RSSIE8 loads pages faster, but not fast enough, in Microsoft test recreation
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published March 26, 2009, 12:07 AM
Performance needs to be something the user feels. That's the explanation we hear from companies that have had difficulty of late demonstrating raw performance by the numbers (AMD comes readily to mind). Numbers may tell you a certain story, Microsoft's marketing team proclaims, but if the user doesn't perceive the speed increase, it may as well not be there.
So in a white paper released last week along with IE8, entitled "Measuring Browser Performance" (PDF available here), made the case that today's Web pages are comprised of so many components, any one of which may load faster or slower in one browser than another. And because of that, the only way to get a real sense of which browser is generally faster is to feel the overall speed.
"For the real world user, performance criteria are based on how quickly a page loads, not the performance of any individual subsystem," the white paper states. "For that reason, this paper will focus on how to measure complete webpage load times and discuss the related complexities."
If Microsoft's goal was to prove IE8 noticeably faster in the real world, it fell a little short. Its white paper ended up demonstrating, in Microsoft tests, that IE8 was 8.3% faster at loading popular Web sites' home pages than Firefox 3.0.5, and 0.023% faster than Google Chrome 1. If everyday users notice that, they're not only smart, but sensitive.
But how did Microsoft come up with these times. The paper suggests that the reader measure the various load times for individual Web pages in order to achieve comparable results. For its own results, the paper's authors chose 25 selections from comScore's Top 50 Web Properties partly because they tend to be more universally available and more reliable. The paper then suggests the reader deploy a video camera pointed at the monitor, which it says has the most reliable time code, and use that time code to assess the load time of each of the 25 pages in all of the browsers tested, then include a fudge factor of plus-or-minus 0.4 seconds.
Well, in reading the part about the "real world," we didn't think everyone would want to do this with a video camera. So Betanews came up with a more realistic alternative: For our tests, we used the WebMonkey Browser Load Time Stopwatch, a simple JavaScript tool made for the WebMonkey developers' site. Specifically, we found where one site had adapted this tool in such a way that it could render an accurate load time for any page, down to one thousandth of a second. Plus or minus zero.
The objective of our tests was to determine this: How much faster at just loading Web pages is IE8 from IE7, and is it faster than its biggest competitor and its future competitors at this specific task? Last week, Betanews tests showed IE8 to be more than twice as fast as IE7 for everyday tasks, including load times; but for JavaScript processing, IE8 remained the slowest of the current production browsers available. If we exclude JavaScript processing and concentrate just on loading, though -- the only part Microsoft says real users care about -- will IE8 demonstrate the speed gains with a real stopwatch?
Next: Is IE8's load time boost more of a tick or a boom?
Please check this (or I am wrong):
1. If Safari 4 was slower than IE8, why is it listed as faster than IE8? Is that an error on that graph?
2. In this test JavaScript was used to measure load times. Could this affect results?
Dragan Panjkov
Technology Specialist for Development Tools
Microsoft BiH
PS. This is my personal opinion and does not reflect official views of Microsoft BiH nor Microsoft Corporation.
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|i've tried this test, its not very accurate at all :P best to test load times locally, straight from your hard drive
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|I am browser agnostic and use firefox because I like Chatzilla add-on. No one cares for browsers anymore, they are now a commodity.
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|I'll start by saying that probably a lot of the writers and posters here have more tech knowledge than I do. I read both the articles and posting to expand my knowledge and also, sometimes for a good laugh at some of the posts.
My focus here is not on the browsers per se but on the Acid 3 test. I used IE7 and FF. I have tried Opera but didn't like it not because of any tech issues but because of my own tastes.
When I tested IE7 and FF on the Acid 3 test, they came in with a whopping 13% and 77%. Obviously, compared to the other browsers ( as mention here), these don't measure up. My question is so what? What I want from a browsers is to get me from points A to B and render the page accurately. both IE7 and FF do this. So the question is this - In the real world of the internet ( I know it's not the real world but I hope people understand), It seems to me that the Acid 3 test bears no connection to the reality of whether or not a browser accomplishes what it is suppose to do. Maybe I am missing a technical issue but it seems to me that the Acid 3 test is a waste of time when compared to everyday browsing.
While I have not yet tried Chrome or Safari, I do plan on downloading these browsers and seeing whether or not I like them.
Is it possible to say that the so-called browsers wars are "much ado about nothing" and that the Acid 3 test is not the holy Grail in deciding what browser works best for you.
Finally, If I am missing something on the tech side with the Acid 3 test, I look forward to posting that explains why this is important.
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|Please include hardware specs of the guest. Is the virtual PC hosted on a separate drive on a separate controller from the guest?
Virtual PC's aren't the best test case. They are Disk I/O slightly weak from a straight PC. Who knows what effects could take place.
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|IE 8 - Acid 3 test -> 20% ! Worst by far of all browsers.
(Safari 4 -> 100%)
IE 8 - Cross Platform -> 0% Total Failure
IE 8 Stability -> Manic depressive
IE 8 Speed -> Better than IE7 but no where near the best (Safari 4 again)
-------------------------------------------------
Final Mark -> What do you think?
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|i think standards are based on more than 1 test
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|i think the end users real experience and satisfaction is based on variables other than the browser's speed to generate webpages.
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|"down to one thousandth of a second. Plus or minus zero."
Surely that's down to plus or minus 0.00049999999999 etc.
:P
"For the Internet Explorer 7 figures, since IE7 and IE8 cannot co-exist on the same machine,"
"Internet Explorer Collection" allows you to, and guess where it's available from :)
/I've got nothing better to do today
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|Well, in this case, I actually feel a little dubious about using that to mix both IE7 and IE8 for this particular purpose, since it might call into question the authenticity of the results from both browsers.
