Safari dominates browser benchmarks
Summary
Topics
We used the SunSpider suite of JavaScript tests to determine which browser was the quickest, and the Safari 4 beat every browser in terms of speed, on both a PC running Windows XP SP2, and a Mac running OS X 10.6 with all updates applied.
Below are the actual figures if you want to see how all seven browsers scored against each other, but for quick reference we determined on a PC that Safari was a whopping 42 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, just over six times faster than Internet Explorer 8, 3.5 times faster than Firefox 3, and 1.2 times faster than Google Chrome. Here's Safari versus the rest, excluding IE 7:

Add IE 7's results to the PC graph and witness the shocking truth. These are results from a PC with a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo:
1) Safari 4 (Total time: 910ms)
2) Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136ms)
3) Google Chrome (1,177ms)
4) Firefox 3 (3,250ms)
5) Opera 9.6 (4,076ms)
6) Internet Explorer 8 (5,839ms)
7) Internet Explorer 7 (39,026ms)

On Mac OS X, Safari was four times faster than Firefox 3 and a depressing (for Opera) 7.5 times faster than Opera 9.6.
Results (fastest at the top) on Mac OS X (2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo):
1) Safari 4 (Total time 967ms)
2) Minefield 3.2a1 (969ms)
3) Firefox 3 (3803ms)
4) Opera 9.6 (7322ms)

