There are so many browsers out there, with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera just being the most popular ones. Internet Explorer has been the king of all browsers regarding the market share, but mainly because it was pre-installed on all Windows versions after Windows 95. But over the last months, Internet Explorer’s marketshare has decreased  to only slightly above 60% while Firefox almost managed to break the magical 25%-barrier, and even Chrome can claim more than 6% although it was released just one and a half years ago.

Since more and more users seem to consider switching from Internet Explorer to other browsers, they all have the tough choice of finding the right browser. I created this browser roundup  to compare the latest versions of all major browsers and show their strengths and weaknesses.

The Contestants

I used the latest available final versions of all these browsers. Beta or Alpha versions are not considered as they may be unstable and thus do not qualify for everyday use. Internet Explorer was running in 64-bit, all other browsers in 32-bit.

• Opera 10.51 (10.51 Build 3315)
• Chrome 4.1 (4.1.249.1036)
• Firefox 3.6 (3.6.3)
• Safari 4.0 (4.0.5 531.22.7)
• Internet Explorer 8 (8.0.7600.16385 64bit)

The Benchmark System

This is the system used for benchmarking all these different browsers. All other tasks were terminated during the benchmarks except for Avira AntiVir.

• Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz)
• Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P
• Memory: 2×2GB A-Data DDR3-1333 (CL 7-7-7-24 2T)
• Graphics: Gainward Nvidia GTX 260 (680/1400/1150MHz)
• Hard Disk: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1000GB (7200RPM, 32MB cache)
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

The Features Tested

• Performance – JavaScript and Rendering tested with Sunspider, Peacekeeper, Dromaeo, V8
• Standards Conformity – Compliance to HTML, CSS and JavaScript standards tested with Acid3, CSS3 Selectors Test
• Loading Speed – Time to load websites tested with Numion Stopwatch on three websites
• Startup Speed – Time it takes the browser to launch
• Memory Usage – The amount of memory used with 1, 11 and 25 tabs
• Customization – The amount of addons and themes available
• Security – Vulnerability to different hacks, block rate of malicious websites

Testing the security was a really hard job. The only reliable data was the block rate. All browsers passed the hacking tests and the amount of vulnerabilities over the last years does not allow to judge the security. Data for the mean time of patch release was not available.

The Results – Overview

I analyzed and created charts for every single test, but these detailed statistics won’t be interesting for most people, so here are the overall results. A German version of this summary can be found on PCMasters.de.

The results of all tests have been summed up and weighted in order to create these final results. Further details on the weighting can be found below. All results based on time (Loading Speed and Startup Speed) and the memory usage are inverted so that higher scores are always faster. Security is left out due to the reasons mentioned above. Please remember: All tests were executed on the system named above. Results on other systems may vary. Numbers (e.g. addons, themes, vulnerabilities) were current at the time of creation of this benchmark (14th of April 2010) and may increase in the future).

The Results – Analysis

Performance: This measurement of performance indicates how fast websites can be drawn, scrolled or zoomed after all the content have been loaded, and how fast complex applications such as Google Docs are running. Opera and Chrome are clearly leading regarding the JavaScript and rendering performance, closely followed by Safari. The popular Firefox browser is quite slow compared to the ones named before, and Internet Explorer is really much slower than the others. This aspect is especially important for slow computers like netbooks.

Standards Conformity: There are some standards like HTML and CSS that define how  the website is supposed to look like. Web developers should write their HTML-Code according to the standards so the website can be displayed correctly. But when the browser used by a visitor does not comply to these standards, the website may not be displayed correctly or some buttons may not work at all. This really slows down web development because developers have to create different versions of their scripts and have to test all browsers which is quite costly. Low standards conformity in Internet Explorer 6 caused Google to dis-continue support for this browser in order to force users to migrate to better ones. All browsers except Internet Explorer 8 comply quite well to the web standards, just Firefox takes a little hit by scoring just 95% on Acid3. Users should really choose a browser that scores high in this section in order to be able to view and use every website perfectly.

Loading Speed: This comparison shows how long it  takes browsers to load websites using the same internet connections. As you can see there isn’t much difference between all browsers, Internet Explorer is slightly faster than the rest, but only by a few percent. Opera and Chrome could perform better using their features Opera Turbo or Chrome DNS Prefetching, but these features were disabled during the test.

