Mozilla on 17th june released an improved version of its Firefox web browser that has gained popularity as a free alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.Mozilla's Firefox promises internet surfing that is fast, secure and easy to customize because it is designed to adapt the people's online activities.Other download sites : Download.com , Spread firefox.com
To get a perspective on how the browsers perform in the real world, I ran all our tests on a more typical office machine, a PC running Windows XP on a 2.67 Pentium M chip with 512MB of RAM. I then put each browser through its paces, asking them to load and reload five websites: our own timesjobs.com, orkut.com, msn.com, yahoo.com and an international news site bbc.co.uk. I repeated all my speed tests three times, clearing the cache when necessary, to produce an average result.
Against the clock, Safari was the clear speed demon, especially when it came to reloading pages it already visited and cached. Firefox was second, with IE pulling up the rear.
The stopwatch doesn’t tell the full story, however. While Firefox took a while to finish loading the page completely, all the elements that matter to the reader – the text and pictures – were loaded first. The remaining data loads in the background.
What this means in practise is that Safari and Firefox feel almost equally zippy, while IE 7 feels even slower than its load times suggest. In a head-to-head race to load each page so it looked complete to the naked eye, Firefox 3 and Safari 3.1 could not be separated on three of our five test sites. Safari consistently had the edge on the other two, while IE 7 was a visible third every time.
VERDICT
Benchmarking browsers by their load time is a useful but slightly misleading exercise, as test reflect. While IE 7 only slightly lags Firefox 3 on the stopwatch, in real-world terms it comes in a very distant third. IE 8 has just entered beta and Microsoft will need to do more than add new features to arrest the steady migration of users to not only Firefox but also Safari.
Apple’s software is the browser of choice for Mac users and it’s proving to be the speed king on Windows PCs. The streamlined interface is easier to use than IE 7’s reinventing-the-wheel layout and if Apple’s iPod halo effect shines a light on Safari 3.1, many PC users will be pleasantly surprised by what they find.
In real world situations, however, Firefox 3 hardly lags Safari in the speed stakes, and offers more than just extra pep. Version 3.0 is a big improvement to a browser that’s already the connoisseurs choice, and the new Location Bar alone will change your online life.
Start typing in the revamped address bar and Firefox starts sifting through your History, Bookmarks and any blog-like Tags you’ve attached to them to guess what page you’re looking for and bring those you visit most often to the top.
RATINGS
Internet Explorer 7.0 - 3/5
Safari 3.1 - 4/5
Firefox 3.0 RC1 - 5/5
Get your Firefor3 now : Firefox3 official release
Other download sites : Download.com , Spread firefox.com