Chrome feels the need - the need for speed

Google has souped up Chrome by updating the web browser’s JavaScript engine. Mountain View claimed loading speed of JavaScript-heavy web pages had been improved by up to 30 per cent in Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, combined with a new version of the Webkit browser engine. Google additionally announced several other changes …

[David Viner]

Interesting/Confusing....

I just updated my V1.0.154.something version of Chrome via the normal update and, without any warning/message, it became version 2 (2.0.172.28 to be precise) - that isn't the latest V2 beta though (which is 2.0.181.1). Is V1 now dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damnit....

My IE7 installation crashed on the last step of that speed test page :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac users can whistle

As if anyone uses a Mac. How about some Linux support?

[P]

Chrome on XP?!

Get it stuck on Windows 2003, works a dream!! :)

[Barry Tabrah]

Zoom improvements

One of the features that's been missing so far from the Stable release of Chrome is a proper zoom function. As I use my TV as my computer screen the ability to zoom in the whole page, not just the text, is kinda important to me. So far the new version looks like it'll do what I need. Hopefully I should be able to discard IE completely now (apart from needing it for badly written web pages of course).

[David S]

Okay, I understand these are Chrome's benchmarks...

...and therefore the results may be skewed a little in their favour, but...

Here are my utterly unscientific results (all run on the same workstation) in descending order of speediness:

Chrome: 2620

SRWare Iron: 1880

Firefox: 201

Opera: 173

IE: 16.9

Please note: There's a decimal point in IE's score. IE was the only browser that said there was a script threatening to hang my computer, and offering to stop processing it, too. Minutes into a task that the other browsers had completed in seconds...

Even allowing for skew, there are orders of magnitude of difference there. Golly.

(sits back and waits for someone to explain just how credulous I'm being...)

[Andrew Moore]

Hmmmmmm...

I wish it felt the need for correctly rendering updated websites.

[andrew]

The Scores

What a test!!

I've got a few browsers installed, for various testing...

****************************************************************

Firefox - 264

Opera - 224

Safari - 1229

IE - Crashed then finally came round with 25

****************************************************************

And redmond wonder why people are changing browser!!

[Anonymous Coward]

where are the complaining linux fans?

any of you out there?

[Anonymous Coward]

to be honest

i find that noscript makes the speed of the javascript engine rather a moot point. I do wish people would stop using java for anything and everything, no matter how appropriate.

[Jeremy]

Removing thumbnails

In true Google Web2.something style, the thumbnails are not so much removed as 'removed'.

There's a 'restore all removed thumbnails' option which nicely brings back all the 'embarrassing' thumbnails you thought were gone, even those removed in previously closed browser sessions. <head/desk> <head/desk>

[Anonymous Coward]

But, is it any safer?

I liked the speed of Chrome v1, but I didn't like all the reporting back to base. The no evil overlords at Google are a bit too keen on my information so I uninstalled it.

If they can fix that I'd be interested, but I don't have much hope. Google strikes me more and more as the public arm of the NSA: No wonder we haven't heard from them for a while - too busy with all that new data..

[Andy]

Is it still using "V8"

... or did they give up and use SquirrelFish yet? Really would be nice of them to be clear about what is WebKit, and where they've been dicking with it.

[JJS]

benchmark results

Firefox 3.0.10 - 237

Chrome 2.0.172.28 - 3068

Yes I even tried refreshing each browser to get a different result but they were within about 5% each time anyway. Now if only Chrome had my favorite extensions I would give it a chance over Firefox...

[Jeff F.]

Sick of Ads

While I welcome the improved ability to download Javascript heavy pages better, I wonder to what benefit? Aren't those annoying spinning, dancing, moving , STUPID ADS I WISH I DIDNT SEE, the biggest users of "heavy Javascript" in pages? Wheres that blocker ad-in again..?

[Jimbo]

hmmm

I get 83.7 in IE8 and 208 in FF3 .... but still who cares? Both IE8 and FF3 are very fast on my laptop and I really don't see that much difference. It all boils down to features and FF wins (at least for me).

[Matt]

Who cares?

Both IE and Firefox load and run my AJAX pages quicker than I can notice. Makes you wonder if there's something synthetic about Googles' tests :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

a bit on the lame side considering...