Startup Speed: Determines how long it takes the browser to start up and load the front page (google.com in this case). Internet Explorer 8 is the fastest one here, but regarding the absolute values this doesn’t count much: Internet Explorer needs 0.8 seconds while Firefox, the slowest starting browser takes 2.4 seconds. Assuming the average user would start his browser 10 times a day, using Internet Explorer over Firefox would only save 16 seconds.

Memory Usage: Loading a website and rendering its contents always needs some of your system memory (RAM). But different browsers use their memory more or less efficiently, as the chart above is showing. Firefox and Safari were most efficient, Internet Explorer least efficient. Considering the fact that Internet Explorer used 521MB with 25 tabs open and 291MB with 11 tabs open, most users with modern computers (having 2-4GB of memory) won’t notice this much. Older and slower computers or netbooks mostly have limited memory (512-1024MB) and thus are more dependent on memory-efficient browsers like Firefox.

Customization: This includes the amount of addons and themes available for each browser. Many users don’t like the default interface of their browser and want to change it, or just want to add more features such as ad-blocking or notificiations (Facebook, Mail, etc) to their browser.  This can be provided by using addons. The more addons and themes are available, the higher is the probability of finding just the ones you need. Firefox is most customizable with more than 12000 addons and 400 themes. Chrome and Opera with 4000/1400 addons and 400/120 themes can be adjusted as well, but Internet Explorer and Safari don’t offer many options here.

There is no way of summing up all these points to come to the conclusion “this is the best browser, this is the worst one”, because every user considers the aspects differently. Thus I will try to give some recommendations who should use which browser. I won’t recommend Internet Explorer anywhere due to its bad implementation of web standards and the shortcoming regarding performance.

The Results – Recommendations

Netbook-User: Netbooks have quite slow processors and thus need a browser with high performance, given by Opera and Chrome. But most Netbooks also have very limited memory, thus the browser should be quite memory-efficient like Firefox and Safari. Firefox is performing quite bad in all the performance tests, so Opera, Chrome or Safari would be the best choice for Netbook users.

Poweruser: If you surf the web every day for a long time using many different tabs you really need performance and memory efficiency. Again, Opera, Chrome and Safari offer these features in combination with perfect implementation of web standards. Safari’s loading speed is slightly better than Opera’s and Chrome’s, but Opera and Chrome have their Turbo and DNS Prefetching technologies respectively to boost page loading. It’s a difficult choice.

Customizer: If you want your browser to look exactly the way you need it, every button to be at the right place, and every feature to be directly available inside the browser, Firefox would be the choice. This browser offers more than 12000 addons and 400 themes for users for whom performance doesn’t matter that much.

Average User: The average user surfs the web only occasionally to check mails, research something or watch some video on YouTube. He doesn’t need any fancy features or designs and just wants to enjoy his web experience. Here almost every browser would fit, but most of them have a lot of features nobody actually needs. Chrome offers good performance, a simple interface with just the buttons required to do normal surfing and comfortable features such as an integrated history search inside the URL box.

The Results – Detailed Statistics and Analysis

The following part will show detailed statistics of the different tests and explain some results. All raw-data is stored in an Excel file you can download here, containing the exact scores and timings, URLs of tests and websites used and comments regarding errors or settings.

Performance:

Opera is leading regarding the performance, directly followed by Chrome and Safari. Firefox isn’t performing that well, but Internet Explorer clearly looses this battle. Its performance is far below the other browser’s, and the Internet Explorer 8 wouldn’t even start the Dromaeo test due to its bad implementation of web standards. Sunspider results are inverted to show runs per minute. On the testing system Opera was fastest with 6174 points in Peacekeeper and 434.52 in Dromaeo. Safari leads with an average of 595.4ms in Sunspider, and Chrome with 4397 points in V8.

Standards Conformity:

In order to check whether a browser complies to web standards, the Acid3 and CSS3 Selectors Test were used. Opera, Chrome and Safari pass Acid3 with 100%, Firefox scores 92% and Internet Explorer only 20%. All browsers except Internet Explorer passed the CSS3 test with 100%, Internet Explorer just passed 349 of 578 tests.

Loading Speed:

In order to measure how fast a browser can load different websites,  the numion’s StopWatch was used. Loading speed was tested on three different websites and recorded as the average of two tests. Loading times for ESPN range from 2.2 to 3.5 seconds, from 0.5 to 0.9 seconds for Google and from 2.1 to 4.5 for this website. As you can see, the results are not really homogeneous, so one can’t conclude that one browser is loading faster than the other one.

