Why Does Firefox Seem faster

Hi All

I am using Firefox 3.6 with WinXP and have been using Firefox for quite some time. Not because I am a diehard F/Fox fan but simply because of Firefox's apparent speed and its extensions.

If I am honest I think I would prefer to use Opera because of its combined mail and browser in a very light installation.

I tried both the 10.5 beta 1 and beta 2 version of Opera. The Beta 1 seemed a vast improvement over its predecessor but barely met the page loading of Firefox 3.6. (Mine is boosted with some speed enhancing config adjustments) The Beta 2 seems slower on page loading.

What I want to know is with all the Speed Test sites proclaiming Opera 10.5 as the fastest (better than Chrome) why is it that on my PC Firefox is definitely in front for page loading. Chrome fares no better.

Any help in understanding this conundrum would be appreciated.

ps I do not have sophisticated measuring equipment. Just a stop watch and a pair of eyes

Thanks

Terry

 

I think that individual software manufacturers & distributors are falling over themselves in advertising double-speak. On my laptop Safari 3 used to be the fastest loading browser. After a while that wasn't the case & I don't even want to talk about Safari 4

However, now SRWare Iron is like the proverbial 's*** off a shovel' & is slightly faster than K-Meleon which is on par with Opera 10.10. Firefox isn't particularly quick on my platform but in all fairness I hardly ever use it. I just think it depends on a combination of your individual set-up, platform & Internet connection.

 

What's also ignored in all of these "speed tests" is that they are static tests using tools made for testing, not real world surfing/downloading/uploading tests on the web. Static, well-controlled testing will NEVER EVER be the same as real world usage. In these so-called "tests", there are no website timeouts, bandwidth anomalies , ISP connection glitches, addons and tweaks to the browsers, security or any other software installed. Even hardware can affect how the browser performs.

Browser tests give you a general idea of how a specific browser CAN perform, but never make the mistake of thinking you WILL get that performance.

 

As others have written, the speed tests aren't universal.
Different computers can provide different results.

 

You already answered your question. You didn't test it out of the box. You are comparing configured Firefox with add-ons (I guess you have noscript, adblock, etc) against "out of the box" browsers.

Configured Opera 10.10 with "add-ons" is faster than out of the box 10.50, at least here on my XP. Does that mean that 10.50 is slower? Yes if I continue to use it like that, and No, because I'm going to configure it.

 

Those speed tests are Javascript benchmarks. Overall page load speed depends on many things, no one can test it for you except yourself.

If you don't surf sophisticated pages full of Javascript then you don't need to worry about those benchmarks.

 

Anyway, SeaMonkey was always faster than Firefox on my computer. K-Meleon is faster than both of them!

I'd probably still be using the Fox-Monkey if I could (a) get the adblocker to work properly & (b) it could render Ajax scripts on interactive sites (like My Yahoo! for instance) properly without the browser not-loading.

 

i'm using right now 3.5.8 because 3.6 is not more fast then 3.5.8 at least for me

may i know about speed enhancing config adjustments?
i know for v2 there was extension to make it faster

thanks Terry