This is such a lame discussion to have...

No-one is considering that nowadays and increasingly in the future javascript will NOT be heavily used, due to the various RIA runtimes (JavaFX, Silverlight, Flash) etc.

So what would be the point having the fastest JAVASCRIPT engine, when there will be very few javascript-heavy websites?

Also, don't get me started on Google's browser, it is a joke.

[Tim Spence]

RE: to be honest

Java != Javascript

[Steve Medway]

@ Kelly Fiveash, Mac users can whistle for it, for now

Really?!?

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/

btw It's coming along nicely.

[Pierre]

Embarrassing?

"Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section"

Yes, but won't it make the smut sites more obvious then?

[joe K]

Agree with Mark

I agree with the javascript speed comment - a speed increase is alright, but there are only two things that properly define a browser expericne for me these days - stability and security. If you can offer me less than one hangup a month, and can keep out the baddies as much as the competition, I'm good.

[Dave]

hmm

Windows XP SP3

Opera 10 Preview: 152

Opera 9.64: 138

FF3: 147

Safari 4 Beta: 1137

Interesting, but I still wont give up Opera ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

"“Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog..."

Gossip blog? Really? So people can hide *gossip blogs*? Yeah... uh huh.

Paris for obvious reasons.

[Oninoshiko]

Re:to be honest

Java and javascript have no relation other then the substring "java" in the name. do you have a problem with people using java or people useing javascript?

I've only seen java used a few places as a way to embed an applet (chat apps, ssh app, a few games), in most cases this would be the primary reason for going to these sites, so I can't imagine its THAT annoying to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

JavaScript?

Oh yeah - I remember that. It used to screw things up before I installed NoScript.

[Andy]

People posting benchmarks...

...be careful what you test against. It's not exactly cheating, but different browsers test against different suites; so it's likely that they'll be the fastest on that test, because they've been optimised to do those tasks quickly. Safari's tests, Sunspider, will likely be fast in Chrome, and Chrome's will be fast fast in Safari as they're essentially the same. Safari is scary fast right now, though.

[Tom]

@AC -where are the complaining linux fans?

No complaints - FF3.5b2 no need for chrome or anything else that makes rusty iron look like silver.

[Anonymous Coward]

IE 6

Still have to use IE 6 at work. I get an amazing score of 18 with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

speed

I used opera for several years.

This year I use ff,

b/c opera is rather low on security.

I had an xxs security hole.

How much would it take to beef up

these holes?

Opera is the fastest on all sites.

[Andy Watt]

Another convert...

IE7 / IE8 with facebook, etc - crashes, failing to load pages entirely, bad rendering... all the bells and whistles you could want, but the thing is now so bloated it's had it.

Firefox similar - had a lot of trouble with startup times with the latest FF versions.

Chrome? Stripped back: this is almost back to NCSA Mosaic here - fast as hell - no bells and whistles, just the things I need: as Web2.0 puts more and more on the page and not in the app, why bother with browsers that weigh 2,000 tonnes and render at the speed of death?

This is how it should be - software getting faster and keeping your hardware investment alive for another few years. If it's still good, keep using it. All the PCs in my house are single core at 2GHz or less, and this browser will mean fast fast fast.

I'm a total convert. Bravo google for finding a niche that REALLY needed filling - a fast browser for Web 2.0.

[Mark Pawelek]

But they all use too much memory.

As I write, I have 5 Chrome tabs open. Task Manager shows that there are 7 copies of chrome.exe running using a total of 150 Mbytes.

Can someone explain to me why it needs to use 150 Mbyes of of memory to display 5 web pages which, probably total no more than 2 Mbytes (including all graphics).

Firefox has a similar problem except it doesn't make multiple copies of itself. Even after I've shut Firefox down there's often a 75Mbyte (or so) Firefox process running in the background.

Give Chrome its due, it's fast.

Installing Safari and opening up 5 tabs resulted in 1 Safari process running, but taking up 175 Mbytes.

So there's not much to choose between Safari and Chrome. Both take up too much memory, Both are faster than most other browsers at rendering.

TBH, it's not speed which worries me. It's the reckless way these thing eat up my memory.

Speed is mainly dependent upon how the websites have been programmed and deployed. The browser is just a bit part player in the speed stakes.