a stopwatch.
Really, I have not cared for the latest (after v.3) Firefoxes, or the equivalent Seamonkeys, but Chrome has given me its share of problems.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7

[James]

Fulvio, I understand. I think it's in our best interests to take these types of sites with a grain of salt. There is no question but that Chrome is rapidly becoming the new benchmark when it comes to browser speed. Chrome just works. But you'll notice that I'm currently using FF. I bounce between the two since my heart still says Mozilla. If SM is doing for you what you want, then that's really all that matters.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1

[Fulvio]

James,
I noticed that you had been using Firefox more frequently than Chrome.
I have Chrome, and use it occasionally. I may have said before that I prefer Seamonkey, for the simple reason that I am too lazy to open two programs, i.e. browser and mail. So far Seamonkey, with both mail and browser take less Memory than Firefox or Chrome+mail program. This is important with my old computer.
And, speed is irrelevant as I have the fastest cable internet connection, because of a special bundle.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20111221 Firefox/9.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.6.1

[James]

And you are so right... you can have the fastest rendering browser but if your cable connection isn't up to snuff... well... what good will it do? I've been with Mozilla since 1997 and I won't be leaving it soon although at times I've become frustrated and ranted and raged for a bit. And you've probably seen that for a time I'll even post in SM. Currently I do not have SM on my system but knowing me I'll probably play around with it at some point again. Having Lastpass allows me to do this easily since it syncs my bookmarks and passwords and I don't really need to worry about importing anything.

So... Santa never brought you a new computer, eh? Well... according to Paul Thurrott, this is going to be the year of the ultrabook so hold on and wait a few more months. These ultrabooks will surpass the Macbook Air in speed and capacity as well as being thinner and lighter according to sites that have leaked information. While our systems are relatively new, I'm lusting for a lighter, faster laptop so I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for information. He says the first ones will make their appearance in April and start at $600. Most of the ultrabooks will make their appearance in the fall before Christmas 2012.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1

[humpd]

The Chrome advertising on the site gives me pause. Not surprisingly, Chrome finished well ahead of the other browsers but what did surprise me is that IE finished ahead of FF 9. Don't understand why that happened. Could be because of some of the addons I have on FF.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1

[Fulvio]

As far as I know tabs management and add-ons limit Firefox and relatives' speed. I would have no way to compare IE9 with anything, as I have Win XP, but, having used Chrome, yesterday, extensively, for the first time, it gave me a feeling of speed. I use IE, only, when a website overrides my default settings, and insists in opening with IE.
And, it is not for my good, as I have IE Tab.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20111221 Firefox/9.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.6.1

[Edward]

Going to http://www.youtube.com/html5 will show you if the browser is HTML5-capable. Chrome has HTML5 support, as does Firefox and SeaMonkey.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20120105 Firefox/10.0 SeaMonkey/2.7

[ncd]

Okay... I downloaded and installed SM to test it against the other three browsers I have installed on my computer. SM did not crash on the test. Here are the results:

SM: 1204
FF: 1312
IE9: 1243
Chrome: 2626

Read up on this yourself. There has to be a reason why Chrome has risen so quickly and while advertising is certainly a factor, most would dump it if it were not as good as it is. Seriously, I believe Chrome will become the number one browser within the next year... two at most.

James,

Chrome is indeed an impressive browser, but privacy concerns with Google mean it has ZERO space on my hard drive. Instead I go to portable apps and download the latest version of IRON which satisfies my privacy concerns about Chrome. I always remember that Google's No. 1 mission is advertising and data mining.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20111221 Firefox/9.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.6.1