Firefox 3 creams rivals

Whilst I managed to get a smaller difference between Opera 9.5 and FF3B4 (about 0.5x slower), I do wonder if these benchmarks are real world, as Opera still seem to perform better, but the numbers obviously show otherwise.

You have to wonder if Mozilla have tweaked their JS specifically for these particular tests.

Firefox creams rivals

'PERFORMANCE specs for the latest beta of the OpenSauce Firefox 3.0 suggest that the browser is shedloads faster than anything out there....'

Why only mention its a Javasript benchmark test right at the end...Totally misleading article in relation to headline...expect better from the Inq.

AT adds: We did say 'benchmarketing'.

But most of today's websites are much more than just a few javascripted pages. The way a browser renders pages may make the experience feel faster even if the scripting is executed slower. Loading the text, frames etc. before images is one way browsers do this, so realworld experience may vary significantly than benchmark results.

Not to mention Opera's resource efficiency is much more than FF. I can open hundreds of tabs in O 9.2 without maxing out my RAM and no crashing. Opera 9.5 Beta is a LOONG way from stable functional operations though. Basically it sucks ATM.

But it isn't always about the fastest, most efficient, most feature rich. If so, then shurely no one uses IE anymore. :P

Have they addressed that issue yet?

"expect better from the Inq"

...ROTFL...

What else do you expect from such an anti-Microsoft site, the Daily Mail of the internet world

@Havoc
Now that many pages employ AJAX which is completely dictated and rendered via Javascript, this starts to become a more real-world scenario. I wouldn't dare say most but I would say many.

"bloated asthmatic slug towing a caravan full of elephants"

Need to memorise that :D

I did note that it only mentioned javascript. However, I have a noticeable speed increase over beta 3. It's also more stable.

I followed the links in the article and I found out that the tester used "estimated results" in Opera JS tests, since Opera 9.5 beta never finished the test (probably due to a bug). There you get the "firefox 3 goddamn 50 percent faster than slow Opera" claim. I'd say he chose a wrong testing method.

BTW, TheInquirer journalists should always double-check when writing stuff against Opera.

If you want to test just how much faster FF3b4 is than all the rest (even FF2) just go to /b/ and hit refresh over and over. No other browser can refresh fast enough to show the same thread sitting at the top twice in a row, FF3 can. Damned sight faster than anything I've ever used.

So, is this the ultimate result of Tamarin, the project to integrate the ActionScript (JavaScript) virtualmachine that Adobe open sourced and donated?

If so, props to Adobe for making it available.

I thing not said so far is that the start up of FF3 is slower than FF2 or IE7 at least on my computer.

with 5 windows open(i dont do tabs sorry) its using 58mb, FF2 used quite a bit more that that. Thats downloading as well

Despite I agree that 'Java' and 'fast' are two concepts that never coexist, I don't remember if I ever had to wait a Javascript code to finish.

Usually navigating the web is all about waiting for the data to come through our link, right? And the browser can't really do much about that by the way.

What I really would like to see is Firefox taking less memory, less booting time and a less sluggish GUI.

@mycelo: Java has very little to do with ECMAscript (a.k.a. "Javascript"), beyond the name and some C++-style syntax elements.

@ Tyler: If Opera didn't complete the test, then it was generous to give an estimated rating. ECMAscript has been a Web standard for many years now.

Personally, I've found Opera, Firefox and Safari on the three major platforms to be highly useful, and it's just a matter of preference which to use. The only reason to use IE is for backward compatibility with backward Web sites generated by backward Web developers.

/b/ is for 14yr old zit-faced fat kids.

Of course, /b/ more like a site for 12-yrolds on pixisticks, which is exactly why it is a superb test for how fast a browser is. They post like they are on speed, hence any browser that can keep up has conquered the mayhem :D

You didn't even manage one single solitary swipe or snide remark about Apple or Steve Jobs in the entire article! Oh Nicky Nicky Nicky, I'm disappointed!

