Browser Speed Tests: Up-to-Date Results
The tests
You can read up on our testing methods in their entirety at the original testing feature. I've come to realize, however, that between all three rounds of testing involved, the "8-page load" test may be the most vulnerable to variables—some of the pages included are quite dynamic, so if, say, Gizmodo puts up a large number of videos or huge pictures, it could affect the total loading time. Other than that, though, the page-loading tests are run by a human watching a timer, the JavaScript from Sean Patrick Kane's web test, the CSS from a downloadable form, and memory use from checking Windows Vista's Task Manager.
Test 1: Page Loading—Winner: Opera (9.5)!
No surprise that Opera 9.6's beta performed just as well as the official release, on start-ups both both cold (right after boot-up) and warm (having launched at least once). I'm heartened to see comparable results between the first batch of browsers I tested and their newer betas.
The next speed test, loading eight pages from a bookmark folder, left me scratching my head. Why did the newer betas take so much longer to load a similar set of pages? As stated above, my best guess is the dynamic nature of at least one page in the group, but Opera was tested separately from the other betas, and didn't gain much in speed.
Test 2: JavaScript & CSS—Winner: Safari! (by a nose)
It's hard to beat Safari's performance in both Cascading Style Sheets and the JavaScript code that fronts so many webapps. It has to be noted, however, that most browsers, other than Internet Explorer, don't out-run one another by a huge stretch in JavaScript; Chrome and Safari, though, pull ahead on CSS.
Test 3: Memory Use—Winner: Firefox!
It's reassuring that Mozilla puts so much effort into memory usage in Firefox 3 releases—seeing as how most readers of this site are more than open to extension suggestions.
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