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Safari 4.0!
The above image is borrowed from Digi.no with their understanding and allowance from the article extreme winner in new browser-test...We're all concerned with browser speed, everyone from Microsoft to Apple, Google and Opera are chasing browser-speed as if it was the Holy Grail. And that's really no surprise since it will probably be one of the most important features in the upcoming 50 years with Ajax as a technology promising to be our next platform of choice for doing application development. Browser speed will probably be almost as important in the next 50 years as CPU speed was the previous 50 years...
So the ones winning the browser-speed tests are highly likely to end up at a very sweet spot in regards to being able to get that "Key Stone Advantage" in regards to being a platform.
According to an article at a Norwegian IT Magazine called digi.no Safari 4.0 is so far an *extreme* leader in this race for speed. Then comes Chrome 2.0, Chrome 1.0, Safari 3.2.2 before finally [we can see my favorite browser] FireFox with the version 3.1b3.
The tests was run on a Windows XP machine with Service Pack 3 and a trippel core AMD with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM. Most software was turned off except their AVG virus killer.
The test used was
Futuremark's Peacekeeper which in regards to browser-tests are pretty unique since it's one of very few browser-tests which is *not* written by a browser vendor. It seems these days every browser vendor manages to write some browser-test which makes their own browser "win".
Mozilla, Google, Apple, Opera and Microsoft all have their own browser-tests these days...
Even Microsoft released a test here a couple of weeks ago which made them "win". And when looking at how IE does it today in *all other browser tests*, that is quite stunning and surprising...
Now Microsoft probably are right in their claims that the web is "more then just JavaScript", and according to the news article where Microsoft claimed they "won" the test Microsoft was running was mostly focusing on "initial page-load time" on websites. This means that Internet Explorer 8 (if Microsoft's claims are accurate) is actually fastest on stuff like loading "pure documents", like the ones you'll find at WikiPedia. But for using GMail and such they're WAY behind...
And also I know for a fact that at least the 3.x version of Safari spends like "forever" just starting up, not to mention it's got that dreaded localhost/WebDev bug which makes it close to impossible to use for debugging web applications during development. Maybe they've fixed these things in their 4.0 version, but I doubt...
But anyway, when it comes to which browser you should use a lot of other arguments are also important, I personally have got the same relationship to FireFox as a drug addict have to heroin, and 99% of the reason to that is FireBug. FireBug for FireFox is for me like Visual Studio is to Windows. It doesn't matter if FireFox isn't the fastest, greatest and most stable browser in the world as long as it get my fixes (FireBug)
For other people other things are probably important. It may be you've got some ActiveX application you just have to use which makes you stuck to IE, or maybe you've been using a Mac for 5 years and feel that Safari is the best since sliced bread, etc...
But no matter which browser you choose, these kind of tests are still pretty important since they're the stuff that pushes the vendors to delivering faster browsers, and even I have some sort of threshold limit where I will ditch FireFox (or Windows for that matter) because the benefits of choosing another browser just gives me such extreme boosts in performance that I cannot anymore ignore the speed differences. My guess is that IE is currently in such a place in regards to a LOT of their users in these days...
Anyway, the last three years Browser Wars have returned with a VENGEANCE. And that's a GREAT thing for you, me, your neighbour and the world...
...some wars are actually GREAT :)
.t