Vacation From Google Chrome: Final Thoughts

Well, it has been about a month since I used Google Chrome, and it was surprisingly easy. Like I said in my Firefox post, 4 of the 5 browsers (excluding IE) could easily be considered 5x better than any browser 5 years ago. Picking one of them is good enough for most people. Of course, me being the tech person I am, I need to make sure I have the best of the best. I am now going to go through many different categories and rank how the four browser fared, and them rank them in order of how much I liked them at the end.

Speed – Winner: Opera

Speed is definitely one of the most important thing I look for in a browser. It was one of the main reasons that I switched to Google Chrome. As I went through this month, the speed was what I expected for all the browsers except for one which was a big shocker. I had imagined Opera to be one of the slower ones. Sure I had seen Lifehacker’s speed tests which ranked it pretty high, sometimes even better than Chrome, but due to past experiences I had just assumed it was slow. That’s the way it was when I used it back in version 9. However, that has significantly changed. Opera is now very fast, maybe at the same speed as Google Chrome. I will have to run speed tests to see which one is faster. In my past speed tests I didn’t even include Opera because of my past experience. Let’s not forget “Opera Turbo” as well, which makes Opera the fastest on slow connections. With the rest, both Safari and Firefox had okay speeds, and as expected, Internet Explorer was by far the slowest.

Ranks:

1. Opera

2. Firefox, Safari

4. Internet Explorer

Addons – Winner: Firefox

This one was another that was really what I expected. Firefox, of course, had the best addon selection. That’s what it is world famous for, and it was the main reason that I didn’t switch to Google Chrome earlier. Firefox has so many addons it is unbelievable. Sure Internet Explorer has some, but it isn’t even close to matching the selection that you get in Firefox. Opera has a bunch of features you would want with addons in the first place (like mouse-gestures, speed dial), however it doesn’t have an addon selection, only widgets (which suck btw). Safari, on the other-hand, has almost nothing that you can get. The only thing I could come across was Surf Canyon.

Ranks:

1. Firefox

2. Internet Explorer

3. Opera

4. Safari

GUI – Winner: Opera

Looks certainly must be very important in choosing a browser. Take a car for example. Even if it has a killer engine with a lot of horse power and many features, you most likely won’t buy it if it is really ugly. The same concept exists for the most part with web browsers in my opinion. While I certainly would never pick a browser just because of its look, it certainly plays a part. I thought that IE had the worst look. It may be just because I have beef with IE or something, but I just don’t like it. Firefox probably is second worse. One of the main reasons I actually did switch from IE to Firefox was the look. It is very simple and better than IE’s, but I really like the other two browser’s themes better. Safari comes in second best. It looks very similar to Google Chrome, and I like the grey theme with iTunes like history, bookmarks, etc. However, I was really fond of Opera’s. If it didn’t have the red “o”, you could honestly confuse it with Google Chrome. However, what makes it the best is that “o” (saves space with one button instead of two) and it has tabs on the top (which saves room and is more logical). With the speed and GUI, it was easy to use Opera for a week.

Ranks:

1. Opera

2. Safari

3. Firefox

4. Internet Explorer

Features – Winner: Opera

Features are certainly important as well, and Opera sure is leading the pack. Opera has always been the leader of innovation (tabs being the most important IMO), and I was hoping to see the future of the web browser when I was using Opera… sure enough I did. Opera has mouse-gestures and speed dial. While Safari has speed dial and you can get both these in Firefox and GC with addons, they come natively in Opera. But that’s not it by no means. The sidebar was super-convenient with RSS feeds and e-mail. E-mail built into the browser! It makes so much since. E-mail is such an essential web service, so it should be built into it. Opera also had built in Chat, “Opera Link” and “Opera Unite” for synchronization, and many more. I’m just touching the very tip of the iceberg. Nothing really stood out in both Firefox and Safari, but Internet Explorer had hardly any features at all. For how clunky and bloated it is, I am surprised there aren’t more features.

Ranks:

1. Opera

2. Firefox, Safari

4. Internet Explorer

Content/Website Compatibility – Winner: Firefox

Sure now a days it is rare to come across something that doesn’t work on a website or website itself that doesn’t work (except for IE), but it is still important to have a solid browser that is very compatible. In every browser I used I had at least one page or content on a page that didn’t work, except for Firefox. Everything worked with it. Even if a page doesn’t work with it (which is getting rarer and rarer), you could always open it in an IE tab as well. Most things worked in both Safari and Opera, but I had to boot open a different browser for Snapfish because the up-loader was loading and both wouldn’t let me fill out my March Madness bracket. However, those were my only problems, and they are extremely rare. IE always brags about site compatibility, but that’s not saying much. Maybe 1/5 sites had some element on a page that didn’t load. It was disaster for a browser in 2010. Maybe if we were 2002 it would be a different story… maybe.

Ranks:

1. Firefox

2. Opera, Safari

4. Internet Explorer

Performance – Winner: Opera

This will be my final category to review. Performance includes how often it crashes, memory usage, how often it freezes, and that type of thing. Speed is a whole different category. Both Firefox and Opera had solid performance. However, I picked Opera considering the fact that if I used Firefox as a full-time browser, I would go extension crazy and the browser would become very bloated, which would minimize performance. I had several crashes with Safari, however, Internet Explorer was outright horrible. It would freeze with over 5 tabs. The memory usage would often reach 500K, and the tab isolation didn’t work. Sure it has tab isolation, but the browser constantly froze so I had to quit the entire browser countless times in the Task Manager.

Ranks:

1. Opera

2. Firefox

3. Safari

4. Internet Explorer

Final, Final Thoughts/Future Of This/Totals

Overall, the month was very easy. Here are my thoughts on each browser with what they could improve on and what they are good at:

Opera: Great with features and speed. The only thing I could ask are addons (which much of what I would normally want is already included), more customization over the mouse-gestures, and tab-isolation (not that I ever needed it).

Firefox: About the same as when I left it. Pretty solid browser for actual web pages, and it had a good developing community. It should get better speed and performance before developing more.

Safari: It is a pretty good browser for basic needs. I like the look and it is pretty good with web standards. Similar to Firefox, it needs better speed and performance. Also, Safari doesn’t really have a good developing community and as a result has few extensions. Extensions may be something worth looking into. I’d steer clear of Safari as there are better browsers, but it is a lot better than IE and will suit people’s basic needs. May be good for somebody coming to Windows from Mac and just needs the basics.

Internet Explorer: IE outright sucks and its lame that many people aren’t aware there are many better alternatives. Similar to Firefox, I advise that Microsoft works on IE’s speed and performance, but I stress it 100x more than I did to Firefox. Also, it needs to meet way higher web standards. None of these below 40 scores on the Acid 3 test.

Here are the rankings of the browsers based on the categories above with no special weighing (a lower score is better)

1. Opera – 9 Points

2. Firefox – 11 Points

3. Safari – 15 Points

4. Internet Explorer – 22 Points

And finally, where is this all going? Well, this may be shocking news, but I am considering switching to Opera. So for the next two months or so I will be comparing the two, and I will be making my decision on May 23 (the 1 year anniversary that I switched to Google Chrome). In every new major release of a browser I will also take a week away from my default browser to see if it made any improvements.

Anyways, thanks for all who read my blog series. I encourage you all to do the same to find out which browser you like best. And please continue to read on as I compare Opera and Google Chrome.

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