I use Google Chrome at college, which the more I use, the more I love; but it doesn't seem like a full browser to me. Something is missing :S

So I stick to FF3 at home :) and Opera as a back up browser.

Don't you just hate them annoying website which only work in IE! GRRR!

LifesSweetDrug

@qrius:

KeePass works well with Firefox.
[lifehacker.com]

token1

@qrius: Doesn't Secure Login do the same thing for firefox?

goodywitch

I'm not surprised that Safari pulls ahead with javascript - it seemed very fast to me when I use it, but I can't stand the font rendering.

The main things keeping me away from Safari, Opera and Chrome (possibly in that order) is the lack of adblock plus (with element hiding, so no, no privoxy for me) and stumbleupon.

I've even tried FiltersetP (or something) for Opera, and it's nowhere near as good as ABP+EHH.

LethAL

@qrius: It's odd that your installation of 1Password doesn't hit the enter key for you. That feature is one of the things I love about 1Password. When I have 1Password enter the UN and PW on a site, it automatically hits enter for me. I'm not sure if this is something unique to my setup, or you have a problem with your install. FWIW, I use Firefox mainly, but also Safari, and the results are the same.

MacGizmo

firefox has been weird on me lately.....always hogging and crashing.....jumped the shark?

exmeatball

@qrius: [addons.mozilla.org]

Happy now? :)

LethAL

@qrius:

Get the Secure Login extension
[addons.mozilla.org]

Reimer

@kph59: ill second that!

Elijah86

@kph59:
As far as I am concerned, IE7 does add-ons just fine.

thisisasignin

funny thing is, I'm a big firefox fan, but one thing about opera has got me hooked more. The magic wand for password remembering. I love that if you just click on it, it fills out the password info, and presses enter at the same time. that one button magic is not found in 1Password in safari or firefox.

qrius

Maybe add-on functionality? Firefox FTW

kph59

did you turn on tracing with firefox 3.1b? it would increase startup by more than half, and increase js performance by half as well.

clevin

@Speedmaster: 1.8% man, that means every one in one hundred people is secretly hiding what browser they use!!

Phoshi

opera is faster than firefox. firefox is more customizable than opera. but hell most of wat i want is already built in opera.

xmido

It's amazing what Webkit and Opera have done on the performance front, but they keep missing the most important thing, extensions.

The amount that Delicious, Greasemonkey, and Flashblock improve my browsing experience can't be described in words. Firefox is buggy and slow (yes, even without any extensions), but I use it because of extensions. Greasemonkey alone would probably be enough, but no one seems to care (userjs is completely worthless, so is Greasekit).

PhilK

@LifesSweetDrug:

Dunno 'bout Chrome, but for Firefox you've always got IE Tab
to render websites in Firefox using IE's engine.
Once again, Firefox only :)

Nabeel

i use it

bullwinkle12

Opera: the often touted browser that no one you know actually uses. ;-)

Speedmaster

Page loading times really surprised me.
Opera IS faster :O

Phoshi

@thisisasignin:
Hi,
Please don't.
Love, PY.

Phoshi

@exmeatball: Firefox has been crashing on me lately too... when it does, I open Chrome and get what I need faster than FF can say 404.

I'm surprised at these results, Chrome seems SO fast on both the home and work machines.

flowerygirl51

@birdfeed25:

Same for me. Even my cold starts for Chrome are up and running in ~1 second.

The only Chrome problem I have is that it causes CPU spikes every now and then, particularly when I close a tab and have more than 3-4 others open. The spikes last for anywhere from 5-10 seconds, and Chrome is completely unusable during them. Once the CPU calms down, it's all back to normal.

wakeboarderal05

@tandonmiir: Opera and webkit are WAY ahead in the acid tests

bagano

I'm sticking with Firefox. It's like the DVD vs. Bluray change over: You know it's better, but it's not really worth the effort when you have such an established relationship that works well.

Benjo

i also have found chrome to be much faster than firefox, comparable to safari, but safari is just annoying on windows. i love the way webkit renders virtually everything.

and firefox may use less memory, but it is ALOT less responsive

bagano

@Return To Null: Fair point: just can't do without those extensions though!

exmeatball

How about the Acid test scores for each?

tandonmiir

It's a shame Opera doesn't render some pages properly. I hate having to open IE because opera mangled a page...

For some reason yahoo mail absolutely crawls in Opera.

gliscameria

@kph59: Lmao that's exactly what I said to myself... "Firefox FTW"

SJRNWT

@qrius: have you tried sxipper, I didnt really check out the wand tool in Opera but sxipper does what you are describing, I discovered it in lifehacker and loved it

metalmarious

@damiththa: You're an IE fan? I knew people used it because it was good enough, but I've never heard someone describe themselves as a fan ;)

PhilK

@qrius: No need to even hit the icon in Opera. Just press Ctrl + Enter to insert and submit any saved password

loudcox

I've been always a IE fan and i will be too. But Chrome is doing a great job, especially when it comes to loading up pages. Not a big fan of Opera,

damiththa

@exmeatball: Eh, I'm more apt to blame it on extensions. The comparison numbers are probably from a clean version.

Return To Null

The unanswered question--why are all of the icons round? Does nobody love the rhombus?

umlaut75

Weird. I get MUCH faster cold starts and much lower memory usage with Chrome than FF3.

birdfeed25

turning on tracing in firefox will improve startup as well as js performance by more than 200%

clevin

@LethAL: I'm pretty sure I recall something about StumbleUpon getting some type of Opera thing recently...

