Blag

There are only a few browsers even worthy of consideration at the moment – due to lack of support, infrequent updates, security holes, performance issues etc, I’ve decided to ignore all other browsers except for the main five. Legacy browsers (e.g. Firefox 2.0, IE7, Safari 3, Netscape were excluded), and the latest versions and betas available at time of testing were used.The versions I tested were:

• Google Chrome 2.0.172.33
• Google Chrome Beta 3.0.193.0
• Opera 9.64
• Opera 10 Beta Build 1631
• Safari 4.0.2
• Firefox 3.0.11
• Firefox 3.5
• Internet Explorer 8

Aside:  FYI, I’ve long since lost all traces of browser loyalty – they’ve already wasted enough of my time and sanity for me to even bother blowing the X browser horn.

I don’t really believe in browser benchmarks – the only real way to test browsers out is to use them for a few days and monitor their performance and system resource usage.  The SunSpider and V8 “industry standard” benchmarks are utter crap – every tech blog, journal and media portal seem to toss their figures around willy nilly, yet fail to realise that both benchmarks are BIASED and UNFAIR when used to compare competing browsers. They were designed to test performance of different builds, updates, improvements and so on, not the performance of a completely different competitors product. SunSpider was developed by WebKit (the basis of Safari) as an internal benchmark, as was V8 for Google Chrome. The only “un-biased” benchmark currently available is ACID 3, but even that doesn’t really simulate real world usage.

So, I gathered 301 different websites – each laced with images, Javascript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, pop-ups and AJAX and loaded them in each browser to check for memory leaks, abnormal CPU usage and disk I/O. I then tried using each browser with 30 tabs open for a day or two each, to see how they performed over time. As a test of each browsers tagging, history and bookmark searching capabilities, I also imported my 8MB bookmarks.html (where possible).

Each browser was setup to a “usable” state – i.e. pop-up and adblocking enabled if available, dangerous javascript options disabled. All other options were left at default, as settings shouldn’t need tweaking out of the box for a browser to be usable.

Test system specs were:

• Overclocked  Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz @ 2.95Ghz
• 4GB 4-4-4-12 DDR2
• 3x 250GB WD2500KS SATA Hard Disks in a RAID0 Array (used as system disk)
• Nvidia GeForce 7600GT
• Windows XP Professional SP3 32-Bit with latest patches as of 13/7/09 applied
• Norton Internet Security 2008 16.5

So by no means a slouch. Keep in mind the average PC will NOT be anywhere near as powerful.

More to come in following posts…

I looked in the Firefox Help > About menu and guess what I saw?

Firefox raped by Thaksin Shinawat!

As it turns out, the maintainer of the Noia Extreme theme is a Thai. Noia, being one of the Top 10 themes on Mozilla’s extension’s website obviously drew quite a lot of negative attention over it. Yet it still hasn’t been fixed, and users are posting “fixed” or “reverted” versions for those who don’t ish to have their favourite browser adorned by some Botox injecting middle aged Thai man.

I, as with most people consider this adware/political propaganda. Yes, as the author of the Firefox theme he can do whatever he wishes, but a more appropriate manner of expressing his views might have been a link on the theme’s download page, or a tab that opens with related information the first time the theme is used. I don’t see the point of that image actually – clicking on it doesn’t provide any information, or open a new page/tab.

Hopefully the Noia Firefox logo will be restored soon… or I might install the IE7 theme for Firefox in protest

<begin rant>

Don’t get me wrong.

Firefox is my preferred browser. It’s customisable – skins, themes, dictionaries, plugins, it’s more stable that IE6 and IE7, it’s more secure and has much higher performance i.e. it loads much quicker, renders scripts faster can handle a plethora of open tabs and so on.

So when Firefox 3.0 came out, just like other Mozilla zealots around the world, I clamoured to get my hands on their latest masterpiece. And it was awesome. Switching tabs was noticeably snappier, memory usage was reduced significantly, it crashed less, the new add-ons manager was great, and the new URL bar was fantastic.

Months later…

Firefox 3.0.5 just came out.

And now I regret not being sentimental and staying with Firefox 2.0.20.

Sure, its now discontinued, but unlike Firefox 3.0.x, it doesn’t suck donkey balls and laaaag every time a page has flash content on it. It doesn’t get slower and sloower and slooower and sloooower as time goes by. And it doesn’t shit itself when you have multiple tabs and windows open. And the sideways tab scrolling isn’t cunted.  And so on, and so on.

Damn Firefox 3.0.x is annoying. Damn Firefox 3.0.x for being such an improvement in general over Firefox 2.0.xx.

:@

So what now?

Back to Micro$hit Winblows IE7 where it takes a full 13 seconds to open, and another 5 to realise that it needs to load the homepage? Or * shudder * Crapple Safari for Windows, the incumbent bloatware and swiss cheese of security? Maybe the niche user browser Opera? Perhaps any of the other hundred of other hackjob browsers, developed by their respective die-hard user base.

-.-

<end rant>

Ok, so my last attempt to update Word Press didn’t go all too well. Hopefully the shit doesn’t hit the fan this time. Crappy un-user friendly Fileman web file manager :@

In other news, subscribe to the RSS feed! For those that don’t have a dedicated manager, Firefox 2 and 3 have this functionality built into them.