Posted on 06/22/2011 6:26:22 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Officially, Firefox 5 is scheduled for release tomorrow. However, users of the beta channel have already got their hands on it. One of the promises for Firefox 5 is better performance. We took tested Firefox 5 and benchmarked it against two other browsers - Google Chrome and Opera. We used the latest version of Google Chrome from the beta channel and the latest stable version of Opera - Opera 11.11.
The SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark is a test for the JavaScript engine of the browser. In this benchmark, lower scores (time) means better performance. In our earlier benchmarks, Firefox is always slower than other browsers such as Chrome and Opera. Let us see how well Firefox 5 does.
As you can see from the graph above, Firefox 5 has made huge improvements in its JavaScript engine. It is now much faster than both Chrome and Opera. However, the difference is very small - just 30ms faster than Chrome and 8ms faster than Opera. So, finally Firefox can no longer be considered a slow browser.
Peacekeeper is yet another highly regarded test for the JavaScript engine. Unlike the SunSpider test, Peacekeeper tests the normal JavaScript applications such as animations, navigation, forms etc. In this test, higher scores means better performance. Here is the result:
The result from the Peacekeeper test is very different from that of the SunSpider test. Here, Opera got the highest score while Firefox 5, which did best in SunSpider, performed the worst of the three browsers.
The HTML5 Test is a test to determine how many of the HTML5 and related specifications are supported by the browser. It does not test how well the specifications are supported. Scores are awarded for support of the HTML5 standards and bonus points are awarded for supporting related drafts and specifications. Higher scores are preferred in this test.
In this test, Chrome takes the lead by scoring more than 300 points. Opera and Firefox are neck to neck with Firefox scoring 254 and Opera scoring 255. The performance of Firefox 5, is a huge improvement from that of Firefox 4 which manages a score of just above 200.
This is the time it takes for a browser to start on a machine that has been just restarted. Once the machine has finished loading everything, the browser is restarted and the time it takes for it to load a locally stored file is found out. Obviously, lower cold start time is preferred. Here is how the browsers performed:
Opera takes the longest time to start here at around seven seconds. The other two browsers have almost the same cold start time at a little above four seconds.
A test for warm start was not done because all of the three browsers have a warm start time of less than a second and it was impossible to time it properly.
The different browsers takes up varying amount of RAM. To test how much each of them is taking up, we loaded 25 popular websites and check the memory consumption of the browser after opening every five websites. Extensions, add-ons etc. which are not installed by default are removed. Here is the result:
The result here is staggering. While Chrome takes up more than 1GB of RAM on opening 25 websites, Opera and Firefox takes up a little more than only 400 MB. Firefox and Opera takes up nearly identical RAM throughout, although Firefox takes up a little bit less than Opera.
As you can see, Firefox 5 does very well in four out of the five tests. Here are some of the main points about Firefox 5 from the tests:
a few weeks ago I downloaded one of the high 4.’s. I didn’t like it so I went back to the early 3’s. In a week or so I might try this 5 depending on what this thread has to say.
Actually, I gave up on Ghostery a long time ago: it nuked way too much actually necessary content. Probably 10% of my pages wouldn’t work any more.
For me, the best addons for FF are:
zoomtoolbar (fantastic for folks with eyesight issues)
Adblock Plus with a few of the Fanboy and Easylist subscriptions, one of which is an anti-tracker.
Tab Mix Plus
IE View
Flashblock
Downloadhelper
StatusbarEx
ViewAbout
Also, MozBackup is a great program for backing up and restoring FF and Tbird configurations once you figure out one or two eccentricities.
Thanks catnipman, I look forward to trying them out.
Great idea. I could use that for a certain poster who posts about the parentage of Republican presidential candidates in just about every thread mentioning a Republican presidential candidate.
Same here. Much quicker and I really like the tabs at the top of the toolbar - much easier to see what I have open.
I did as well. We’ll see how it runs...
Try DownloadHelper. It allows the download of video off YouTube and other sites. I have a lot of video from old TV shows I’ve downloaded and watch. Fun stuff.
Link for Xinha Here! 0.17 doesn’t work. Get a ‘page not found’ sheet. Also, it comes up empty when going through add-ons search.
So how do you prevent the memory leaks?
Can you be more specific? A search through the addons for “DownloadHelper” resulted in many choices.
Same here. So far, so good.
One of the reasons I’m still using Firefox 3.6.18 is the problem with addons not being compatible with the upgrade. Further, with the slowness and crashes reported with version 4, I think I’ll stick with version 3 for a while, at least until version 5 is proofed a bit longer.
The add-ons that I find most useful with Free Republic and other non-HTML bulletin boards are BBCode and BBCodeXtra. They allow one click posting of URL’s, images, bold, italics, etc. Also, Word Count Plus which allows me to not violate FR’s excerpting rules (1/3 of total article words or 300 words, whichever is less) when preparing an article for posting.
Other ones useful to me are Tab Saver (restores tabs if you accidentally close the Firefox window), and Tab X which gives each tab a close button.
I was given help with the incompatibility of add-ons with never Firefox versions by installing Add-on Compatibility Reporter which will identify incompatible add-ons but allow you to continue using them at your own risk, of course. Here is the information on this add-on:
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/04/01/firefox-add-on-compatibility-reporter-force-add-on-compatibility/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/
FYI - you can put the tabs back in their familiar position at any time by going to the View menu and selecting - Toolbars - Tabs on Top (check or uncheck). There’s also a nice feature at the right of the tab bar that lets you view all open tabs in a group and then select from among them.
...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xinha-here/
Xinha Here! 0.17
by Hypercubed
Portable WYSIWYG editor! No matter what site you’re visiting you can launch a WYSIWYG right in your browser.
Wow! Thanks for the FRPFE mention. I just added it. I love it!
Thanks for the link. I’ve added it, re-booted Firefox, and I can’t find it. How do you activate it? My add-ons link show’s it’s operating...
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