Ah, yes. Here we are.

[www.operastumbler.com]

Also, and I know this isn't as good as Adblock Plus (which is one of the reasons I have FF installed on my computer in case Opera won't work or something), you can right click on a page, hit 'Block Content' and manually block ads.

Given, it doesn't work for all of them, but...jeah.

Sensai

As a basic browser, Opera is swell. Pages are rendered quickly, and for the most part accurately. Pages that do not render accurately break down one of two ways:

a) The site was optimized for another browser, namely IE. You can usually mask or identify the browser as Internet Explorer and fudge your way through.
b) The site or service is in beta - Hmmm.....Google Docs anyone? - and you cannot access the page correctly (or at all) within Opera.

My bank's site (National City) works under Opera just fine. (And Opera Mini for that matter) Since upgrading to a Blackberry I enjoy continuing viritually the same browser experience on my PC at home (or work) on my mobile device. I just wish I could access Google Docs. Calender, Gmail - even Reader - all work under Opera with little or no issue.

Opera starts up right away - cold or warm - and runs without causing too much of a strain on system resources, etc. Plus, with the rendering in Ubuntu (aside from any font tweaking done to improve system fonts) the text looks wonderful compared to sites that I surf in Firefox.

sw4383

@birdfeed25: same here. I wonder if it's due to extensions or other cruft, but I really feel no motivation to do a clean install of FireFox when my experience in Chrome is fantastic.

Crashproof

Opera is a great browser and probably the most extendable without extensions if that make sense. I use it as my main browser and I have moded it to open pages in FF and Safari if I run into rendering problems. What apple is doing with web kit is really amazing but Opera has always been a great browser usually 2-3 yeahs ahead of the curve. That's why they have been copied so much. 5 years ago people were saying tabs? who needs tabs?

ZeroCoolFool

@qrius: hmmm, maybe I should find out where you live and steal your pc with all your password loaded, hmm...maybe bank account, email, school account, etc. Maybe even lifehacker and youtube account too.

dnats

@bagano: Yup, but I'm curious about the numbers across the board.

tandonmiir

@qrius:
Me 2 I noticed FF was the fastest right now for me its the slowest I'm using chrome which really boogies on my box hmmmmmmm

rtipping

Screw all this! Netscape Navigator 7.01 FTW!

x3r0

Firefox is and always will be my first love. ^__^ Even with 81 extensions installed on my 3.0.2 version, it still does wonderfully. ^__^

Since Flock is heavily based on Firefox, I get comparable performance from it. ^__^

Opera as always also does a great job on my computers, so no complaints with it either. ^__^

I have to say that I am well pleased with I.E. 8 Beta 2. It is the first version of I.E. that I can actually say that I like. Loads quickly and renders webpages nicely for me. The only thing that puzzles me is when I close it and it takes an extra moment or two to completely shut down...

Have started to muck about with Safari and I do have to agree that it loads pages very quickly. ^__^ As mentioned in previous comments, the fonts do look kind of weird...

I am using the Iron variant of Chrome. It still acts a little bit odd compared to all of my other browsers on occasion. Since I have only had it installed for ~2 days, I can not say too much either way about it yet...

Asian Angel

@birdfeed25:

Same story here as well. I wonder if Chrome's gonna start buckling on me as well once it's own add ons come out

zhinker

@Crashproof: Agreed. I think all the addons that make Firefox so user friendly end up bogging down my system. Oh well... I'm perfectly happy with Chrome.

birdfeed25

Finally LifeHacker shows all the numbers, not just for selected browsers its writers prefer. To no surprise, on overall average Opera ranks at the top.

Now if LH would only start including K-meleon in their tests. It makes a better second browser than Firefox because (IMHO) it does well in all the test categories, plus it's small and just as configurable and feature filled as the rest.

[kmeleon.sourceforge.net]

P_Smith

@qrius: ...toss LastPass on the pile of password generator/tracker/form-filler awesome add-ons.

baglunch

I don't feel like that test was very fair for Safari (of which I am a proud supporter). Safari is an Apple product and was originally designed for Mac only. I definitely notice that Safari is sooooo much faster on Mac that it is on Windoze when cold/warm starting. As for page load times, that's another story.

I think that Safari is a horrible browser on Windoze but it's my browser of choice on OS X.

I just think that Safari only has a fair fight if used on OS X.

that's just my 2 cents.

winduptoy

What's "tracing"?

YachiraG

I just like the feel of Chrome - minimal ui, but when I start typing in the omnibar, it gets me what I want pretty quickly. The ability to create standalone web apps so easily is also cool. Disappointed that their Javascript wasn't quicker, I thought they had some new technique that was supposed to make it way quicker - something with caching the compiled version of the script? Did you try re-running the same script and see if it got quicker in Chrome?

djnrempel

@dnats: haha, no need to pick on me b/c I want to use a simple password tool. I doubt that I'm the only one using such a tool around here in LH.

qrius

@LethAL: well, I gotta try it out! :) thanks, I didn't know this extension existed.

qrius

btw, very informative, thanks!

qrius

I would like to see a memory test that compares memory usage when doing a lot of surfing over time. One time I caught firefox using 500 MB of RAM with one tab! I will often browse a site/read my reader and open up to 20 tabs to read once I'm done, then close them all as I finish with them, and I'll also open and close a tab in webapps like facebook, gmail, greader, etc. several times during one session, so I'd be interested in tests that simulate that for memeory usage.

