Dueling Browsers

Today I came across a website where you can test the performance of various Web browsers against each other. Just for fun, I tested all five of the browsers I mentioned in my review a while back. The results were interesting:

First off, explanation: the numbers don't represent any single value, instead they represent some kind of weighted sum of the individual components of the test and serve as a relative performance measurement between browsers. What are these components, you ask? I've copied all the “Details” for each test into the picture below:

Note that these charts are relative, not absolute. If you just look at the length of the bar, it looks like Chrome is really slow in Rendering, but if you look at the numbers you'll see it's actually the second fastest. The bars show the relative strengths between components within browsers.

It's interesting to see how various browsers come out in terms of the various components of the test, how some are well-rounded and others are much better at certain things. It's also interesting how Chrome and Opera are so far ahead of the other three. Chrome clearly shines in the handling of data, being over 3 times faster than its closest competitor Firefox and nearly 5 times faster than Opera. On the other hand, Opera was faster than Chrome in the Rendering, Social networking (however that works), and DOM operations categories, and only slightly slower in the Complex graphics and Text parsing sections. So while all of these browsers will work just fine for rendering modern Web pages, if you want the very best for displaying complicated or involved pages Chrome or Opera are definitely ahead of the pack.