Startup Speed:

When looking at the startup speed (starting the browser and loading the homepage google.com), Internet Explorer is clearly the winner and Firefox clearly the looser. But when considering the time it actually takes the browser to launch, from 0.8 seconds for Internet Explorer and 2.4 seconds for Firefox, this doesn’t really affect the browsing experience and can be neglected.

Memory Usage:

In order to measure the real memory usage (which can be quite difficult for browsers like Chrome who run multiple processes) the total memory usage of the whole system was measured before browser launch, after 1 tab, 11 tabs and 25 tabs. The memory usage results are inverted to show lower usage as higher score. Running one tab with just google.com in it, all browsers except Safari required between 55MB and 61MB, while Safari took only 32MB. Running more tabs, Firefox clearly leaves the concurrents behind with just 165MB for 11 tabs (others between 219MB and and 291MB) and 271MB for 25 tabs (others between 372MB and 521MB). For calculating the total score the memory usage for 25 pages was weighted only 50% because most users never open that many tabs. You can find the list of pages opened in all browsers here.

Customization:

To compare the ways of customizing the different browsers, the amount of addons and themes was assessed. Firefox has more than 12000 addons and, followed by Chrome with only above 4000. Similarly, Firefox has most themes with more than 400, closely followed by Opera. Internet Explorer and Safari didn’t have many addons and no official way of customizing the interface or theme.  There were some third-party applications to chance their looks but they can’t be considered as official themes.

Security:

Comparing the security of different web browsers was a really hard job. The company scanit released a test that tries to crash browsers using various security leaks, but every browser managed to resist all of them. Then the block rate of malicious websites was considered: Internet Explorer blocks 85% of all malicious links tested, followed by Firefox and Safari with 29%, Chrome with 17% and Opera with only 1%. Just blocking links doesn’t make the browser safe from hacker attacks, so this does not really show the security of a browser. Then the public security vulnerabilities (leaks that are known to the browser developers and hackers that were not closed by a patch before being known publicly) were counted (inverted in the diagram). There was no data available for Chrome, and since Safari only had 4 of these vulnerabilities it is clearly leading here. The last diagram shows the amount of vulnerabilities found for each browser in the NVD. But since some browser exist for a very long time (e.g. Firefox and Internet Explorer) and some just for a few years (Chrome), I can’t really compare the amount of vulnerabilities ever found. This is why there is no  total security score in the summarized diagram.

I hope this browser roundup gives an overview over the features and possibilities offered by each browser. If there are any suggestions, please comment! Screenshots to prove all results are available, but too big to be uploaded here. If you want me to prove any of the results, just comment or write an email and I will send the screenshots.

Opera claims on its own website that its latest beta  version, Opera 10.50b, is the fastest browser the world has seen so far. This statement is based on test results from different browser benchmarks published on the official Opera blog.

As Google Chrome has been the fastest browser for a while and the alpha version of Opera 10.50 caught up quite well with Chrome’s performance but didn’t beat it yet, I decided to check the benchmark results given in the blog post by Opera. I ran all the benchmarks with the same settings as Opera did and also tested all four browsers. The only difference is that I used Chrome 5 (alpha) instead of Chrome 4 which is justified since Opera is also using non-stable builds of their browser. I summed up all the benchmark results in a diagram quite similar to the one used by Opera in order to make comparison easier:

The diagram published by Opera looks like this:

As you can see, the latest version of Opera really beats Chrome in Peacekeeper and Dromaeo, but Chrome is far ahead in both Sunspider and V8. I ran all the benchmarks several times to verify my test results and they are perfectly valid, but still differ from the ones published by Opera somehow. Now one has to ask why there is such a big difference regarding Sunspider and whether Opera faked its scores or the latest version of Chrome really improved in this sector.

All in all, it’s quite clear that Opera is really trying to beat all other browsers when concerning JavaScript performance and manages to catch up with Chrome. It will be interesting to see whether the final version of Opera 10.50 will beat Chrome in all tests or not.

In contrast to Opera, I want my  benchmark results to be rock-solid and not to be challenged, so I took screenshots of each result and also created an Excel file that contains all results and the calculations made to create the diagram. You can download the screenshots and the Excel file to check my results.