Also, It'd be insightful to test a clean firefox and a firefox install that has several popular extensions installed and enabled to see how much difference they make.

draketrumpet

Opera WOULD be the best browser, by a long-shot, if it actually worked with all websites. Unfortunately, every time I try to switch to Opera, I come across a good number of sites that just won't work with Opera. Google Docs? AOL mail? And many more. If this were not the case, I'd definitely use it as my primary browser. For now, I'm stuck with FF.
Is there a way around this in Opera?
I know there are some long-time Opera users here. Does anyone know how to make Opera just plain work with all sites?

adoucette

I'm not sure that being 100 milliseconds faster is all that significant. I mean, I am not Daphne Millbrook.

berribrand

I like Opera because of its wand functionality. The Opera wand remembers passwords for sites where FF does not even offer to remember the password. I also like Opera for loading pages very quickly. I still run into problems with my credit card company since their "view online statement" option just does not work with Opera.

arungupta

@ZeroCoolFool: didnt know opera came up w/ the idea.

qrius

I dunno, having the browser that is the quickest to access a particular page by a factor of milliseconds is kind of like having the best ham sandwich.

DonLaFontaine

Wow Firefox is so overrated. The only thing it won was Memory Usage but that was without addons and FF is useless without addons, so scratch that off the list.

marksman7328

WOW. Another great one for Lifehacker!

I have to use Firefox on vista right now. But soon it may be Chrome all the way.......

hardman.ethan

they are all good browsers, IE being the worst.

eagledrc

I'm curious. Why do so many people have a "backup browser?" Do you use it if your main browser is in the shop for repairs?

Hands

@clevin: We got it the first time.

anebg

@gliscameria: When a page is rendered improperly, it's usually the page that is at fault (A page fault? Ugh, sorry.), not Opera. For a long time now, designers have created pages which display properly on flawed rendering engines, with the result that many pages do not display properly on browsers which actually render HTML properly (like Opera).

taodude

@LethAL: [www.fanboy.co.nz] - Adblock for Opera. Very simple instructions. Works just as effectively as Adblock Plus for Firefox.

MrJenkins

"Why did the newer betas take so much longer to load a similar set of pages? "

Could it be because the newer browsers have to create separate processes for each tab?

critter42

@birdfeed25:
Yeah the Cold starts in Chrome are amazing fast. The things that just kill chrome are:
-Adblock (and chrome will never get it unlike the others which have a chance
-Flash (so many times I'm playing an intensive flash file in chrome and flash just crashes.)
-Small Developer Base (This might be fixed)

bigngamer

@LethAL: It's not fair to use an adblocker - the people making free content for you on the web should be paid somehow

Raakanin

While Opera didn't come up with the idea for tabs, they were one of the first to implement it and they did a great job. I personally use FF, but I certaintly respect Opera.

Frame

@Hands: For me, I love the variety. ^__^

One day I may be in the mood to use one browser and the next day use a different one.

Also sometimes, I like to use one browser for specific webpages/tasks while using a different browser for others.

It is also a plus if you are building websites and need to test them against the various browsers.

Asian Angel

Tracing is a new optimization technique that is going to make Firefox 3.1 much faster. You can download one of the Firefox betas if you can't wait until 3.1 is released. Here is a link:
[startupmeme.com]

boricuachick

I don't think you're giving safari a fair chance. Its sucks on windows, you need to test it on mac. Cold start is definitely not six seconds, one of my main reasons I love it is it starts on loads so quick.

jphelan

@LethAL: I use the userContent.css for safari and it seems to work better than any adblock plus or any other ad blocker i've tried for firefox. You can use it in firefox as well, I just prefer safari on mac because its starts on loads so quick.

[www.floppymoose.com]

jphelan

@PhilK:

How is userjs/greasekit completely worthless compared to greasemonkey?

kftgr

FF is definately on its way out if they carry on developing it in the direction they are currently going.

Its becoming a memory hog, slow and flakey

evilenglishman

@taodude: i agree, if a page renders incorrectly in opera a quick check [validator.w3.org] will usually find the page is the culprit.

element119

Firefox rocks.it's the best whether it wins or loses he tests.My verdict is firefox.

gadgetgeek

Does anyone know how seamonkey ranks with these browsers?

ninjaviking

The most important thing is not the benchmark speed. it is the FEELING of it.

Case in point: Vista feels utterly sluggish when its really not that bad. But it FEELS bad.

Chrome feels insanely fast. Excellent design for the feeling of speed. Opera's interface feels slow, same with firefox.

holyspidoo

@P_Smith: K-meleon uses the same Gecko engine but is lighter,faster, and less memory hog. I agree with you.

I rather use K-meleon than Opera.:)

silentcon

Sorry, didn't feel like reading all the comments, so this might be a repeat. But why is Opera considered the winner of loading time when firefox beat it on 2 of 3 categories (warm start, and multiple tabs)?

PyreBorn

It has everything built in ... I just need adblock ..

gapo

Opera for me ....

gapo

@Speedmaster: I use it as well. The easy search, customizable toolbars, superior tab management, password wand, and sync between computers make it too hard to resist. I just can't myself use Firefox. Don't get me wrong FF is a good browser, I just don't like its look or feel.

cyriene

@Nabeel: you can also render a page with the IE engine in opera as well.

cyriene

@evilenglishman:

mmm.....do you even know what "direction" firefox developing is heading?

clevin

Maybe the reason why firefox is favored by most users is because it has add-ons.(just imagine firefox without addons, maybe it is not the firefox browser you know today)

silentcon

@PyreBorn: Better look at Opera 9.5 (Opera 9.6b1 is still in beta)

silentcon

@ninjaviking: It still uses the firefox engine (also flock,k-meleon)

But i don't know since seamonkey is not really as developed unlike firefox

silentcon

@evilenglishman: At least it is better than the worst browser today (but not before) IE.

