Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 09, 2009 by CyberNet.

Ever since we did a browser comparison test last year there have been a lot of emails and comments asking if we were going to update the article to reflect new releases. I thought about adding in the new browsers as they came out, but decided against it for one reason or another. Instead I thought it would be better to just do a fresh article, and include even more stats than last time.

The main reason that I thought this was worthy of its own article was because a lot has changed in the last year. Since March 2008 we’ve seen major milestone releases from each of big browser makers, and to top it off Google Chrome has come onto the scene. These browsers have also shifted focus from adding nifty new features to diving deep into the code trying to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

We’ve got a lot in store for you today ranging from JavaScript speed tests to memory usage comparisons, and we’ll even throw in some Acid 3 coverage. Lets go ahead and dive right in.

Notes about testing:

• All of these tests were performed on the same Windows XP SP3 machine that is wired into a network to eliminate the effects of wireless disturbances.
• All browsers started with a clean profile and no add-ons/extensions were installed.
• All browser data, including caches, were cleared before each test was run.
• Only one browser was open at a time, and no other applications (other than standard XP services) were running.
• Internet Explorer 8 was used in the native rendering mode (“standards compliant mode”).
• No plug-ins (Flash, Java, etc…) were installed on the machine to ensure that slow performance wasn’t due to the loading of a plug-in.

–JavaScript Tests–

The main speed test that everyone seems to use for JavaScript is SunSpider. Last year we compared the browsers with the SunSpider test prior to writing our first comparison, and so we wanted to try something different. That’s when we turned to the MooTools SlickSpeed Test. It tests various operations against a lot of common JavaScript libraries including MooTools and JQuery.

So which one did we go with this year? Well, we did both. We ran each test, SunSpider and SlickSpeed, a total of three times each. Then we averaged the results together to get the pretty little graphs you see below. For both of them the goal was for the browser to complete the tests as fast as possible, and so a lower number is better.

Sunspider Test:

1. Safari 4: 603ms
2. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 636ms
3. Google Chrome 2.0: 720ms
4. Firefox 3.5: 1278ms
5. Opera 10 ^Beta: 2975ms
6. Opera 9.64: 3931ms
7. Internet Explorer 8: 5441ms

MooTools SlickSpeed Test:

1. Opera 10 ^Beta: 330ms
2. Safari 4: 355ms
3. Opera 9.64: 375ms
4. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 464ms
5. Firefox 3.5: 580ms
6. Google Chrome 2.0: 763ms
7. Internet Explorer 8: 1901ms

–Website Rendering Tests–

I used the same method for testing website load times as I did last year. It’s a website called Numion Stopwatch that uses some fancy JavaScript to monitor when a page has finished loading, and then spits out the amount of time it took to complete.

We used two extremely popular sites for these tests: ESPN and the Wall Street Journal. Each site was loaded up three times in each browser, and then the results were averaged together. Obviously we were targeting which browser could load the websites the fastest, and so a lower number is better:

ESPN Load Time:

1. Safari 4: 1.936 seconds
2. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 2.194 seconds
3. Firefox 3.5: 2.380 seconds
4. Internet Explorer 8: 2.604 seconds
5. Opera 10 ^Beta: 2.605 seconds
6. Opera 9.64: 2.651 seconds
7. Google Chrome 2.0: 2.873 seconds

Wall Street Journal Load Time:

1. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 1.612 seconds
2. Opera 10 ^Beta: 1.989 seconds
3. Opera 9.64: 2.141 seconds
4. Safari 4: 2.166 seconds
5. Google Chrome 2.0: 2.552 seconds
6. Firefox 3.5: 2.886 seconds
7. Internet Explorer 8: 3.292 seconds

–Memory Usage Tests–

I’m sure this is what many of you were looking for. As geeks we like to have a lean browser that knows how to handle itself without us having to keep a watchful eye over it. That’s why we ran numerous different tests to see just how well a browser controls its memory usage when loading a decent number of sites, and also whether it’s able to release that memory once you’ve closed the tabs.

Here’s a rundown of the order in which we ran the tests to collect the stats:

1. We started the browser, and took a memory usage reading.
2. Loaded 10 predetermined sites in tabs, and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
3. Loaded 15 more predetermined sites in tabs (totaling 25 sites), and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
4. Let the browser sit for 10 minutes with the 25 tabs open, and then took a memory usage reading.
5. Closed all the tabs except for Google.com, which was always the first site opened. Then we took a memory usage reading.

And here are the results. The best browser for each test is highlighted in green, and the worst is highlighted in red.

–Acid 3 Tests–

Last year we also took a look at how the various browsers scored on the Acid 3 test. At the time a Safari nightly build was the closest to perfection by reaching a score of 86 out of 100. Today, however, is a different story. A few browsers can handle the test perfectly, some are very very close, and others (yeah, IE) have some work cut out for themselves.

