Gadgetory

hey guys what is up it's Duncan and today I'm going to be doing browser tests of each of the five main browsers Internet Explorer opera Firefox Safari and Chrome I'll be checking the speed and I'll also be looking at different features as well as memory usage and general usability of the browsers so let's get this one started okay so today I will be taking a deeper look at each browser to give my opinion on it I don't know that this is certainly far from definitive as this is less of a test on outright numbers more of a test on each browser how it works and how it doesn't first step we have Internet Explorer eight IE 8 has a lot of detractors about it but it also has some good things going for it introduced in IE 8 was a nice add-on called accelerators sliders allow you to do different things with highlighted text so just instantly map it search it translate it and more in general these features are very robust and handy in my opinion and often times I wish I had them in other browsers ie8 also has a good anti phishing filter called smart screen which official tests show does a good job at blocking you from potentially harmful sites lastly ie8 did decently well my memory tests doing a bit better than Chrome with three tabs open however there's a lot wrong with IE 8 while it is much faster than IE 7 it still trails far behind the other four browsers here by a decent margin and it's the only one that actually feels slower which is a big downside another is the security aspect as it's the number one browser viruses and malicious code is often written for it more often than other browsers so while it's not bad browser at all I ate still has a ways to go or can turn the tide of dissenters headed to Firefox Chrome and Safari next we have operatin Opera is one of the rarer browsers but don't let that fool you it's quite good for starters it has some decent speed it did lag behind the frontrunners Chrome and Safari but not by a huge margin and is probably not going to be something you notice unless you happen to have both browsers up Opera is an innovative browser with its speed-dial page which works similarly to the new tab pages in Chrome Safari however it must be said the Opera did come up with the idea first as well as it's offered turbo which supposedly speeds up loading on dial-up connections by 3 or 4 times the interface has some good things about it and it certainly looks nothing like the other browsers however that isn't necessarily a good thing compared to the minimalist interface of problem opera looks somewhat bloated and complicated in reality it's not much bigger but there are quite a few buttons here and there that can be confusing at first one of the biggest complaints I have is this just simply average opera really doesn't stand out in any one great feature like many of the others browsers do it's definitely not a bad way to go however so why not go test it out Firefox is the only browser that really stands a chance in the short term of dethroning Internet Explorer as the most used browser it's easy to see why the biggest pros of Firefox is certainly its support for a huge variety of add-ons they range from everything from YouTube video downloaders to JavaScript blockers to themes to much much more add-ons are easy to find at the official Mozilla website and they are a snap to install and use along with the great add-ons Firefox uses the least ram out of all five browsers so it seems a good candidate for an older computer as well on all Firefox is certainly a very good overall bathroom you don't really have any compromises however it is not perfect even with the latest 3.5 release still gets smoked by both Chrome and Safari and the majority of speed tests although it does beat opera 10 by a small margin however it's considerably faster than 3.0 and for most people it would be perfectly fast Firefox also does look very boring without add-ons and in general the browser likes any kind of real foyer that most of the others possess don't let that put you off though 5ox is over double the market share of opera Chrome and Safari combined and while it's not twice as good there's certainly reason for it Safari 4 is really a browser made by Apple it's very polished and good looking throughout whether it's the menus history search or the new tab page it looks fantastic throughout speaking of that tab page it really is a great piece of eye candy it looks the same as the page on Chrome and opera showing your most viewed site with an option to delete sites or add whichever ones you like Landers each site in great looking cover flow it also updates each pane to reflect what the website looks like right then and it makes the other most viewed sites look positively boring and it's fast very fast different tests give the edge to both it and chrome but make no mistake these are the fastest browsers around and it will be easily apparent as soon as you begin using it perhaps because of the couple flow those great looks could be one of safar as biggest weaknesses memory usage in my admittedly unscientific but still reasonably accurate tests Safari used up twice as much RAM compared to Chrome and three times more than Firefox if you have a modern computer with gigabytes of RAM this won't be a problem you will want to be careful however running Safari 4 on an older computer but when needing quite a bit of RAM the nice-looking cover flow effects won't work on some older computers so that's something to consider altogether though Safari is one of the best browsers around assuming you have a decent computer you will likely be very pleased with it chrome is very minimalist very fast browser the speed is really what strikes you first when using it javascript heavy pages such as Gmail load almost instantly and other pages open almost as fast as your connection will go it has some really nice features such as the omni bar where you can not only enter URLs but also search google or contrary to what some may think any other search engine as well without bothering with a separate entry box it doesn't seem like something useful but as soon as you start using it you wonder why you ever used a separate bar for search the tab handling is also excellent the slick design the last four tabs to be placed up top think valuable room screen real estate in addition it's very simple to drag tabs out to make a new window and it's just as easy to drag a tab back into the main window on the other hand if you really value privacy then Chrome isn't the best choice but it felt allows all cookies including advertisement tracking cookies and allows Google to save the searches you entered into the omni bar even if you don't actually search something however you can remedy this by limiting the cookies accepts and shutting off to Google statistics compared to Firefox it's also somewhat sparse when it comes to features vanilla spider release adds support for themes which is very welcome but there is still a long ways to go before it comes close to matching Firefox that aside don't let that put you off chrome is a very nice browser and I recommend it the least checking it out thanks for watching guys