I always laugh when i remember that IE was beating the crap out of Netscape. And oh when Firefox 1.5 and Mozilla sucks so much before (being memory hog). Seems the table is turned and the curse is reversed.

silentcon

@jphelan: You right but showing that many uses Windows and less people using Safari in Windows(because it sucks!!!)

silentcon

@Hands: I also have a backup browser (Opera and Safari), but it seems i always use Firefox as my main. My last memory of using my backup browser was 1 year ago. But it is nice to have a backup browser. Just in case firefox gets buggy.

silentcon

@marksman7328: Why not IE?It is the worst!

silentcon

@Benjo: that's actually a really good way to put it. Yeah, Chrome loads stuff faster, but hey, I love FF3 way too much to leave it. (oh, and Adblock plus. l-o-v-e i-t)

11hawkinst

looks like Safari is holding it down. :)

thirdopticaltool

@ZeroCoolFool: Sometimes having an idea isn't good enough. You need to implement it well. ;)

polobunny

Loving chrome...minimalistic design, fast, and nice integration with Google apps. For those who love to tweak their browsers FF is the way to go, but for those who just want a fast, nice looking web experience, Chrome is tough to beat.

ortwein

Opera. Backup is FF.

cainmark

Take -THAT- Google cHrOMO.

Sanjo

Before this post came out (i.e. yesterday), I decided to compare the usage of my beloved Firefox3 and the new Chrome. I love the concept of each tab as a separate process (or group of tabs, I couldn't figure out why a few tab combined in one process). If Firefox could figure out a way to implement that, man would that be helpful! But anyways, I wanted to compare the two browsers to how I normally (mis)use my browser.
[waves from his chair in the circle]
"Hi, my name is bbbco, and I suffer from Tabitis. Yes, its true. I usually am known to have 30+ tabs open at once and use the session saver to reopen them all again at restart. I think my record has been 91 tabs. But I love my tabs. For some reason bookmarks never appealed to me."

Anyway, back to the story. I compared the two with my 30 tabs open on each browser, and Firefox did a better job with the memory footprint. Congrats. End of true story number 61.

bbbco

@cainmark: Opera. Backup is FF.

Try out K-meleon. I run both it and Opera at the same time.

It's smaller, loads fast, and doesn't have memory bloat, plus it handles all common plug-ins and add-ons (Java, Javascript, Flash, etc.).

[kmeleon.sourceforge.net]

P_Smith

@silentcon: Maybe the reason why firefox is favored by most users is because it has add-ons.(just imagine firefox without addons, maybe it is not the firefox browser you know today)

That's like favouring an empty tower (that you have to buy all the boards, drives and parts for) over a complete PC (Opera) that you don't need to add to, but can.

P_Smith

@adoucette: Opera WOULD be the best browser, by a long-shot, if it actually worked with all websites. Unfortunately, every time I try to switch to Opera, I come across a good number of sites that just won't work with Opera.

If you don't name the sites you claim you are having problems with, then your claim looks dubious.

Opera (9.51 is on my laptop) has no problems with any of the websites I visit.

P_Smith

Does anyone really:

1) Notice differences when talking about milliseconds?
2) Care when talking about milliseconds.

These kind of comparisons are irrelevant to me. I just know what works for me, and if I think FF is faster, even if it isn't, I could care less if Opera or Safari beats it in load speed. There are so many components to a browser these days that IMO head-to-head comparisons are extremely difficult to do in a meaningful way.

I just want something that doesn't get in way. Don't get in the way of the Moose! :D

Nuclear Moose

but one thing i love about firefox 3 is the tags that they added!!!

Ash

damn surprising to see opera leading in speed :)

Ash

i've had 2 firefox updates in several days and it's turned into a useless pile of garbage.

MuglyTheWorm

@silentcon: Well, didn't even see 9.5 :)

PyreBorn

I feel like using the Windows version of Safari isn't very fair.

sam1am

@Nuclear Moose: 1. No. and 2. No.

One of the tests is multi tabs and no-one can read more than one at once, so who cares. The others are milliseconds, which no-one can notice unless they side by side.

No-one has yet come up with a single solid reason people actually care about to switch from Firefox.

Onouris

Safari is such an awesome browser but it quickly becomes very sluggish as it stays open and start up time sucks :|

bnhymn

@cyriene: Circa '98, '99 I was a dedicated Opera user. I've heard some good things (including right here) about Opera 9.5's blistering page loads. I sometimes have 2- and 3-day blocks where page load is my most heavily-weighted browser criterion, so I need to give Opera a solid look-see.

The Dagrolord

@LifesSweetDrug: I'm still evaluating G-Chrome, but it's looking like I'll remain with Firefox which I'm digging for my usual multi-tab applications.

The Dagrolord

Internet Explorer is more blue than the other browsers. So when I feel like using a blue browser, I use IE. Or sometimes Google Chrome, because it's pretty blue, too. I also use Google Chrome when I'm feeling retro. It's the name, 'Chrome', I guess.