Note: Click on any of the thumbnails for a full-size rendering.

1. Safari 4 (100/100) – It gets a perfect score and renders everything correctly.
   
2. Opera 10 ^Beta (100/100) – It gets a perfect score and renders everything correctly.
   
3. Google Chrome 2.0 (100/100) – It gets a perfect score, but not all tests are executed successfully.
   
4. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta (100/100) – It gets a perfect score, but not all tests are executed successfully.
   
5. Firefox 3.5 (93/100) – It gets a near perfect score.
   
6. Opera 9.6 (85/100) – This is the oldest release we tested, and it comes as no surprise that it doesn’t pass the test. It should be noted that the next milestone, version 10, does pass the test perfectly as seen above.
   
7. Internet Explorer 8 (20/100) – While they still have a ways to go before they get a perfect, I do have to give them credit for at least making the image look halfway normal. You know what I’m talking about if you remember what IE7′s rendering of the Acid 3 test was like.
   

–Conclusion–

So which browser is the winner? I wouldn’t really say any of them outshine the others. The problem that we are going to face with performance tests from here on out is that the browsers will all come very close to each other in the standings… often within a fraction of a second from one another. As the browsers continue to get optimized we will see these times get even closer, and performance might become less of a concern which picking which one we want to use. So I’d say to pick the browser you feel the most comfortable with, because it’s getting hard to distinguish one browser from another when it comes to performance.

What’s your take on the stats? Anything stand out to you? Will you be switching browsers based upon anything you learned here?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

As websites continue to become more and more AJAXified I believe that bookmarklets are going to become a larger driving force. Some of you may not be familiar with bookmarklets, so I was trying to think of a good way I could explain them. When I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article I thought it couldn’t be said any better:

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page. Because Internet Explorer uses the term favorites instead of bookmarks, bookmarklets are also less commonly called favelets by users.

Bookmarklets can be saved and used like normal web page bookmarks. Therefore, they are simple “one-click” tools that can add substantial functionality to the browser. For example, they can:

• Modify the way a web page is displayed within the browser (e.g., change the font size, background color, etc.).
• Extract data from a web page (e.g., hyperlinks, images, text, etc.).
• Jump directly to a search engine, with the search term(s) input either from a new dialog box, or from a selection already made on a web page.
• Submit the page to a validation service.

There are all kinds of services that provide bookmarks, especially for browsers that don’t support extensions or add-ons, like Opera. The problem is trying to find ones that are actually useful to you. Below I have categorized the different bookmarklets depending on what you are trying to do. I have quite an extensive collection of bookmarklets that I have gathered over the years with my two primary sources being SquareFree and OperaWiki. I’ll be mashing the two sources together to bring you my favorites, and each one will have images signaling which browsers they work with (Firefox 2 , Internet Explorer 7 , and Opera 9 ).

Note: To use any of the following bookmarklets just hold down the left mouse button and drag the hyperlink to the bookmark toolbar in your browser. 

–Hyperlink Manipulation–

• Color code links  
  Makes all internal links on a site red, external links blue, and links pointing to the current page (internal bookmarks) orange.
• Hide visited hyperlinks  
  Removes all hyperlinks that you have already visited on a site, therefore making it easier to see which links you still need to open.
• Rewrite redirects  
  This script will rewrite all URL’s to point directly to the source instead of routing through a redirect URL.
• Increment URL  
  Increases the last number in the URL by 1. This will often work with sites where you go through multiple pages, and therefore simulates pressing the “Next” link.
• Decrement URL  
  Decreases the last number in the URL by 1. This will often work with sites where you go through multiple pages, and therefore simulates pressing the “Previous” link.
• Generate TinyURL   
  Creates a TinyURL for the current site.
• Linkify
  Make all plain-text URL’s into hyperlinks.

–Form Manipulation–

• View password  
  Shows password field in plain text instead of asterisks. 
• Remember passwords
  Some sites try to block passwords from being stored by using the “autocomplete=off” option in the form. If a website is blocking the storage of a password using this option (such as Yahoo! Mail) then it will remove it from the HTML so that the browser can store the password. 

 –Appearance Manipulation–

• Remove bloat  
  Eliminates all occurrences of Flash, Java, music, and third-party iframes.
• Disable StyleSheets  
  Turns off all stylesheets which might be useful for hard-to-read websites.
• Slowly load the site
  Choose how many characters to load on the site each second. Might be useful to test what your site looks like on a dial-up connection by setting the character limit to something low.
• Duplicate tab
  Opens the current site in a new tab. 
• Highlight search term   (submitted by “edwest”)
  Prompts for a search term that you would like to highlight on the current page.
• Ultimate Highlight   (submitted by “Chad-)”)
  Prompts for a search term to be highlighted. It will also display a box in the upper-right corner of the screen with the number of results on the page and a link to start a new search.

