Browsers speed compared

[timwhit]

Yep. Graphic design and publishing places still use Quark. What else is out there?

Adobe InDesign.

 

[Mercutio]

Adobe InDesign.

Made by Adobe. Doesn't count.

I know both my local papers (not Chicago) still work in Quark. My company has done Quark training as recently as the beginning of this year. So people still use Quark.

I do about 90% of my word processing in Google Docs these days, but when I'm finishing a book or handout for my classes I still need a desktop word processor to allow for floating text boxes and the small graphics I need when I'm dealing with screenshots.

Virtually all my application needs these days are being met with browser based apps, now that I think about it. I haven't even needed Visio in months.

 

[timwhit]

I haven't even needed Visio in months.

What do you use in place of Visio?

 

[Mercutio]

What do you use in place of Visio?

Gliffy.com

 

[LunarMist]

Gliffy, WTF? Are the files compatible with Visio?

 

[Mercutio]

No, but if I'm being lazy I'll just clip the diagram into a PNG or something.

 

[sechs]

Adobe InDesign.

Quark's development time is so glacial, I thought that they were just a niche product for newspapers stuck in the nineties.

A new version of FrameMaker came out recently. I thought it was dead, too. But PageMaker... that's really done.

 

[Tannin]

Tannin, have you ever tried a desktop publishing tool like Quarkxpress for managing your word processing needs?

Actually, no, Doug. Never occurred to me. But even if you gave it to me, the time it would take for me to learn a new application and become efficient at it ... it would never repay itself, not given that I already know how to do anything I need to do in HTML and have (in many cases) the CSS ready to re-use.

Writing print stylesheets is a complete pain, by the way, but once you have done one, you can use it a million times over. The secret is that a lot of HTML print formatting is done by the browser and is not under your control - you have nowhere near the ability to control the browser's rendering of the printed page that you have of the screen version of a page - and every damn browser does different stuff: you can't predict it. But if (as in my case) you have the luxury of being able to write for a single, known browser, with known, consistent user settings, then you can just get hte CSS right once and then forget about it. The only thing I have to remember is to set Firefox (Firefox has the best print system - beats Opera and IE hollow in this regard) to my standard margins and etc. when I do a reinstall.

Oh, and I also have to remember not to keep putting the (p) and (/p) around all my paragraphs if I happen to be using (e.g.) Word for some reason. Half the time my fingers just do it without me telling them to.

 

[Mercutio]

Article on Slashdot: Youtube begins phasing out support for IE6.

First post, from Anonymous Coward:

Good. That's like phasing out of support for cancer.

I laughed so hard I almost pissed myself.

 

[LunarMist]

YouTube doesn't make any money off of me so I'll not miss be able to view them either.

 

[Handruin]

Article on Slashdot: Youtube begins phasing out support for IE6.

First post, from Anonymous Coward:



I laughed so hard I almost pissed myself.

I'm still chucklin...that's some funny shit.

 

[udaman]

...on dialup, I don't notice much difference btw FF 3.1 & 3.5 as far as speed. I've been using 3.5 since it's release under OSX 10.5.7...unlike Opera which works with 10.2 and newer, FF 3.5 will only run on OSX 10.4 and newer

Nor sure what they mean by lightweight? Start up on FF consumes ~60MB RAM. While that's not much, I don't consider it lightweight. And then open up a dozen tabs and each tab initially uses up 10MB or more of RAM. After a while FF3.5 consumes so much RAM, I need to restart my computer (or quit FF, but I don't think that frees up RAM in the same manner, even if the activity monitor 'shows' more than 500MB of RAM is now available) to get everything reset with the RAM addressing. Same thing happens with Safari 4.0, both of these browsers are memory hogs and after a while, consume all CPU, causing posting on SF to be slow or impossible .

The new way FF3.5 reports the 'history' is a PITA 'today', 'yesterday', 'a week', I prefer the way Opera does it.


Browser tests: Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari


http://www.electronista.com/reviews/browser-tests-chrome-firefox-ie-safari.html

personal usage thoughts

While not the champion, the new Firefox 3.5 is still noticeably faster in daily browsing than the previous 3.1 edition. It also still has the largest development community of all of the browsers available today and its add-on architecture is not only flexible but results in top notch contributions. Despite coming in third in our speed tests, it's responsive for day to day use and is quite stable, which couldn't always be said for earlier versions and other modern browsers.

Internet Explorer may still have the largest share of the browser market, but after these tests we're wondering why. There are no redeeming qualities to the software's performance or ability to draw websites, and it's bad enough that we would recommend any other browser over Internet Explorer unless it's absolutely required. Just as in the tests, IE is tangibly slower in common use and sometimes creates problems with viewing sites as they were intended.

Chrome and Safari shared the top spot for a reason: they consistently took top ranks in our speed tests and are both a pleasure to use. They may have garnered less than 5 percent of the global browser market, but they're both excellent browsers that deserve more. Either is very lightweight and has an extremely simple user interface that gets out of the way when possible. If you haven’t tried one of these browsers before, we would highly recommend giving one or both of them a go for a solid week -- though Mac users will likely have already spent their fair share of time with Apple's software, which can't be said for Windows users and Chrome.

wrapping up

Between the Acid and JavaScript testing and our real world usage tests, we can say without a doubt that we would recommend virtually any of these browsers other than Internet Explorer. We didn’t design this article to bash against Microsoft, but their product truly is second class compared to the competition. Firefox is great for those that love add-ons, and Chrome and Safari are both very high-speed but also low-frills.