The Long and Winding Thumb: The Browser War.

Today I intend to help put an end to all the fan boys saying their browser is better, well all except one set. The results are below.

These results were done on my own PC, all browsers were fresh clean installs, and all had the same working conditions, except safari which insisted aero do the opposite of what it was at the time.

The Test's are as followed.

Rendering

These tests measure your browser's ability to render and modify specific elements used in typical web pages. Rendering tests manipulate the DOM tree in real-time. The tests measure display updating speed (frames per seconds).

Social networking

Social networking sites use JavaScript to provide navigation, forms and other features. These tests measure typical webpage functions, such as loading, sorting and searching for data. The purpose of these tests is to show the relation between the tests and real life. Performance in these tests is measured in frames per seconds.

Complex graphics

These tests use 'Canvas', a new web technology for drawing and manipulating graphics without external plug-ins. Canvas is not yet supported by all major browsers so the scores from these tests are not included in the overall Peacekeeper score.

Data

Almost everything you see on a dynamic webpage uses JavaScript arrays. These tests measure your browser's ability to add, remove and modify data stored in an array.

DOM operations

DOM, or Document Object Model, is the standard API JavaScript uses to create dynamic webpages. These tests emulate the methods used to create typical dynamic webpages. The DOM tests are based on development experience and the capabilities of the jQuery framework.

Text parsing

These tests measure your browser's performance in typical text manipulations such as using a profanity filter for chats, browser detection and form validation.

Anyway...Result's

Peacekeeper Score

As you can see Chrome is the "outright" winner here, offering the best rendering, social networking and text parsing. Second we have Safari. Now For people who are thinking of going this route....don't, recently a conference of sorts was held, this conference brings together the worlds best legal hackers and pretty much all they do is try to hack browsers and other software for the respected company.

In this conference Safari was the easiest to crack, taking only about 3 minutes. Followed by IE (no surprise there) followed by FireFox3.5, but the amazing thing is no matter how hard they tried they couldn't fully crack Chrome.

And Third we have Opera 10.50. Which gave the highest result's for Complex Rendering (Using the new HTML 5 Standard).

My thoughts on each? Well;

One to keep an eye on is Opera, that thing ploughed through the complex graphics test with ease, a must have for artist's and website designers. You will notice that V10.50 is a pre-release Alpha, which basically means that it's so full of bugs it makes IE look perfect, and yet it's a huge leap over V10.10 and is quickly climbing the rank's.

FireFox 3.6, well I'm a little disappointed, with the likes of Chrome flying in and beating every browser I was expecting Mozilla to bring out a Chrome killer but alas they didn't. One thing to note is even though you can get plugin's to make it faster they can ultimately bog it down. Even though FireFox didn't win in overall score it absolutely trounced the competition in data throughput, scoring 10,129, that's just under twice as fast as Chrome, which is just pure awesome.

Chrome, is the best by far, I was a firm FireFox guy till I tried it. It's quicker lighter and looks simple. Only grip so far is it doesn't have a built in RSS reader. Which in this day an age it should.

It also lacks plugin's and although it is first in terms of "Total" point's it's Data Throughput is something to be desired.

IE8, stay well clear, it's slow, bloated, doesn't support CANVAS and is full of bug's. It came last out of the main contenders and was 2nd to last when compared overall, beating Maxthon (which uses IE7 engine anyway) and was the only browser to not adhere to the HTML 5 standard (be it not official yet)

Safari, pretty much the same, it's not safe at all and until they make it stronger I'm not gonna recommend it. On the bright side it's DOM Operations and Data Throughput were fantastic, Beating all the other's in DOM Operations and coming 2nd in Data Throughput.

Lunascape 6, considering it's built on an older safari engine and isn't really a browser heavy weight still managed to be toe to toe overall against FireFox 3.5.7, which is impressive. The best browser out of the "Unknown".

Flock, which is based on the older FireFox 3.0 Engine managed to beat out Internet Explorer 8, Not looking good for IE 8 here as it's 2nd from last. For those who want FireFox but don't want to say you've got it, this is the browser to get.

Maxthon is built on the old and shameful IE7 engine, but it doesn't seem to be as bloated and slow as IE7 or IE8 is, so perhaps a good alternate to IE fans, even though it came stone dead last.

Seamonkey, one of Mozilla's not well know browser's, it's pretty much an all-in-one internet application and managed to 8th out of them all, which may seem bad but bear in mind this thing does everything the other browser's don't. So if you need a browser, email, newsgroup and RSS feed, IRC Chat client and HTML editor all in one package, then this is for you.

Well I hope this was informative and I hope this helps you choose your browser. Now I know I've most probably pissed off a lot of fan boy's, I'm sorry but that's just the way life is.

For those who wanted to know the spec's I run these browsers on look below;

Intel i5 750 @3.6Ghz.

MSI GD80.

4Gb 1800Mhz DDR3.

WD Caviar Blue HDD.

My Picks.

Best for Social Shenanigans - Chrome

Best All Rounder - FireFox 3.6

Wild Card - Opera 10.50

Best Underdog - Lunascape 6

Best Feature Full Browser - SeaMonkey

Most Secure - Chrome and FireFox 3.6