It seems that there are now such things as browser wars, just like how there are console wars in the video game industry. Then again, everything these days concerning multimedia seems to be about who or what is “better” than the others, right? For the next couple of days, I will be testing and comparing the following browsers: Arora, Avant, Enigma, Chrome, Enigma, Firefox, Flock, Internet Explorer 8, K-Meleon, Maxthon, Opera 10.10, Opera 10.5 alpha, Safari, and Sea Monkey. There are already many of these types of posts (or even videos) online, but none of them really crack down on each browser in detail, and I have yet to see anyone mention the more obscure options, like Avant. I will try to cover the subject to the best of my ability. Users may disagree with a thing or two that I say, but that is just your opinion. Keep this topic civilized.

So, first up will be a comparison of speed. This test was conducted with Peacekeeper. Unfortunately, I could not test every browser, because there were some that were detected as something different. For example, Maxthon was detected as “Internet Explorer 7″. Those kinds of results would be misleading, so I only tested the ones that it actually recognized. Let’s begin! Just click the thumbnails to view the full size.

The first image is the chart of the results that I got on my machine, while the second image is based on an average of all other users who have done this test. My results were a little different from the majority, but I will base my opinions on my own results. One thing that really surprised me big time was the drastic increase in speed on the Opera 10.5 alpha over their current stable version, 10.10. I was not expecting it to be that much of an improvement over 10.10, and definitely not faster than Chrome. I may be wrong, but Chrome still seems to load pages a little faster than Opera 10.5, but the test results disagree, so take that into consideration. Firefox 3.6 to me honestly wasn’t a surprise. Pretty fast, but definitely not the fastest. The majority user results do not contradict that statement either.

Last but not least is the result for K-Meleon..yeah. K-Meleon is slower than Internet Exploder. How can this be, you ask? Well, K-Meleon is pretty much designed for those with a less than average performance computer, and it’s also a fan favorite for alot of Linux users who may have lesser machines than average. It’s very lightweight and stable, but it’s a trade-off for performance. It also has a very dated interface, but that could also be what they were going for.

Below are pictures of the resources taken up by each browser; the first being results from each browser having DigiMantis loaded, and the second list are the results from each browser running a YouTube video (the same video as well).

The results for resources used are all pretty much a mixed bag. While almost each browser is special in its own way, they all have their ups and downs. Opera is known to be an extremely stable browser, but I beg to differ. As much as I love Opera and its plethora of features, there are times when the user can experience very inconsistent RAM and CPU usage. One day, I was on YouTube and the ram taken up was around 60-70 MB’s which is about average, but as you can see in the YouTube results on the second picture, the numbers are completely different. Firefox seems to also seems to be a mixed bag. It can have its good days and its bad days. I’ve used Firefox quite a bit in the past, and when I tried out the newest version, and not very much has changed. Firefox is a quality browser, but it can also be quite the RAM and/or CPU hog occasionally. The results do not show this, but there have been several reports of RAM and CPU usage skyrocketing. For sources, simply search Google for “Firefox memory leak”. As far as Chrome goes, it just depends on how you use it. Chrome now has the ability to use extensions, and the more extensions that are enabled, the more RAM and CPU will be taken up. These pictures are based on a bare bones Chrome setup. No flashy extensions. Because of the way Chrome is designed however, despite the RAM usage, it performs extremely well due to each tab or extension being its own process. That will be covered more in part 2 of the browser wars. I was very pleased by Maxthon’s resource usage, as it had very little. The browser itself is very nice also.

Each browser has different startup times as well. Chrome will start up almost instantly. Not even enough time to make a countdown for Chrome. Firefox, K-Meleon, etc. all have close to the same startup speed. 2-5 seconds on average. Sometimes longer, depending on what the user’s system specs are.

Of course, I can’t give commentary about every single browser under this particular test, as most of them speak for themselves, aside from special cases. Part 2 will contain discussion on each browser and the features that come with them, as well as my personal thoughts on each one.

As for the final thought, what browser do you guys use? Why do you use this particular browser? Do you use more than one for certain applications? Are you getting different results with speed than what I’m getting? Leave a comment and tell us about it! Just to get it out of the way, I use Chrome as my main, and Opera 10.5 as my backup. As far as my backup goes, I may changed to something a bit more lightweight (if I like it) since it is meant to be a backup for me.

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