EDIT:
I spoke to the Opera development team and after some tests, we came to the conclusion that the missing support for SSE4.1 and 4.2 is what makes my Phenom slower than the Core 2 Duo in the Sunspider benchmark.

The latest version of Google Chrome, build 5.0.317.2, brings a new feature to improve the browsing experience when visiting foreign websites. It includes an automatic page translation tool which detects the page language and, if it differs from your browser language, offers to translate it to your language using Google Translate.

When Chrome offers you to translate a site, a blue bar will show up in your Chrome window:

When you click the Translate button, it takes a few seconds, and your page should appear in another language. I tried this on several websites with several languages, but it never really worked. Always some parts, like links and headlines were translated, but most of the text stayed in its original language.

Other languages are working, though:

As you can see, this feature is still very experimental, but since I’m using the alpha (dev) version of Google Chrome, I can’t expect every new feature to work perfectly. Google will surely fix this issue until the release of Google Chrome 5 final, and it will make browsing easier, as you will be able to view a lot more websites in languages you don’t understand, without having to mess with pasting the text to your favorite translation tool or guessing what it may say.

If you want to try the new feature (and thus have Chrome dev version), switch to the Dev channel here. Also check out the AdThwart extension to block ads in Google Chrome or my tutorial on how to make Google Chrome anonymous.

There is an updated benchmark including Opera 10.50b and Chrome 5.0 here!

A newly released pre-alpha version of Opera promises to radically improve the browser’s performance and speed of displaying and loading websites. The official developer website even claims that “[Opera 10.50] is fast, more than 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10“. Since Google Chrome has been the fastest browser on the market so far, followed by Apple’s Safari browser, we may have a new player among the best-performing browser.

I downloaded and tested Opera 10.50 and found out that it actually is much faster than before, but also very unstable. I ran Peacekeeper three times, the first time it went well, the second time it was much slower and the third  time it didn’t start the benchmark and showed just a blank page. I had to re-install Opera in order to fix this problem. But please keep in mind that this is a pre-alpha release and not meant for everyday use.

In comparison to Chrome 5.0.307.1, Opera 10.50 lost by 12.8%, which is actually a big improvement compared to Chrome 2.0.170 and Opera 9.64, where Opera lost by 60.2%. Safari, once the fastest browser, scored 28.6% less than Chrome, thus giving up its second place to Opera.

Considering the fact that Opera is still pre-alpha and that the development team will improve it before releasing the final version, one can expect Opera’s Peacekeeper score to increase again, bringing it dangerously close to Chrome.

The new version 4.0 of Google Chrome (currently Beta) enables the use of plugins and extensions in your browser. Extensions are a long requested feature for Chrome and one of the only reasons why many users still favored Firefox over Chrome.

In the Google Chrome Extension Directory you will find many interesting extension, but the one I waited for a long time is one that blocks annoying advertisements on websites. With AdThwart, there finally is such an extension and I will show how to use it. There was a trick to do block ads with earlier versions of Chrome, but using the official extensions is much more comfortable.

1. Make sure you have Chrome 4.0 or later. Click at the tool button (top right corner) and “About Google Chrome” to see your version. If it’s not 4.0 or later, download the Chrome Beta here.
2. Go to the AdThwart page and click “Install”
3. Once installed, you will see the options page. By default, the filters EasyList and Extra filters are enabled. You may choose another filter for your country.
   
4. Now most ads on websites should be gone.
   
5. If there are still some remaining, you can use the  Easy Filter function to block them as well. Click on the devil-button on the right side of your address bar and select “Easy create filter”. Then click on the element you want to block or hover over it and press CTRL + Shift + E. Return to the popup and confirm that you want to block that element.
   

If you for some reason don’t like AdThwart, there is another ad blocking extension called simply AdBlock. I didn’t try it, but looking at its rating of 4.5/5 stars, it seems to be quite good as well.

Currently, Google is testing a new search interface for their websearch somehow reminding of Bing. This new interface is supposed to make searching easier by putting all the useful filters and kinds of search in a bar on the left side while displaying the search results on the right side.

Although this interface hasn’t been released for the public yet, you can try it already by following these easy steps:

1. Open a new browser window or tab and go to this URL: http://www.google.com/ncr
   By using the “ncr” statement, you make sure that you’re not redirected to a local version of Google (e.g. .de, .cn, .co.uk, …)
2. Paste this script into the address bar replacing the URL:
   javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);
   This will set a cookie telling the search to use the new interface
3. Go back to google.com and start searching!