-SF3
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|IE8, to me 'feels faster' and it probably is, I do think Chrome may be faster, but not by much. also, should we really be putting IE8 up against firefox 3.1 beta? etc, why not simply put up each browser against publicly available builds and leave it at that? unless you folks have some nightly build of IE8 laying around
and stop using VirtualPC
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|A better comparison than previous articles; nice job.
So that makes Chrome about even w/the new trunk builds per your test, which sounds about right. I honestly, didn't see chrome loading pages very fast, when I tried it for the last several days- but that wasn't a "factory build"- rather, an ad-blocking "hack" full of scripts for site surfin'. So- like I said: "sounds about right".
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|Chrome does a number of really good things. One being that one tab crashing doesn't take down all the tabs. Having used firefox too much, this has happened to me numerous times, and it's really annoying. It also allows you to seemlessly move a tab to a different instance, create an instance from a tab, combine instances, and put 2 tabs side-by-side for comparision, quoting, etc very easily. Not to mention it's much faster than the other browsers.
That said, if I could find a browser that was as compatible with sites as IE, had the add-ins of firefox, the speed and stability features of chrome, then I'd be happy. As it sits, I run all 3 everyday until I hit a feature that it's missing then I start using a different browser in a merry-go-round fashion, unfortunately.
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|IE8 is actually using one process per tab like chrome, has more addins than firefox, is really fast and has all recent features... (HTML5 and CSS3 isn't even standardized.
Im also running all browsers as i switch the browsers as needed and i often run chrome cause im already browsing the page as firefox finished starting. (firefox needs to optimize its startup time...)
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|apparently your firefox is misconfigured or has issues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQjsadxCpvI
yeah, i guess mozilla could shave a few more milliseconds off startup, i'm pretty satisfied with anything less than 1sec
version in the video is 3.0.5, its faster now and if extensions were disabled on par or equal to IE8 and chrome, i would say chrome has a couple millisecond advantage over IE
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|"has more addins than firefox"
Really?
Kindly direct us to the free adblock addin, the free download manager addin, and the session/tab management add-in. :)
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|PC_Tool, I believe he is counting all the spyware, trojans, and viruses you pick up when you use Internet Exploder. So yes, it has more "plug-ins".
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|OK, wonderful, but even if Firefox was slower than all the above, it still would be my pick. It simply does work, in everyday use, the way I want it to. I like the looks, love the add-ons, and it is compatible with most websites. Opera is very good, but it doesn't work well on some sites, so I always go back to FF. As for Chrome, I don't get it. What is suppose to be the big deal with that one? What Google did far better than the competition, IMHO, is the web-calendar -- OK, some other good stuff too. But the browser? I am staying with FF.
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|Pretty much agree. Its all about user experience, and that is something Microsoft is woefully clueless about. The best they've been able to do is copy FF as much as they can stand to. Oh, and I notice that IE8 actually imports FF's bookmarks. The Mozilla camp should be proud of that one. Also, I haven't used Opera for over a year but I have never liked anything about it - not its speed, not the interface and especially not its weirdly isolationist bookmarking system. I'm getting realy curious about Safari on Windows, though...I haven't seen it since an early beta. I'm hoping it supports themes and/or plugins by now.
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|Here's something I couldn't help but notice: In IE7, clearing the cache is the typical Microsoft Hoop-Jumping Cycle of Pain: You go through Internet Options, find the General tab, look for the Browsing history frame, click on Delete, then bring up the Delete Browsing History dialog box, then click on Delete Files, then "Are you sure...?" and you respond Yes, then click on Close, then click on OK. Wow, that's easy and straightforward. It's never been easier to jump off a cliff.
And in Firefox, well, you clear the cache by pressing Ctrl-s***-Del and hitting Enter. Foom. It's something you may be doing often, so the shortcut is a real shortcut. That hasn't changed in 3.1. But in IE8, surprise, there's a shortcut for clearing the cache. What is it? Ctrl-s***-Del. Now, you still get a dialog box, and because Microsoft's policy now is not to make OK the default, you have to type D instead of Enter. But Ctrl-s***-Del, D. Foom. That's the way you do something right.
It took until Internet Explorer _8_ for Microsoft to figure that out, and when it did, it figured it out by looking at how Firefox does it. Can't help but notice.
-SF "You'll Feel a Rush of Air In Your Face, and the Ground Will Get Closer Very Fast. Click Next to Continue" 3
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|FWIW: Most people *never* clear their cache. Are you at all familiar with the 80/20 rule?
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|well, you can't forget IE was released when originally? firefox came in 2004+, how quickly people forget IE once commanded nearly 100% market share, MS did things its way, why? it had no other product with any sort of userbase to compare with, creating its own internet standards, well, recently things have changed
so yeah IE is playing catch up feature wise with other browsers, i expect that from here on out with most of their offerings while still remaining your everyday browser
and yeah, PC_Tool is right, your average joe does not care about cache, nor know what it is
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|Most people will never find it, but you can customize the toolbar and add a "Delete Browsing History" button which does the same thing as Ctrl-s***-Del.
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|well, its not that hidden... its right in the safety menu :D
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|Remember that Google is selling services, including online word processing and spreadsheets.
Just like applications on your computer, you don't want one application's failure to affect all of the other applications. Should their word processing crash its process/tab, it wouldn't necessarily affect the spreadsheet, mail, or calendar tabs.
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|well, its not that hidden... its right in the safety menu :D
Ah yes, but that's three clicks, a toolbar button does it in two. That could save you almost 5 seconds a year! ;)
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