“The problem is that there are no widely accepted tests that can accurately gauge real-world Web browsing, which includes page loading, running JavaScript, and performance on Web-based services such as Gmail. In my experience, Safari felt slightly faster than Chrome on the Mac, but on the PC, I was unable to discern any difference between the two,” Gralla reports.
“I put Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer through the most widely accepted browser speed test, the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark suite… So who is the speed king? In real-world use, you’ll likely find Safari and Chrome indistinguishable,” Gralla reports. “How does Safari stack up against Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer? When it comes to speed, Safari’s at the head of the pack — at least, on the Mac. Its new Reader feature is unique among browsers; as a result, for reading long Web articles, Safari is clearly the best browser.”
“However, even though Safari now supports extensions, at the moment there are few available, so it’s far behind Firefox and even Chrome in this area. Its address bar is the least functional of all the browsers, and its bookmarking, which is no different from the last version, is still very basic and leaves something to be desired,” Gralla reports. “The upshot is that anyone who already uses Safari should upgrade immediately. Those who have yet to use Safari may well want to download it as well, if only to check out the Safari Reader for reading long articles, and for experiencing speedy Web browsing.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari