10/25/2007, 3:55pm, EDT
Thursday, October 25th
Safari dusts IE, Firefox in performance
Safari is the king of speed according to a study performed by Michael Czeiszperger, general manager of Web Performance. Czeiszperger tested the Windows versions of Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Mozilla's Firefox 2, concluding "In all cases, the Safari 3 Windows beta was the fastest browser in terms of page load time," according to a Macworld UK report. The tests were performed by browsing the 16 most-trafficked sites as listed by Alexa. Interestingly, the performance differences between Safari and IE, and Safari and Firefox, were minimal when the site was pulled from the local cache, not the actual server. " When pulling a page from a remote server, however, Safari was on average 1.1 seconds faster than IE 7, and 1.4 seconds faster than Firefox.
When Apple first released Safari for Windows, it claimed "Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2."
Apple's performance claims for its Safari browser were subsequently challenged by various reports. Apple's CEO told WWDC attendees during his keynote that the new browser was faster than its Internet Explorer and Firefox components; however, some tests performed showed that "Safari is slower than both IE 7 and Firefox in the login page and message index tests, in both cases by a substantial margin. Only when loading Google Calendar does Safari have a slight edge, clocking in at 12.8 seconds to IE's 17 seconds. But even there, Firefox has both the other browsers beat."
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michael a safari user mac/win
Plus, they now have two different ways of doing menus in their windows products. In Safari, it has the classic general window look (title bar and menu bar separate - although Apple might do well to contemplate following Windows UI guidelines, rather than trying to supplant their own into other's OS's) while iTunes has the menu bar IN the title bar (OK, maybe Apple could just spend some time working on a consistent guideline that at least they could follow).
If MS or Opera or anyone else converted their browser for the Mac and it looked more like the Windows version vice a mac program, they'd get laughed off the downloads page.
Still, Safari is certainly fast for me.
I have wondered about how Apple might adapt Safari to the Windows GUI guidelines, and it is clear that (as with iTunes) it cannot be done in a literal fashion without destroying the appearance. The best they can do is to copy iTune's approach, which they probably will at final release.
I have come to really dislike the Windows MDI UI (menus that are contained within each app window) due to the clutter and inefficiency of the method. What a drag to have to use it at all.
No, iTunes and Safari does follow the poor design choices implemented in windoze, as the menu bar on top is not at the most useful place (which is on the upper edge).
It's buggy as hell and completely unstable_ the Mac beta isn't much better_