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Just in case you feel the need for browser speed, you should have a look at this demo at the end of the page presented by Steven Sinofsky (President of the Windows Division) and Dean Hachamovitch (General Manager, Internet Explorer). You know, I don’t think that browser speed matters. Our PCs are brimming with CPU power and hardly make use of all their muscles to trim fat desktop apps. It is interesting to note that they don’t tell what kind of hardware they are using. My guess is that these are low-end machines because otherwise the differences wouldn’t be so obvious.
It is hard to imagine that slim real world web apps will ever need more power than desktop apps considering that a large portion of their code is running in the cloud. But who knows, maybe HTML5 will change the game. And yes, when it comes to games speed counts.
The good thing about IE9′s speed gains is that Chrome and Firefox fans can no longer abuse browser performance to hype their favorite JavaScript interpreters, so browser developers can focus again on features that matter for business apps (security for instance).
Have you used Chrome for any period of time? back to back refreshing pages you might not notice any great difference… but in day-to-day web browsing its clear to me that Chrome is a much more productive interface to the tubes. On the rare occasions I have to load something in IE8 (on Win7) it frustrates me how slow it is.
Luke, yes I have seriously considered to move from Firefox to Chrome for a while because of security reasons and also because Chrome makes better use of the title bar. I didn’t experience any speed difference to Firefox or IE. If you want to convince me that IE8 is slow, you only have to show me a real world web app (no rotating logos) where I can easily measure the difference and not just “feel the speed”. My problem is that I am not very susceptible to placebos.
Hi, we have done some tests with websites which are using lightbox to display animated images. This JavaScript-Code is very popular. You can see the performance differences in a video on our site.
http://www.zdnet.de/news/digitale_wirtschaft_internet_ebusiness_internet_explorer_8_video_zeigt_schwache_javascript_performance_story-39002364-41001942-1.htm
Kai, thanks a lot. It is the first real web app I have seen where a performance difference is really noticeable.
However, I strongly disagree with your conclusion at the end of the video. You have chosen a very special Javascript application for your demos. It is wrong to infer from your tests that the IE8 is significantly slower with all or with the majority of web applications.
I have never come across a comparable web app and I certainly wouldn’t hover with the mouse over the pictures like wild. The point of this web app is to actually look at the pictures and not to display them as fast as you can. Thus even on this web site a visitor using IE wouldn’t have a disadvantage. You made the same mistake as those benchmark programmers. You have created a scenario that has nothing to do with the real web.
Michael, Lightbox or Lyteshow and other JavaScript-Code to display picture animations are often used on websites. Th disadvantages for IE users are not limited in a very slow animation, the cpu usage is the main disadvantage. It costs you battery power on netbooks when you look these animations. IE9 performs much better with an DX10-GPU on these tests. Have a look here:
http://www.zdnet.de/bildergalerien_aktuelle_browser_im_benchmark_test_story-39002386-41005883-4.htm
Website-Animation taken from here: http://www.schmerer.de/Skifahren_in_einer_anderen_Dimension/Webcams.html
Unfortunately it is right now not possible to measure real world performance on every webapp. A good example of real word performance is our own cms where Chrome performs much better than Internet Explorer and Firefox. Our editors are now using Chrome because they are more productive.
Another disadvantage of IE is the higher memory consumption compared to other browsers. This might be relevant for netbook users where memory is limited.
Last but not least IE8 is a poor performer when it comes to web standards. A lot of coders told me that they have to put much effort in programming a web site for IE-compatbility.
Kai, this may all be true. My point is that you hopelessly exaggerate the significance of these performance differences. It is a matter of fact that for 99.9% of all web users it simply doesn’t matter which browser they use.
The problem is that a very small minority is very loud when it comes to web browsers discussions. This distorts the overall picture. This is also the reason why many people could swear that they can “feel” the difference. I think it would be an interesting field for psychologists. If you let average web users surf without telling them which browser they use, they couldn’t tell at the end of the day if they used Chrome or Internet Explorer.
I am happy that Microsoft is catching up now. Considering the current media hype about this topic, it probably is only a matter of time until IE will be the fastest browser. I am pretty sure that nobody will then be interested in browser benchmarks. They are only useful as long as they can be used to push other browsers.