When I'm feeling kind of red, however, it's Opera all the way. Also when I'm feeling cultured.

Firefox has the cutest icon, so when I'm feeling drawn toward cute little animals, I use Firefox.

I've never used Safari, but I'd be happy to give it a try if I ever feel compelled to use something really exotic-sounding.

Terry

OK... how about a 'worst' Browser (and why) poll. Maybe put it under "Things that Suk"... ?

cgarduc

I'm still using Opera for my enterainment, IE for work-related activities.

Opera is waaay faster, more stable and I'm a suker for the 'Speed Dial' options.

I'm pretty sold on it. Chrome didn't move me and Firefox was just another 'flav of IE' to me.

Should I switch? Why?

Comments from ya'll?

BTW... Hello from Central CA!

cgarduc

When you tested Firefox 3.1, did you first go into about:config and turn on the JIT compiler?

Search for JIT in about:config and set them both to true and do the test again. It will be significantly faster.

_ck_

@Speedmaster: well, I used Opera...

Opera seems to work well for me.... 20 tabs without any sort of lag or problems....

taking_this_easy

I decided to give Seamonkey 2 a try myself and so far, so good! The browser seems super quick!

Haven't touched the e-mail client yet... Since it supports many of FF3's add-ons, I for one would like to see it match up with the other browsers (especially with Opera, as both are Internet suites)...

ninjaviking

@Onouris: i can read multi-tabs at once... with Opera (Opera = true MDI application, can tile tabs horizontally and vertically...)

thats why i love opera.... it has functions that Firefox cannot dream of without installing all those extensions... just get www.kejut.com/operaportable, run on public machines

taking_this_easy

Now this is only for windows, on a hackint0sh, safari pops up instantly, while firefox is just bouncing there in my dock. even though i use firefox because of the great addons, I will probably use chrome more when it even comes out for mac, because they are making addons for it too.

ckrames1234

so using the data from these tests i conclude that Firefox is still the best browser for me. with chrome being the best back up...hey wait a minute...that's my current set up...how strange... i didn't even research it :S i guess for once brand loyalty has paid of

Zepth

Despite what all these tests say, Google chrome is much faster on my computer than Firefox.
Opera has an interface that seems strange to me, but cannot be customized (i.e. moving the bookmarks bar). And IE is made by the company that despite their vastness is still 6 months behind every one.
Then I guess there is Safari, hmmm... I don't like the mac look on a pc.

ethanthekiwi

Is safari using the latest webkit javascript engine, "squirrelfish extreme".. That'll score some more points for Safari

sandaru1

@Speedmaster: I have been using and advocating Opera since version 3.

JamesIsIn

@exmeatball: Then you really ought to consider Opera: no extensions required.

JamesIsIn

@bbbco: Try this same test against Opera. I too use dozens of tabs (at times).

But I have to ask: what use is separating tabs into processes? If the browser crashes and you recover all your tabs you're ok. Do you crash all the time so this becomes a concern?

JamesIsIn

@Hands: Developers occasionally develop their page(s) for one specific browser (presumably the one they use). If you happen to use a different browser you may have troubles (especially if they are developing for a non-standards-comliant browser).

JamesIsIn

@adoucette: You use AOL mail? You're problems may not be browser related.

JamesIsIn

@damiththa: Support groups abound. You can beat this; be strong.

JamesIsIn

@ethanthekiwi: You should spend more time with Opera. Everything you see in its facade is mobile and customizable (well, you can't move the File menu). I have turned off my Bookmarks Bar prefering to use a Bookmarks Panel which pops up hidden on the left-hand side of the window. Plus I use it on several machines with different operating systems and all of my bookmarks are instantly sync'd across all machines.

JamesIsIn

@P_Smith: Right. Good point. Gmail, for one, doesn't work right with Opera. The CSS layout for each email's details (at top) are bunched up together and don't expand/contract like in IE and FF.
Lifehacker's new commenting system, for another site. I browsed to this post in Opera, then clicked to reply, then to log in. Opera wouldn't get me to anything but the first page of comments until I refreshed the page after logging in.
These are just two examples. There are a lot of sites that are simply not designed with Opera in mind or aren't tested as widely with Opera as with the more popular browsers.

For as GREAT as Opera otherwise is, I wish that the Opera team would figure out how to get it to render sites like these better.
Or, I wish there was an easy work-around (anyone?)

adoucette

@JamesIsIn: I agree! But AOL mail is for my wife...and though I've gotten her to use Gmail, she can't give up the old address (or just POP it into Gmail).

adoucette

@Speedmaster: Speedy, I have to use FF at your blog because Opera doesn't play well with the Blogger commenting system. But other than that, I use Opera for 95% of my toobing. Salud!

skh.pcola

@JamesIsIn: I can't remember what version I got hooked on, but it was back around 2003 or so. It's my primary browser and I can't get the same functionality in FF without tacking on add-ons. I tell people about it all of the time, but most of my friends still use IE. Makes me want to bang my head on a table when I have to use their boxes.

skh.pcola

It is interesting to observe the many Opera fans...yet, Opera's "marketshare" is miniscule.

As for those complaining that LH unfairly tested Safari on Windows instead of OS X, note that Safari [ie, 3.1.1] is no longer betaware and thus is fair game for the comparison. Don't like it? Blame Apple for releasing Safari for Windows.

