There can be no algorithm to judge which is the fastest browser, apart from user experiences itself. Vote and share which browser according to you is the fastest browser?

The stats reveal the the coming of Google chrome has mostly affected the popularity share of IE.

*The above data has been taken from w3schools.

While Mozilla Firefox remains unbeaten at no. 1 spot as the most popular browser among internet users with 42.9%, Google chrome is at no. 2 with 23.8%, IE  at no 3 with 26.6 ,Apple Safari at no 4. with 4% and Opera at no 5 with 2.5% of internet users using these browsers.

Interesting to note is that with IE [ IE9] and Mozilla[4.0.1] both launching their newer versions have had a small increase in their popularity in the later part of the graph.

Does this mean constant updates help in increasing popularity?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The first time you use My Location on Google Maps, you’ll be asked to confirm that you’re happy to share your location with Google Maps, and you can always undo your decision.Google Maps takes advantage of the W3C Geolocation API standard. The Geolocation API is a new feature available in the latest web browsers which allows any website to access your current location.

How does it work? When you activate the My Location feature, Google Maps asks your web browser for your location. Typically, your browser uses information about the Wi-Fi access points around you to estimate your location. If no Wi-Fi access points are in range, or your computer doesn’t have Wi-Fi, it may resort to using your computer’s IP address to get an approximate location.[Source :Google]

For more information on Geolocation API .

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In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force users to visit these Web sites. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade users to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes users to the attacker’s Web site.

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
However,
“An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. When using Internet Explorer, code execution is remote and may not require any user intervention,” said Microsoft security representatives.

This is the security advisory which microsoft has released especially for Windows XP and Server 2003 users.

This advisory discusses the following software.

You may follow Microsoft website from here or You may directly Fix the problem from here(Note: this disable the ActiveX video features in IE). The workaround given on microsoft’s website currently disable all the Video ActiveX features.However if you are an advanced user you may like to know more about this issue and can manually disable this vulnerability from the registry check out Microsoft’s Manual .

The fix will apply to all the following:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, when used with:
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (32-bit x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition for Itanium-Based Systems
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition for Itanium-based Systems
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, when used with:
  • Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3, when used with:
  • Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional

If you are still facing problems you may contact the support here.

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I tried all the method given online, deleting the cookies and clearing the temp folder ,creating another profile,opening mozilla in safe mode, removing the favourite bookmarks and removing all the plugins . But the problem of slow tab switching persisted , I was left with no other option than to roll back to Mozilla Firefox previous version. I read on few blogs that 3.08 has a similar problem so i switched to 3.0.5 and now everything works absolutely fine.I have installed all my plugins and the memory usage has decreased substantially.To my understands firefox 3.0.11 has some security fixes and have tried to make mozilla faster, because of which it starts consuming a lot of memory and then it affects other system processes as well.

Though I hope firefox to fix this issue in the next version it releases , you can refer to mozilla forums if you are experiencing similar problems:

Mozilla Forums

You can post your problem here Mozilla Forums

My experience with other browser’s taught me that Firefox can never be replaced.It is the best browser available currently.

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I got to admit that Safari 4.0 is the fastest browser currently as it is really faster than Mozilla 3.0.1,Opera,IE and Crome. But there is a long list of unsupported basic elements of a browser in Safari which can partly explain you why it is the fastest and some of them comprise of “things which I don’t like”. Initial experience was pretty smooth browser faded shortly as the browser started showing incomplete pages. My internet connection speed is fair enough to browse [835kbps download speed ].

Take a look at what Nytimes looked and it happened with almost all the sites, I had to refresh it again and again though it refreshed it very quickly just to show me incomplete loaded pages , though it happened on certian sites but overall the average was 1 refresh per page.

Though for me flash was working perfectly fine and when I installed Java plugin the incomplete loading of pages only increased and many times I got an error like Safari cannot open this page and it opened on the very next refresh.

After a while I realised it is basically a problem related to proxy, when I try to connect to internet using a proxy it shows me incomplete pages and while directly connecting it doesn’t .So safari isn’t better than Opera for me unless a newer version fixes this up. But best is to either wait for Mozilla to release an update or downgrade Mozilla.

Since Safari isn’t  open source it doesn’t have the variety of plugins that Mozilla has and I was really missing some of the plugins . The plugins increase the utility of the browser. (You don’t even get a password manager in safari you have download a separate plugin.)

But I found Safari  overall 9/10 if 10/10 goes to Mozilla firefox. Admit that Firefox isn’t the fastest(safari looks to me to be the Fastest) but if it is able to patch its bug in 3.0.11 which most of the firefox users have been complaining of then Firefox is unbeatable.

……check out Mozilla forums if you are facing similar problem.

If this problem perisists many Safari users will migrate to Firefox or Opera.
So far there hasn’t been a solution available you can check out for the links below if you are experiencing same problem:
Apple Forum Topic 1

Apple Forum Topic 2

Apple Forum Topic 3

My Guess is that Apple might have missed the trick, it hasn’t been about the speed of the browser as opera is the fastest browser but ins’t the most popular, IE is faster than firefox but firefox has been constantly eating IE’s Market share. All these event suggest that it isnt  about the speed or looks its about the utility the same way iPhone wins over other options available.

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Though this is not the first time we have seen this, another reality browser last year named “Enkin” was launched on Android phones, Take a look at this video:

Another one of the Reality browser as Google Sky:

While on one hand this technology might not be new but now with the coming of Layar, a new dimension has been added to the technology which is both useful and attractive.

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1. When the browser is started for the first time on a computer after booting,known as Cold start.

2. Restarting the browser known as the Warm start.

3. The CSS redering time(Test done using 2500 div avg time)

4. The Java Script loading time

5. Multiple image loading

6. History reloading

In general on almost all operating systems and the above criteria which matters the most i.e the 3 ,4,5,6 points i.e the script,image & css loading,executing was fastest in Opera.And this has been claimed on Opera’s site.Specific fastest speed measured are:

Windows:(800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM)

Fastest: Opera 9.0.1 in image,history loading and opera 6.0.3 in executing Css and Java.

Mac OsX[400 MHz G4, 256 MB RAM]

Fastest:Opera 9.0.1 for 4,5,6(Java script,image &History loading) and Safari 2.0 for 3 (Css Loading).

Linux[800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM]

Fastest: Kconquerer starting and restarting(1,2),Opera 9.0.1 for 4,5,6(JAva,Image&History loading)

The report from which I have caputulated this data clearly mentioned this:

“So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.
On Linux, Konqueror is the fastest for starting and viewing basic pages on KDE, but as soon as script or images are involved, or you want to use the back or forward buttons, or if you use Gnome, Opera is a faster choice, even though on KDE it will take a few seconds longer to start. Mozilla and Firefox give an overall good performance, but their script, cache handling and image-based page speed still cannot compare with Opera.
On Mac OS X, Opera and Safari are both very fast, with Safari 2 being faster at starting and rendering CSS, but with Opera still being distinguishably faster for rendering tables, scripting and history (especially compared with the much slower Safari 1.2). Camino 0.8 is fast to start, but then it joins its sisters Mozilla and Firefox further down the list. Neither Mozilla, Firefox nor IE perform very well on Mac, being generally slower than on other operating systems.

On Mac OS 9, no single browser stands out as the fastest. In fact, my condolences to anyone who has to use one of them, they all perform badly.”

Although the comparison has been between older versions of the browsers but gives an idea which one is the fastest browser.Check out the reports here.

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