When it comes to getting on the internet most of us just click on Internet Explorer and it leads us straight to our homepage. However, is this the best way to get there? An internet browser is a program that allows access to the world wide web. With it you can load many different pages, watch videos, download content, and make a website, to name a few possibilities. Internet Explorer is just one of many different browsers. The main reason for it's popularity is due to the fact that it is preinstalled on Windows based operating systems. However, other notable web browsers include; Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Flock, Maxthon, Avant Browser, Deepnet Explorer, and PhaseOut. In this blog I will compare and provide a brief overview of a couple of these; Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome.
Note: For all tests and facts about the speed of the browsers I will tell you which version was used. However, it should be noted the latest versions as of April 10, 2010 are as follows. Internet Explorer: 8, Firefox: 3.6, Chrome: 4, and Safari: 4.
General Overview Browser-by-Browser:
Mozilla Firefox: This is a fairly fast web browser that is often considered the most customizable. It works well across windows, linux, and macs.
Google Chrome: This is a relatively new browser that is designed for it's lightning fast speed. Due to it being very new it has relatively few add-ons, can't load every web page, and doesn't work for mac/linux. However, given time this may be a very great browser.
Internet Explorer: This browser is the slowest by far. However, it is also very secure and it works for nearly every web page due to it's wide popularity.
Safari: This default browser for Mac is also a very fast browser that rivals Chrome's speed. This is a good all around browser for it's speed and security. However, it doesn't seem to have become that popular on Windows quite yet.
Speed:
One way that the speed of browsers can be compared is by running a Javascript benchmark test. I ran this test on the latest version of each browser using the following website. http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html. While this provides a general idea of the speed of browsers this isn't a perfect test due to other elements of websites that don't use Javascript and to slight variations of browsers. (For example if I use Firefox all the time and never use Safari then the Safari tests may be quicker since it has less cookies, browsing history, etc. While I tried to eliminate this variable by clearing browsing history some things may not have been deleted.) The results are as follows (lower scores are better):
Chrome 4: 663.4 +/- 4.9%
Safari 4: 845.4 +/- 3.7%
Firefox 3.6: 1160.1 +/- 2.3%
Internet Explorer 8: 6040.4 +/- 0.7%
To see a visual representation look at the top left of this article.
Therefore, as you can see Internet Explorer is by far the slowest when it comes to this test and Chrome is the fastest. However, Safari is fairly comparable to Chrome and Firefox is neither as slow as Internet Explorer nor as fast as Chrome/Safari. The reason for this is because Chrome and Safari have the same basic type of code used to make their browser while Explorer and Firefox each have a different type of code used.
Security:
Another important feature of any web browser is security. While you can have a fast browser, if it can't detect threats it is much harder to protect your computer while on the internet. A study by NSS labs judges the security of web browsers by seeing how successful a web browser can stop socially-engineered-malware, a harmful and common security breach. The data collected shows what percentage of threats were stopped by each web browser.
Internet Explorer 8: 85%
Firefox 3.5: 29%
Safari 4: 29%
Chrome 4: 17%
So as it can be seen while Google Chrome may be the fastest it is also the least secure among these four browsers. And just as Internet Explorer is the slowest it is the most secure among these four browsers. So when it comes to speed vs. security you can decide what's better for you. However, if you want a balance then maybe you should consider Firefox or Safari.
Customizability:
Customizability is the process of changing colors, default settings, installing add-ons, etc. While this may not be as big a deal to some people as it is to others it may still influence what browser you use. Since Chrome and Firefox have open source development (which means anyone can edit the code to make it better) they will, in general, change quicker and have more customizable features than Explorer and Safari. One important feature of customizability is add-ons which are like little programs that can be added to web browsers such as parental controls, blocking ads, etc. While all of these browsers allow for add-ons some have more options than others. Firefox probably has the largest, if not the highest quality, add-ons. However, since these all have add-ons the individual user may like the type of add-ons for one browser more than those for another.
Final Words:
So every browser has it's pluses and minuses. It all depends what you are looking for in a web browser when it comes to the internet. To download any of these browser simply do a Google search for it and it should be the first result to pop up. If you have any questions about this article feel free to ask me in the comment section. For more interesting reading about this subject I'd suggest checking out the following pages:
http://www.consumersearch.com/web-browser-reviews
http://internet-browser-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_BrowserSEM_Summ_FINAL.pdf
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
Main sources used:
http://www.consumersearch.com/web-browser-reviews
http://internet-browser-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_BrowserSEM_Summ_FINAL.pdf
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
http://www.mychromeaddons.com/
http://www.ieaddons.com/en/
http://safariaddons.com/en-US/safari/browse/type:1/cat:4
http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html
http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/v5/run.html
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