I once wrote a JavaScript page that calculates pi to thousands of decimal places, at last a use for FireFox!

For normal browsing, I find the best way to make JavaScript faster is to turn it off...

I am using the ff3b4, and I have to say it is awesome. I was just telling my wife how much faster it is than ff2 and IE7. I mean in initial loading of the program and in webpages both. I think it's a huge improvement and I can't wait for the full and final releases, not that I've had any problems so far with stability, compatability, or speed.

I would recommend it to anyone. 

T

like 400 MiB less after termination :)

http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

Yes, although these benchmarks use javascript, its important not to underestimate just how vital js is. 

There isnt much difference between browsers in loading simple sites like google.com. 

However, a LOT of sites are javascript heavy, so firefox benefits. Also, javascript is used in the browser itself - so by speeding it up, they effectively increase the speed of everything.

I'v used opera 9.2x for ages now, but on my system fx3b4 renders significantly faster, even to the human eye, without benchmarking.

I ran through a pretty comprehensive set of tests comparing Opera 9.5b and Firefox Beta 3.0b4.

Turns out they're evenly matched. The only things that Firefox really has a clear lead in are regex and arrays, in other places I'm just not seeing much change.

And comparing anything to IE these days is just silly. Does anyone here actually expect their browser to be slower than IE?

But come on, who really cares about the speed of javascript unless, I don't know, being able to play scrabble on facebook three times faster is more important to you than massive memory leaks and periodic crashing.

I just ran the benchmark on Safari and the latest nightly build of Webkit (i.e. upcoming version of Safari), and even at this stage Webkit was 2.3x faster...

Javascript is important to web 2.0 innovation. I was developing a B2B web site, which there is a page loaded with 1000-2000 records, with some fancy features.

IE6 was running 10+ times slower than FF2 on the page, that I have to turn off some features for IE users.

If we have a very fast Javascript browser, I am sure we will see sites more sophisticated than Facebook or Gmail today.

I'd be more interested in seeing how fast the latest FF3 nightly builds compare to the webkit nightly builds.

mycelo, you mean to say that your web browser simply displays pages straight out of your modem/router/local computer?

you mean to tell me that the reason an AJAX page of say ~20Kb takes 5 sec to display on my 20mbit connection is that it's the link speed?

wrong.

FF3B4 is multicore capable but still only 53% faster than Opera9.5 which is singlecore. If Opera enabled multicore "support" soon (without reworking engine) FF3B4 will be like 47% slower.

Firefox 3 is new and beta so you'd think they'd have the inteligence to benchmark it against IE8 Beta. This just smells of Microsoft baiting

I don't really care if it faster then Opera.....I will never go back to IE.

I just want to know if it will actually pass the ACID 2 test like they said it will?

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

If it does then Opera, Safari, and Firefox all will pass....and IE will be the default if you want to look at a page rendered WRONG!

You don't have to believe these tests by linux fan club. You can easily test it yourself. Just download IE8 beta and firefox3 and make them load the same website and find out that IE8 is actually usually a bit faster. Java is just one (normally small) part of websites.

I used to use Ubuntu 7.10 with firefox 2 and it was pretty quick but i upgraded to 8.04 which comes with FF3 beta5 and firefox seems far slower, the downloads are at normal speed but the rendering of websites is unbearably slow...


And sadly I can't get safari on Ubuntu yet :P

HA HA! This page takes forever to load in the latest Firefox 3 beta version whereas it loads in a flash in Opera 9.5!

FF3 candidate release on windows 2000.

javascript is like a dog with flea. It is not usable. FF3 should not be released if the last candidate is like the release. simple is a dog with fleas.

i myself personally using the firefox 3 beta 5 in my windows vista.it's fast and reliable even if the connection is a dial-up.kudos to the mozilla foundation to this creation.

OMG Opera fanboys are worse than MAC fanboys. If you like it, use it, and enjoy yourself. It's a browser, a stinking piece of software, not a religion.