The comments about mere milliseconds differences in program loading times, etc are valid. For instance, who can distinguish between 170 msec and 190 msec? And since the comparison relies upon a human for timing, the margin of error is likely much greater. Since I'm on slow dial-up [ie., 28 kbits/sec], I'm naturally not in a position to evaluate loading times for remote web pages [especially with respect to CSS & Javascript rendering].

My web experience began [way back in 1996] with Netscape and naturally progressed to Firefox. Currently, I'm still using FF 2 [2.0.0.17, to be exact] with about 40 extensions. [I'm waiting for the SilverSkin 1.2 theme to be ported to FF 3 (changing the max version number in the JAR's .rdf file didn't yield satisfactory results).] Along the way, I have tried many versions of MS IE [uggh!], Opera, Safari, Chrome, Iron, K-Meleon, Orca, etc, all on Windows.

In terms of GUI design, Opera was somewhat odd in the earlier versions [ie., 4, 5,...] but I don't find version 9.5+ too uncomfortable. Certainly lightweight but the lack of AdBlock, among other things, is a large deficit.

The Webkit browsers, Safari, Chrome & Iron, are quite minimalistic & thus "seem" to be speedy. However, given a choice [which I am], I much prefer K-Meleon. Furthermore, I'm not impressed with the fact that, with Chrome, GoogleUpdater is installed as a start-up process and that web search data is silently transmitted to Google. Iron addresses this privacy invasion. With Safari, the blurry fonts are hard on my aging eyes.

K-Meleon 1.5.0 is based on the same Gecko engine [version 1.8] as FF 2 and loads perceptibly faster on my system [2.8 GHz Celeron D with 512 MB RAM & Win XP SP3] than the webkit browsers. The first time, I was shocked by its speed. With 10 tabs open, its memory footprint is significantly smaller, using only about 60 MB of RAM vs 92 MB of RAM for FF 2. [With the same 10 tabs open, all of the other aforementioned browsers come in at over 100 MB while FF 3 weighs in at about 80 MB.] It is a good example of how good the [albeit older] Gecko engine can be despite the snide remarks of detractors on the internet. Yet, K-Meleon has greater functionality than the webkit browsers, including built-in blockers for advertisements, Flash, pop-ups, images, etc. Thematically, it is not as rich as FF but the "Klassic" theme is ok. What's missing? FF extensions of course, but then, that arguably defeats the purpose of a minimalistic browser.

An interesting alternative to K-Meleon is Orca which is based on the same Gecko engine [version 1.9] as FF 3. Alas, Orca is still betaware and some stability problems have been reported. While Orca has built-in privacy features [ie., AD Blocker, Flash Blocker] similar to K-Meleon, it also supports numerous Avant/orca extensions that mimic FF extensions. If LH were to test Orca, I suspect it would perform on par with FF 3.

What do I use? K-Meleon for rapid checks of my many web-based e-mail accounts [most are with Yahoo Mail]. (I have a hard drive-based form for logging into these accounts: so, K-Meleon's built-in cookie clearer is handy for switching accounts without having to log out of each account.) I use FF 2 for most of my browsing, mainly because of the added functionality of the extensions. Comparing K-Meleon to FF 2 is like going from an econo-car to a luxury car.

It would be nice if LH expanded the comparison to include stable releases of FF [ie., FF 1.5.0.12, FF 2.0.0.17, FF 3.0.3] as well as K-Meleon & Orca.

FinibusBonorum

Actually... there IS Adblock Plus available for Safari. http://safariadblock.sourceforge.net/

SupriyaHippodamia

I'm still having a problem with FireFox not showing Flash sites properly, or at all. I download the latest version of Flash and install it, and it says it's installed but I still can't see sites like www.007.com in FF - I have to use Opera or something else.

Anyone know why Flash won't work properly for me?

da5id_nz

@qrius: Maybe Firefox doesn't have a built in Magic Wand but it has a great extension called Secure Login which does the job pretty well ^^, ... hope it'll help you switch back to FF again

pandecoco

Oper Ownes all!

rjdsmith

@qrius: Use Sxipper addon for firefox, it pwns!! :D

durthor

@Asian Angel:
How long does FF3 take on cold and warm start for you?
Mine takes on both cold and warm start about 25 seconds and I always thought that I probably got too many extensions(20).But with the amount of extensions you got Im surprised it still works fine.

DanyWho

Will yahoo let you use imap? If so just use the mail client built in Opera, that and IRC are two of the best things about it!

ShivaniKolkata

I think that users tend to forget that webkit is the core of Safari. When comparing Chrome and Safari they are going to be virtually identical in css rendering. Javascript speeds are a different story; what with the way that google went out of their way to improve that. But I expect that to be rolled in to webkit again so Safari will run with it too. Expect webkit to really be the new "browser" engine of the future. It's going to blow everything else out of the water soon enough. As to firefox. I only use it for stumbleupon anymore. It's too buggy and crashes far too often for my development work anymore.

ValentinaKaplog

Hey you complain about opera because bookmarks bar cannot be moved, what about chrome then? :p Opera will do everything you want, just need to apply an interface to it (you can find some at myopera.com)

SudeepaZeikfried

I don't know if its just my system then, but I've been terribly disappointed with memory use by firefox. The number of times its crashed for me , hogging up loads of memory is a real "turn off"

SubhagyaGabynoodle

I do not see Internet Exploer 7 or 8 scoring better than its rivals in any of these tests. Where will IE 8 stand now?