–Cookie Manipulation–

• Remove site’s cookies  
  Deletes all cookies created by the current site.
• View site’s cookies  
  View all cookies created by the current site.
• Transfer site’s cookies  
  Transfer cookies created by the current site to a different browser. This bookmarklet will give you the necessary code to re-create a specific cookie in a different browser.

–Other Bookmarklets– 

• Calculator  
  A popup window where you can enter in a simple calculation such as “7 + 4″ and have it return the sum of those two numbers.
• ASCII table  
  Shows the ASCII character table in a new window
• WebColors  
  Shows the 216 “browser-safe” colors with their corresponding hex codes.
• Scroll by Dragging   (submitted by “Chad-)”)
  Executing this bookmarklet will turn the cursor into a scroller and executing it again will return it back to normal.

There you go…now you can start to utilize the power of bookmarklets. If you’re a Firefox user, than many of the bookmarklets mentioned above can also be found in extensions, such as the Linkify. Personally I prefer to use the bookmarklets so that I keep my extensions list to a minimum, and also because I don’t want an extension analyzing every site that I visit when it really isn’t necessary.

There are many more bookmarklets available, so I tried to keep the list concise, yet thorough. If you know of a bookmarklet that you can’t live without, let us know so that we can add it to the list.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

We’ve shown you how easy it can be to retrieve passwords stored in your browser, provided that someone has access to your computer. Well, that’s not the only way for a hacker to gain access to some of the information stored in the Firefox Password Manager. A new flaw that was just revealed late last week can retrieve some of your passwords using a very small amount of JavaScript.

How does it work? Here’s a quick example of what could happen:

1. User visits a site such as their own blog hosted on a popular network (something like Blogger).
2. They login, and have Firefox remember their username/password.
3. They visit someone else’s blog on the same domain, and a username/password form appears on the site. As expected Firefox autofills the information for the user (both the username and password) so that they can just hit enter to login.
4. The site is able to use some JavaScript to store the username and password without the user even hitting the Submit button. This is done by having the JavaScript go and retrieve the values located in the text box (document.<form>.<field>.value).

This flaw can only be used to expose the username and password that is entered into a form, and Firefox automatically does this for people who have stored a password. That means your information could be surrendered without you even realizing it.

If you want to try this out yourself, Heise has setup a demo site where you makeup a username/password, and then have Firefox store it. Then when you go to the “evil” page, Firefox will automatically fill out the form and a popup will reveal the username and password you stored.

To get around this happening, it is recommended that you either don’t store passwords in Firefox or you disable JavaScript. Of course, this is really only an issue on a “network” of sites that all have the same domain. The reason for that is because Firefox will not, for example, fill in your bank’s username and password here on CyberNet. So just be aware of what passwords you have stored, and you can always have Firefox prompt you for a master password before it autofills any information.

An alternative that xpgeek pointed out in the forum is to install the Secure Login extension to prevent Firefox from automatically filling in password forms.

Note: This vulnerability also affects the Safari browser.

– What’s the Most Secure Browser? –

I decided to lookup on Secunia, who tracks vulnerabilities for more than 14,000 applications, to see which browser is currently the most secure. Here’s what I came up with:

• Opera 9.x has had 8 advisories, all of which have been patched. [source]
• Firefox 2.0.x has had 13 advisories, and there are 6 that have not been patched. [source]
• Internet Explorer 7.x has had 14 advisories, and there are 8 that have not been patched. [source]

You can take that information for what it’s worth, but it goes to show that most browsers constantly have security-related flaws.

Source: Heise Security [via Slashdot]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Opera issued a press release today announcing an antitrust complaint that they filed with the European Commission. In the complaint they argue that Microsoft should be required to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows, and that the browser should follow the Web standards that many other browsers are already compliant with.

They are “filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them,” according to Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO. In Opera’s own words they would like to…

1. Obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop.
2. Require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.

As a Web developer myself it is always difficult designing websites that work on all browsers, but I do have to say that Internet Explorer 7 is much easier to design for than its predecessors. But still, Opera Watch’s Daniel Goldman makes a good point when he says:

We, as Web users, will greatly benefit when Microsoft will start supporting Web standards, something which the other major Web browsers (Firefox, Opera, and Safari) have been doing for quite some time already.

I’m not sure how this is going to play out, but everyone knows that the European Union (EU) has ruled against Microsoft in the past. Because of them Microsoft has had to offer a version of Windows that does not have Windows Media Player bundled with it, and has also had to pay a $613 million fine.

It does make you wonder how you would download another browser if Windows didn’t come with Internet Explorer, and you only had that one computer?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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