You can download Safari yourself here.
This article was originally published on CNET UK Crave.
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How is that a good thing?
side you should have a wealth of experience and Anti Malware
applications to help with the increased speed of delivery of said that
Safari might afford you...:P
Now what Malware there is for OSX does not require speed for there is so
very little of it and what I've read about it the OSX malware I can not for
the life of me determine what actual harm it does.
Pagan jim
while Safari is running , go to the top menu & click on View, then look for
Customize Toolbar ...
"In a world without walls & fences, who needs windows & gates?"
which is dependent on your ISP pan.
Fanboys are as tiresome as religious fundamentalists, and often
indistinguishable.
Oh, that's right. It's OS X. Guess I'll keep on waiting.
It's like going to an auto showroom and the dealer saying, "On this new Belchfire 3000 the engine will start in 0.3 seconds when you turn the key, not the 2 seconds your old car needs." Big whoop.
But maybe it's a factor.
I personally use FF3 w/ NoScript which stops JavaScript from running by default. More or less any page I visit has NoScript blocking something which tells me there is a lot about (most are Google Analytics scripts) on a page.
So I would say using a browser that can render it faster (if you don't use NoScript) will speed up your web experience...
-- EDIT --
Takalok just kind of made my point a lot more compact!
can you disable javascript, but also java, plugins, etc,,,
"In a world without walls & fences, who needs windows & gates?"
What NoScript does is allow the user to turn off javascript elements on a site by site basis. Javascript can be on for YouTube.com while being off for ZDNet.com. That's a whole different level of javascript control.
virus writer's wet dream.
libraries coming on line. JQuery, MootTools and a host of other new
interactive libraries offer us designers many new ways to develop
advanced web pages. With these abilities, the complexities in code can
start to choke older web browsers from rendering. What speeds you
think you are happy with now will start to bother you in the years to
come as the web jumps to 3.0.
As an example, go run your Vista program on a 3-4 year old computer
and feel the effects of why faster computers are needed to make you
happy.
instantaneous in Safari = 20-30 second in IE...
you're still waiting, fast download or not..
speaking of rubbish.. :P
(b) Only one of the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark tests returns an abnormally high result in IE7, and I doubt you'll come up against that very often in the real world or (a) would equally apply.
(c) The times shown in the graphs are the total result in milliseconds for all the tests. You're not likely to come across all the events tested in one piece of JavaScript on any one site.
(d) The important factor is always the user experience, not how long something takes to render in some measurable test. I doubt anyone would really notice the difference between a piece of JavaScript that rendered in 50ms and a piece that rendered in 500ms. Especially given that the download time is part of the perception, and this can vary considerably just from page to page.
I'm not an advocate of IE. I hate it. My preference is still for Firefox. I just think this whole test is not only biased but highly flawed.
easily answers your a) point.
as for d) "I doubt anyone would really notice the difference between a
piece of JavaScript that rendered in 50ms and a piece that rendered in
500ms."
So you think that there is little difference visually of something updating
at 20 fps VS 2 fps. Interesting.
I believe the author meant to write OS X 10.5.6 instead of
"OS X 10.6" as this would suggest the author had tested the
new Safari 4 on Snow Leopard and not on Leopard.
one sweet browser on Linux.
"In a world without walls & fences, who needs windows & gates?"
Safari is crap.
over the course of time that Safari was invented.
I found this so far.
"637 Million Insecure Web Surfers - Microsoft Forced to Launch
SmartScreen Filter"
Guess what buddy this article claims that Internet Explorer is leading
the pack in exploits, vulnerabilities, and all kinds of nasty stuff.
Follow this URL:
http://www.watblog.com/2008/07/03/637-million-insecure-web-
surfers-at-risk/
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have
their shoes."
Having baseless and biased opinions presented as facts is always a
tremendous help in forwarding any reasonable discussion.
ZDNet loves 3D graphs...
According to Apple's propaganda dept (er, marketing)
"Because Snow Leopard delivers the fastest implementation of JavaScript to date, web applications are more responsive. Safari runs JavaScript up to 53 percent faster with Snow Leopard.*"
I was glad to finally make the switch from firefox.
Forget the benchmarks, in the real world this browser is lightning-fast,
no other browser is close.
(Sorry PC fanbois, I bet Safari is not quite as good running on Windows.)
Of course since most don't have AV you could be infected with bot software and never even know.
been waiting for over 15 years and nothing yet. There must be
something that has to be said about all this F.U.D. Well yours anyway.
Like when Steve Ballmer said that Linux is violating about 230 something
of Microsoft patents. Ballmer and his moronic Saber Rattling. If you are
going to make a threat Mister Ballmer, please proceed forward and show
us the code. I mean like it's no top secret then if many are violating your
patents. Right!
"In a world without walls & fences, who needs windows & gates?"
While MS has improved in both areas, the number of attacks (successful
at that) against Windows far outweigh what their market share would
indicate.
True FF with addons can get buggy at times. And it will crash (not often) more than Safari (never seen it crash to date), but it's the trade-off.
about anything Apple does better than anyone else
because better is no longer what the tech community is
about.
Safari 4 is different enough from other browsers for both a
wow factor, for speed and for, what I considered, smarter
browsing. And it renders faster than anyone.
Do you think giving the lemmings better water will lead
them to the trough?
No. Just look at the answers in this post. More excuse-
making here than a pregnant Mother Superior in a delivery
room.
crumbling. They are in denial. That's right kiddos, Apple did what
Microsoft couldn't do. Acing the Acid 3 test, properly rendering CSS 3,
and so on.
"In a world wihout walls & fences, who needs windows & gates?"
Yes - don't bother showing how Linux, OS X and others can do better;
even if they were 10 times faster or 10 times more secure (oh, wait,
they are!) or came for free (oh, wait, Linux does!) then most of the
unwashed masses would still buy Windows because they don't know
any better.
As for the IT community, posts like "Safari is crap" and "Safari is
insecure", where opinion overrules any facts, are just sad & scary.
At least Firefox, Chrome, Safari et al are improving the situation and
giving the rest of us a choice.
fanboys. That's just life.
My prediction is that Google will just tweak Chrome's javascript engine and recapture the speed title in the near future. Eventually, either FF or Opera will blow past them both in the next year or so. Ultimately, javascript rendering comparisons will become largely irrelevant within the next two years - unless you're comparing speeds with IE, that is.
If anything its the other way round. All Google had to do was tweak what Apple did and they had a great browser.
Safari uses WebKit - WebKit was originally created by Apple based on Konqueror?s KHTML software library. WebKit is the best rendering engine on the market today. The recently released Chrome uses - Webkit. Apple technology.
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