I have the latest versions of Netscape 7.x and IE 6.x set up on my PII 233mhz 64mb old school machine.

I wanted to test which browser was faster on a low end machine so I set both browsers to open to a blank page and conducted my 1st experiment of which browser loads faster. The results were: It takes IE 5.7 seconds to load to a blank page and Netscape a slow 9.0 seconds.

My 2nd test was to time the loading of www.valhallalegends.com with both browsers. The results were: It took IE 3.2 seconds and Netscape 4.5 seconds. The tests were performed on the same ADSL connection.

My 3ed test was to determine if they both display XHTML 1.0 correctly. The results were: IE and Netscape both displayed identical results.

My opinion is that they are both good browsers but I will keep using IE because I found it to be a little bit faster and Netscape has nothing special to entice me to use their browser.

Why did you limit yourself to just those two browsers?

They are the most widely used.

[quote author=Invert link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=0#msg10919 date=1054087012]
My 3ed test was to determine if they both display XHTML 1.0 correctly. The results were: IE and Netscape both displayed identical results.
[/quote]
This has more to do with the version of the software than the quality of the hardware...

Netscape 7.0.2 doesn't display XML formatted with XSL correctly, just so you know.

There might be an issue with the shell integration of IE 6.x - a larger part of the dlls used by it may be in the cache. It would be interesting to see if you get any different startup times if you set the computer to use cmd.exe as the shell instead of explorer...

When you tested Netscape, did you already have the application running (ie. another window open)? If you did not, then the tests were not accurate. Netscape usually takes a while to start, but opens windows very fast. Internet Explorer is built into the operating system so when you start up the computer, you are inadvertantly starting IE.

You should have also tried Opera 7. Opera is the self-proclaimed "Fastest browser on Earth."

In defense of Invert's tests, why not test it yourself and post your results? It's so easy for critics and doubters to tear down the work someone else has done, but are they willing to set up what they consider a proper test and run it themselves? Are they willing to post their findings and let others second-guess? We'll see.

[quote author=Grok link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=0#msg11407 date=1054583530]
In defense of Invert's tests, why not test it yourself and post your results? It's so easy for critics and doubters to tear down the work someone else has done, but are they willing to set up what they consider a proper test and run it themselves? Are they willing to post their findings and let others second-guess? We'll see.
[/quote]

I already know that IE starts much faster in the real application I have: My nice 200 MHz comp! But I still think it's more because of the integration than because of IE being better. So, IE is better. Not because it's better, but because it's integrated.

IE for Mac was always fast for me, on my school's iMacs *shudders*. About as fast as it loads on my 1ghz pc here.

IE 5 runs somewhat slowly on my friend's 486 with 16mb RAM...

[quote author=Adron link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=0#msg11416 date=1054589488]
[quote author=Grok link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=0#msg11407 date=1054583530]
In defense of Invert's tests, why not test it yourself and post your results? It's so easy for critics and doubters to tear down the work someone else has done, but are they willing to set up what they consider a proper test and run it themselves? Are they willing to post their findings and let others second-guess? We'll see.
[/quote]

I already know that IE starts much faster in the real application I have: My nice 200 MHz comp! But I still think it's more because of the integration than because of IE being better. So, IE is better. Not because it's better, but because it's integrated.

[/quote]

OK, it might be true. Is it true? Is shdocvw.dll already loaded in the process of iexplore.exe? No, the process does not exist until created. It could be interesting to prove what integrated means relative to loading speed. Does the kernel detect NS and slow it down? Does NS simply want to do too much at startup?

After the browsers are loaded, are rendering speeds different when going to a new uncached page? What about rendering speeds going to a cached page? And if the page (cached or not) is DOCTYPE compliant, which browser is faster then?

There are all sorts of "faster".

If the content of this article is true, you won't ever have to worry about Netscape being slow or fast again. :(

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/leon/2003/06/02/unholy_alliance/index_np.html

That sucks. What can I say; Microsoft is just too smart, and the other corporations are just too stupid.

Not so natural selection, survival of the fittest.

Netscape sucks. Everyone knows it's just mozilla with more bloat. Not to say Mozilla is good either, I think it's one slow mother which hogs too much RAM, not to mention it spews DLLs all over the place.

I'm an Opera7 addict. So sue me :)

Don't mean to be offensive, but personally, I wouldn't think your test results could change my opinion at all, 1 second difference isn't much.. I judge a lot of things like a browser by their appearance, how much CPU Usage each takes, and whether or not it's got a lot of features/versitility and etc..

