With Internet Explorer 10 finally available to Windows 7 users, the emergence of Maxthon as unique powerhouse among web browsers, and Firefox andChrome continually bumping up version numbers and adding new standards support and more speed, it's high time for another round of our Browser Wars! Truth be told: Today's major browsers are all so good that picking a winner can be tough.
So how do you pick a Web browser? The first consideration is whether the browser actually runs on your computer. For this shoot-out, we focus on Windows PCs (which is why we omit the excellent Apple Safari), but most browsers come in flavors for other operating systems. If you want to run the new Internet Explorer 10, you'll only be able to do so if you've got a PC running Window 8 or Windows 7. The other main Windows options—Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Maxthon (in order of popularity)—all run on Windows versions back to XP, and they're all available to users of Apple Mac computers, too.
Ubuntu users will be best served by Firefox, which comes with the OS by default. Ubuntu users are likely the kind of folks who want all of Firefox's customizability. But Chrome and Opera are also available for the open-source OS, though you'll have to add their repositories, since they don't show up in the default Ubuntu Software Center.
FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP
The Speed Factor
Maybe for you, choosing a browser is simply a matter of speed? If so, you'll find that answering the question of which browser is fastest is hardly cut-and-dried, as my article, By the Numbers: the Fastest Browser illustrates. You could run a bunch of synthetic benchmarks, which do offer at least some insight into real-world performance. Here are my latest results on a few of the most often cited JavaScript benchmarks run on a mediocre 2.5GHz dual-core laptop:
Maybe for you, choosing a browser is simply a matter of speed? If so, you'll find that answering the question of which browser is fastest is hardly cut-and-dried, as my article, By the Numbers: the Fastest Browser illustrates. You could run a bunch of synthetic benchmarks, which do offer at least some insight into real-world performance. Here are my latest results on a few of the most often cited JavaScript benchmarks run on a mediocre 2.5GHz dual-core laptop:
| SunSpider 0.9.1 | |
| Browser | Score in ms (lower is better) |
| Internet Explorer 10 | 180 |
| Google Chrome 25 | 238 |
| Internet Explorer 9 | 260 |
| Firefox 19 | 277 |
| Opera 12 | 302 |
| Maxthon 4 | 328 |
| Google V8 (v.7) | |
| Browser | Score (higher is better) |
| Google Chrome 25 | 10111 |
| Maxthon 4 | 9703 |
| Firefox 19 | 6817 |
| Internet Explorer 10 | 4525 |
| Opera 12 | 3840 |
| Internet Explorer 9 | 2048 |
| Mozilla Kraken 1.1 | |
| Browser | Score in ms (lower is better) |
| Google Chrome 25 | 2660 |
| Maxthon 4 | 3156 |
| Firefox 19 | 3247 |
| Internet Explorer 10 | 8829 |
| Opera 12 | 12336 |
| Internet Explorer 9 | 16794 |
A few takeaways from all this: IE10 is vastly faster than IE9, so if you're a dyed-in-the-wool IE user, definitely upgrade to version 10. Chrome users get automatically updated to the latest version, and that browser perennially yields top showings on browser benchmarks, though Maxthon is nipping at its heels on some of the tests. Firefox consistently posts respectable results in the middle of the pack.
Alternatively, you could just see how fast pages load in each browser, but that's completely dependent on your internet connection. One thing that you can test with some authority is the time it takes for the browser to start up. Here are my results for that one using a mediocre 2.5GHz dual-core laptop:
| Startup Time | ||
| Browser | Cold Startup Time(seconds) | Warm Startup Time(seconds) |
| Internet Explorer 10 | 2.5 | 0.9 |
| Internet Explorer 9 | 3.0 | 1.3 |
| Chrome 25 | 3.1 | 0.8 |
| Firefox 19 | 3.3 | 1.1 |
| Maxthon 4 | 4.3 | 1.5 |
| Opera 12 | 10.1 | 2.9 |
Again, pretty close, aside from Opera's poor initial startup time, though its restarts are fast enough. This is clearly not the main differentiator among browsers anymore, and if you have a reasonably new PC, you won't notice a significant delay in startup.
Another overriding criterion is the browsers' standards compliance. You certainly want the program to be able to correctly display the sites you visit. Though HTML5 isn't yet an official standard of the Web's governing body, the W3C, it's being used by more and more sites, and support is increasing in the browsers. One test of this new support is theHTML5Test.com site, which reports a score based on supported HTML5 features out of a possible 500 points, along with bonus points for extra capabilities not technically part of HTML5. Here's how the current crop of browsers pan out on this one:
| HTML5Test.com | ||
| Browser | Score (higher is better) | Bonus Points |
| Maxthon 4 | 464 | 15 |
| Chrome 25 | 463 | 13 |
| Opera 12 | 419 | 9 |
| Firefox 19 | 393 | 10 |
| Internet Explorer 10 | 320 | 6 |
| Internet Explorer 9 | 138 | 5 |
Here you can see that IE10 finally gets in the 300s, a vast improvement over its predecessor, though a significant amount of ground still remains between it and the leaders, Maxthon and Chrome.
When you are about to download a web browser, its important you should search for the pro's. Chrome is the most popular browser used, but it still has its con's. See the complete details of Chrome vs Maxthon -> http://bit.ly/1rxbPc9 ..
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