15 replies to this topic

[Alpha]

I recently installed Google Chrome again and I must say every website I visit loads considerably faster than FireFox! It's crazy... does Google Chrome use the Google.com caching system or something? I may have to stop using FireFox now, as the speed difference is truly monumental.

Anyone have similar results?

[LoRd_SnOw]

I'm not so sure about the web cache'ing, but I do agree that the browser itself is pretty zippy on most places i visit/ponder upon. It does have some very neat features and seems to have a very huge edge since it's heavily unified with google.com itself. Perhaps, we may start seeing other browsers fade into oblivion like netscape.

Edited by LoRd_SnOw, 09 December 2011 - 09:15 AM.

[Hard Core Rikki]

SPDY and chrome's special accelerated SSL negotiation makes a noticeable difference on google-ownerd properties (even for google analytics). The browszerr and google.com also use a few smart prefetches to preload pages predicted to be what youre looking for. Its even faster if the pages are already loaded in the cache.
In browsers supporting the WebP image format, google search previews, thumbnails and picasa use them in priority, essentially providing better quality for smaller filesizes.

Firefox only prefetches results from google search (this can cause cookies from pages listed in search results to be created in your browser, even if you never visited them). Rather useless in practice.

http://dev.chromium....spdy-whitepaper
http://code.google.c.../prerender.html
http://news.cnet.com...-not-just-jpeg/

You might get even more radical speedups if you optimize your DNS with faster, more secure ones (especially if you use them properly, faster first). See DNSBench for a benchmark (try a full check for your closest DNS resolvers).

Edited by Hard Core Rikki, 09 December 2011 - 01:05 PM.

[Agozer]

Not an educated guess by any means, but the rendering/layout engine used by the browser affects the overall performance. Firefox uses Gecko and Chrome WebKit (IIRC). Gecko seems to be more robust in design, while WebKit is very lightweight

[emsley]

Chrome is fast for me and the inbuilt spell checker helps me out a lot.
The spell checker is often annoying though making you attempt a spelling of a word then it suggest 5 things totally stupid.
The word "Movie" is still in there as wrong.

I never got on with firefox after chrome.

[Devia Eleven]

Chrome has a noticeable speed increase when I switch to it from FireFox. Chrome doesn't allow me to use the plug-ins that I use for FireFox, so I've stuck with FireFox.

[LoRd_SnOw]

Not to mention, chrome is the only browser that can make google "Do a barrel roll"

[Agozer]

Chrome has a noticeable speed increase when I switch to it from FireFox. Chrome doesn't allow me to use the plug-ins that I use for FireFox, so I've stuck with FireFox.

The most popular Firefox plugin has been ported to Chrome. I tried Chrome once on my old computer, but there was some weird error, so I sort of gave up on it. I've been using Firefox for so long that I've haven't even seriously considered switching browsers.

No doubt Chrome is great and speedy, but I'm simply a Firefox person.

[Robert]

I've been using Firefox for some time now, however each new release has been slower than the previous one, with no tangible benefit. With Firefox 8.0, it made the whole computer stutter along, couldn't even use the file manager as it kept freezing for minutes at a time. So I've gone back to 3.6.24 and it is a whole heap faster. Haven't tried Chrome as yet. Will it run on Windows 2000?

[Agozer]

For me, Firefox 8.0 is a lot faster and more stable than the previous versions.

AFAIK, Chrome does not work on Windows 2000, only Windows XP SP2 and above.

[Devia Eleven]

I've updated FireFox with almost every release, and I have never noticed any large changes except for appearance.