I think a list of comparisons would be better than the seconds each takes to load.

Still, I thought maybe each of the browsers took the exact same time and the time to load a page was judged on your connection, but I guess not. =/

Netscape follows the w3c standards more strictly (they do not create their own markup or CSS) but does not support as many new w3c standards as IE. I found that out recently.

Why don't YOU do a feature comparison? This test was about the relevant uses of the 2 browsers. Loading speed and website processing speed.

[quote author=ch33z3 link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=15#msg11670 date=1054858476]
Still, I thought maybe each of the browsers took the exact same time and the time to load a page was judged on your connection, but I guess not. =/
[/quote]

Do you think that makes sense? You download the content at the same speed (my test was not about that) but the time it takes the browser to interpret the content is not the same.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I was just trying to say that a few seconds isn't much of a big deal. I'm sure that the speed appeals more to you than me, but I don't care about that stuff, Hardware is always better than Software..

A thought about testing browsers -- whoever is considering it.

When testing, one might wish to load static pages that are on the local PC to get a consistent content at a consistent rate.

IE and NS each fully cache a certain number of previous pages viewed. I remember IE 4.01 would cache 4 pages. That is, you could click back on your browser 4 times and each page, (if static and nonexpiring), would display without visiting the web server. Back a 5th time would visit the server and request that page.

If you use active content pages, such as ASP, CGI, the server might detect your browser and issue different html. So you're not getting a good test in that situation.

[quote]
If you use active content pages, such as ASP, CGI, the server might detect your browser and issue different html. So you're not getting a good test in that situation.
[/quote]

Well in a sense couldn't that be a good test? Wouldn’t it show you which browser is better suited to handle those situations?[quote][/quote]

[quote author=Tuberload link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=15#msg11686 date=1054878370]
Well in a sense couldn't that be a good test? Wouldn’t it show you which browser is better suited to handle those situations?[/quote]

No. If what you're testing is the ability of a particular web browser to generate the best html for a given client (IE, Opera, Netscape, Lynx) then you want to allow dynamic HTML creation.

If what you're testing is browsers A vs B, you want each to be given the same HTML.

By letting the servers detect the browser and vary the HTML based on the target, the response of A and B to that content cannot be compared.

No one uses netscape anyway...Opera is where it's at :)

Doesn't matter. They both equally suck in terms of DTD support. Who wants to use a browser that doesn't do what it's supposed to when it's supposed to? Aside from that, Netscape has drastically better FONT support than IE or Opera.

IE has better CSS support simply because IE decided what they wanted CSS to do and implimented it. They never changed their CSS support or any support for HTML elements, as oposed to say Netscape with its LAYER and ILAYER support only present in NS4.0.

I must say that comparing two browsers is pathetic when neither of them actaully allow full user control as by custom DTDs. Netscape does not conform to W3C standards better than IE. The W3C conforms to Netscape standards better than to IE standards simply because Netscape says explicitly how they support things - everything microsoft makes is closed and private. If you work for MS and disclose the source code for anything, you will find yourself dying of natural causes pretty quickly.

The W3C is basically a joke. If you have ever looked at the times where browsers supported elements and the W3C said they were alright, you would see that the W3C said that it was alright AFTER the browsers in question already supported them. That should tell you something.

In defense of Netscape, the only times it crashes are when the OS decides it should. Netscape does not use up 100% of your CPU time unless you are on a 200MHz system. It's not necessary and I have seen the Mozilla source code (which Netscape is very closely modeled after - the major differences are in appearance).IE on the other hand: windows close unexpectedly and randomly open. When I log in on WinXP, the first thing I do is end the task called "msmsgs.exe." If I don't, it starts using up 90% of my CPU time. I don't even use IE or MS Messenger. There is no possible reason that msmsgs.exe should need 90% of anyone's cpu time when it's not being used - unless of course it is being used and you don't know about it. I wouldn't be suprised if it were a MS backdoor. But I can't say that with any real amount of certainty without seeing IE source code... and let's see... that ain't gonna happen.

[quote author=St0rm.iD link=board=22;threadid=1459;start=15#msg11937 date=1055186871]
No one uses netscape anyway...Opera is where it's at :)
[/quote]
That was the last post before yours, notice the date. Although your contribution was valuable, I had to read through an old thread for no reason, I do not care for old threads, you could have created a whole new thread for this, as I'm sure there have been many updates since that time.

Please leave dead threads just that, dead.

Locking.

If you want to resume this thread, create a new one.