UshiKlik

It seems to me that the only users that employ 'back-up browsers' are the ones not using IE. Lets face it, if you want to keep it simple and have all web pages work first time every time then there is only one browser and I think we all know what that is...

SuramaMelachony

Well Opera obviously wins, FF has no extensions loaded and would probably be 200% slower with the 5-10 plugins that is required to make it as functional as Opera. As a default install it's no better than IE8. Plus the memory usage in FF gets loads higher with extensions loaded, so it probably would fall behind all the other browsers in the memory test. Opera can adblock too.

AlexanderPostumus

i use opera. and there's ad blocker by fanboy. just google for adblock opera. it's the fastest and most stable browser i have used yet. it's way better and faster than firefox for cold start which is what i need.

ReneeCabarizzaaay

Ive gone back and forth between all these browsers over the years and there really isnt that big a difference.Much ado about nothing.

ShakeelWalsall

if you run into a site in opera that it doesnt work well with, simply right click on the page, go to properties, click the networking tab, and at the bottom choose to mask as internet explorer or firefox.

ShrikirtiHaele

this is easily fixed in opera. right click and go to properties. click the network tab and under browser identification you can choose to mask opera as either internet explorer or firefox. opera, FTW!

ShrikirtiHaele

I have my doubts about the memory test. Surely in the days where most computers have at least 512mb of ram they could use free ram to dump cache into memory for your most frequented sites ensuring a better experience. after all unused ram is of no use to you.

EveBabatunde

I think Lifehacker should include Shiretoko build of mozilla because it runs a lot faster for me

BarnabasPeriphetes

What about safari on OSX?

FalknerNaso

I can follow that. I balked at moving over to Firefox for the longest time just because the majority of the content was written and tested for ie users.

UziAnakes

Yes! This is what I say as well. I use guestures and speed dial. Right click on the page and select block content to selectively filter ads. However I do hit the occasional page that doesn't want to play nice concerning basic html.

UziAnakes

You might be interested in SafariBlock, which is an implementation of Firefox's AdBlock for Safari. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19202

GeorgetteScratchy

@qrius: Opera have invented a lot of thing what all the popular browsers have nowadays, like precursor to tabs (in 1994), Page Zoom (1994), was the first browser to block pop-up ads (2000), first to add a Search field in the browser toolbar (2000), Sessions (1996), deleting private data (2000), Mouse Gestures (2000), User JavaScript (2005), BitTorrent support (2005), Widgets (2006), Speed Dial (2007), and much more. Unfortunately Opera doesen't get the attention it deserves.

Jaok1m

@DanyWho: Not able to test the cold start for it at the moment without restarting my computer (for a pure cold start test), but the warm start test runs at 19 seconds.

Of course that includes the 9 second timeout (which I set it at) on the splash screen extension that I have installed.

I know that it would be a lot quicker without the splash extension, but I just love having that custom picture and text at startup. ^__^

Asian Angel

@FinibusBonorum: Actually, you can block ads with opera by right clicking any page and clicking 'Block content...' You can block an entire server or single elements.

RoyHizang

Most of the stats is kinda useless, no one can tell the diffrense betwen 100ms and 200ms and if you say you can dose it matter you still need at least a few sec to see whats on the page. The basic thing is dont take IE it's way behind the others is basicly the same. It's all about other functionality like extensions and usability.

MurphyBucco

That is, however, irelevant. It's like blaming drivers for Vista crashes - it's not its fault, but the OS still is a sucky experience (was, Vista is quite awesome now actually) Plus, Opera is inconsistent - it sometimes rendered a page differently between sessions for me.

GloriaAthos

add-on functionallity? Okay, you go fill up firfox to do many of the things opera does natively, then we will see how much that already narrow memory usage and render time gap changes. You have to remember opera does most of that stuff out of the box.

FarfallaEosphorus

What? You compare the FireFox, IE, and Opera betas, but you don't include the massive speed improvements in the new Safari beta? (http://webkit.org/)

BrookePhoebe

I tried all that browsers and for me is Opera quickest.

FredaAndromache

I hope Opera is working on a new and improved JS engine to combat the likes of v8, tracemonkey, and sfx.

Opera's userjs is more powerful than the current implementation of greasemonkey. The sheer ability to run as soon as the page starts processing is a strong point. Greasemonkey doesn't even run until around DOMContentLoaded. Userjs has the ability to rewrite scripts PRE-processing. That is very powerful.

Some docs: [www.opera.com]

fearphage

Good news!! You can Stumble with Opera. I do it all the time. go to Operastumbler.com

Eli, ElyPulvillus

@lethal, you /can/ use an Adblock file for Opera. The Opera "urlfilter.ini" file can have Fanboy's Adblock list. Go here, http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/ and do the "Install" for Opera. Shutdown Opera 1st, of course, so that you can update the urlfilter.ini file. I do a copy/paste of most of it, works fine here. :)

EstaKodie

I drop in on the other browsers all the time and I think they're all great in some way.

I just don't need any extensions since 99% of them're some gimmicky social thingie, gimmicky shortcut, or gimmicky display beautification or whatever.
I don't like Safari since it's clunky, just like how I find Firefox, especially in it's loading and general handling.

Opera for example loads a page from cache when going back and forth, permitting mouse-movements from the start, and has speed dial (I really wish they fleshed out that page a bit more. So much unused potential there). I fell in love with the ability to add/remove/move almost any part of the UI in Opera. Right now I use a minimalist version by Tamil <3

In any case, it can be debated back and forth as much as I'd like, but in the end I've tried them all, and Opera's still the smoothest experience.