There is also a nice comment on the bottom of each page with customized search telling you that you’re awesome!

If you have a Google account and use the Google search while logged in, the search engine will try to improve your results by relying on keywords you searched for before and on the websites you visited. In the official help file, they describe this personalized search as follows:

When you search using Google, you get more relevant, useful search results, recommendations, and other personalized features. By personalizing your results, we hope to deliver you the most useful, relevant information on the Internet.

If you use personalized search and have the new beta search interface enabled (enable the new Google Search Interface), Google will show this message on the bottom of each search results page:

Have you heard about Google’s upcoming operating system ChromeOS and are willing to test it on your computer?  Then follow this guide to make it working! ChromeOS is intended to include only the Chrome browser and is only able to run web applications, thus targeting users who spend most of their time in the internet.

Test and use ChromeOS without installing it:

1. Download a compiled release of ChromeOS. This is the easiest way, you may of course compile it on your own, but that is not part of this tutorial. Use the torrent mirror for fastest downloads. Once it’s done, unpack the image file (ChromeOS-Cherry.img)
2. Connect a USB memory stick (at least 1GB) to your computer
3. Download and unpack Win32DiskImager and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. Click on the little folder symbol and select your image file unpacked in step 1. Select the proper drive letter of your USB memory stick in the Device section. Then click Write and confirm the window warning your about a potential physical corruption on your device.
   
4. Once it finished writing, unplug your USB device and plug it into the computer you want to test ChromeOS on. Make sure your computer is configured to boot from USB devices as first priority. If your computer is a netbook (e.g. Asus Eee PC), try the steps under Prepare the Asus Eee PC to boot from USB devices in my tutorial on Windows 7 on the Eee PC. Most other computers will have a similar BIOS configuration, though.
5. Boot from the USB device and wait a few seconds. ChromeOS shouldn’t take long to boot (around 5 seconds on my Eee PC 900).
6. Login using facepunch as both username and password.
7. There should be three symbols at the top right corner. The first is showing your battery status (in running ChromeOS on a laptop), the second your WiFi and Ethernet configuration and the third some menus. Click the second one and connect to your WiFi/Ethernet network. This is really necessary since all applications in ChromeOS are web-based!
8. Enjoy ChromeOS!

Troubleshooting:

• I am connected via WiFi/Ethernet but can’t open websites.
  This may be due to a misconfiguration in your network settings. Sadly, ChromeOS currently has no GUI to configure it, but you can try to do it with the terminal. Press CTRL + ALT + T to open terminal, and go on using Linux commands (e.g. ip addr to see your network configuration, ping to ping other network devices, sudo bash for root user, …)
• My screen resolution is not at its maximum.
  I had this problem a few times and there was no way of fixing it (xrandr in terminal didn’t work and told me that VGA1 was disconnected). Probably ChromeOS has some problems with the display drivers, but restarting the computer always helped.
• Flash/YouTube videos are lagging.
  This happens probably also due to bad/missing video drivers. I don’t think there is a solution for it except finding and installing fitting display drivers for your device and Linux on your own. Hopefully Google will fix this in the final release.

If there are any questions, please comment!

Since Google keeps providing me with new invitations for Google Wave and all my friends have it already, I don’t know what to do with my invites. If you’re interested, just post a  comment and I will send an invitation to the E-Mail address provided in the comment form.

If you don’t know what Google Wave actually is, check out my post about the Google Wave Preview!

A few days ago, Google released a new version of their translation tool at http://translate.google.com/

If you have used Google Translate earlier, you will have recognized that the translations were mostly awful and that bad that it was hard  to understand them at all. This new version improves the quality of translations significantly; now you can actually use it to read websites or texts in foreign languages.

It also adds a dictionary function: Just type in the word you need and it will give you different meanings. Moreover, by clicking on “detailed dictionary”, you have the possibility to see examples of how to use this word in a phrase and listen to the translations.

The real-time translation is also a quite nice feature: You can just type in a sentence, and as you type, it will try to translate it. This reminds me of the live translation called Rosy used in a promotional video for Google Wave. Rosy currently isn’t available for Google Wave users, but the new Google Translate may actually be a testing ground.