Morghus

Even though the difference in speed between browsers is fairly small, I do notice when I go from Opera/FF at home to IE at work.

My good ol' Dad has just discovered the virtues of YouTube (he looks up all his old songs...). He complained that even though he's paying AU$60 a month for broadband access, his YouTube videos stuttered. I put him onto Opera and it completely fixed the problem!

jamesclish

Google Chrome usually takes 2.3 seconds for it to do a cold start on my laptop...

Exilm

one of the most important things for me is that a browser should load fast! firefox is a great browser! but if they could make it! like as fast as opera loads they would have a winner!

one thing that really annoys me is that upon installation of the other browsers it doesn't have support for flash, java and so on! unlike IE you don't have to install all of that! maybe just update!

firefox is great but when you really need to find something fast on the internet i hate waiting for the browser to load! unless, i guess you have like a quad core with like 4gb of memory!

one thing i would really like for firefox to have is the way google chrome handles tabs you cant drag it and make it into a new window! i hope firefox has something like that! i have dual monitors and that would be a great option!

sugarqfx

@adoucette: The problems you list in regard to your installation do not exist on my laptop. Neither Gmail nor LH and its sister sites are problematic for me. That suggests it's not Opera but your system setup, operating system or some other installed program affecting your system.

Does Opera have problems displaying some sites? Yes, but only where non-standard HTML and XML are used. Opera may be the only browser that strictly conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium's (www.w3.org) standards for the internet. If a page doesn't display properly in Opera, then almost certainly it's the fault of website designers building for specific browsers and using non-standard tags, rather than any fault in Opera's rendering software.

Standards are set down for a reason, yet since Infernal Exploder 3 and Netscape 4, non-standard tags have been invented by browser makers in an attempt to make their browser dominant.

As Tim Berners-Lee wisely noted, "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

Some people (I don't mean you) just don't seem to get the message.

P_Smith

@ZeroCoolFool: please let me know how you modded opera to render using FF. I just need firefox when i open certain sites like gmail where i need the better gmail 2.

madguy000

@Speedmaster: Opera used to be my main browser while they still had the ad supported version. firefox took over when i found add ons that made sense. I still use opera though. its 80:20 to firefox.

madguy000

Btw, maybe it would be fair to also test memory use on ff3 with a couple of basic addons (or even try it with all the addons needed to match opera's functionality).

Lohikaarme

@winduptoy:

"I don't feel like that test was very fair for Safari(of which I am a proud supporter). Safari is an Apple product and was originally designed for Mac only."

Your point is valid. My main argument against it is really two points. The first is that FireFox and Opera both manage to support a variety of platforms, and their performance doesn't have the sort of dramatic drop that Safari's does (to my knowledge) on any of the platforms that they run on. Part two, if every browser is run in and on its ideal available hardware/OS/config, Safari will get look silly bad.

Run Firefox on a really ballsy PC in a lightweight linux distro, see if we can pull some more performance out of it.

Just out of curiosity, compare IE7 in Vista to IE7 in XP, and PC Opera vs Wii Opera.

"I just think that Safari only has a fair fight if used on OS X

This is the browser market...the internet, and its associated technological space-race, there aren't fair fights. Sometimes the other guy has just built a better car.

UnMicD

@djnrempel:

I agree that the Chrome UI has a nice feel, and the omni-bar is nice, which is what inspired me to tweak my Firefox so that the addressbar is an omnibar and the UI is fairly minimal. IMO Chrome is pretty nice, but until it has extensions or built-in functionality to replace my key Firefox ones, I'm not willing to switch.

Which again brings up my key point. FF might have a bit of a slow start and not the fastest page loads, but thanks to its easy-modability and massive extension/theme community support, I can accomplish the tasks that I regularly use it for a whole lot faster than I could in Opera or IE or Chrome or Safari.

UnMicD

How is userjs completely worthless? Have you ever tried some of the userjs the opera forum people have provided? I'll point you to this list and faq, http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=250627

VanceCosby

Finally we got good tests ! My browser is definitely Opera, i was a FF user before. Ok last time : opera got adblock : http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block opera got extensions : http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/2006/07/04/top-150-popular-firefox-extensions-and-opera opera got great stuff compared to ff or safari : i discover new features every week ! (slideshow, search shortcut /, (ctrl+)F11, ...) it is very rare that a site is broken under opera by now, and if so : that's the webmaster fault because opera RESPECT standards. opera is damn fast, these tests finally say it, great ! i prefer my browser to take 100Mo rather than swapping, i've got 2Go so whatever! Opera also has : irc, mail, bittorent, RSS reader, widgets, post-its, directory, voice control, mouse gestures, ... Opera is multiplateform and the address bar is way more powerful than the ff one. Opera is working on neat projects (3d graphics, sync system, ...) Just TRY it completely chrome V8 engine is cool, but chrome is a failure

AnnunziataTobias

Have you checked out the Webkit SquirrelFish Extreme? The report says that it beats Chrome and Firefox in JS testing by a WHOLE LOT! More details: http://webkit.org/blog/214/introducing-squirrelfish-extreme/. Without the latest update to the WebKit (that's what chrome is based on), the test maybe flawed.

OrnellaKaylon

I don't think I want it to press enter for me automatically. I occasionally click on the wrong link/page and it's nice to have to confirm that I really want to log into it and simply pressing enter is pretty low-effort.

HeidiGaloobaloop