TheAtheist

Here it is, at last!, the first draft of the browser article i began about 1 1/2 months ago.

My only bugbear with it right now, want other peoples opinions about this, is that it reads too much like a review. I have tried to balance each browser and be objective rather than subjective, but not sure if thats now how it comes across.



There used to be a time, years and years ago, when there was only really one main Web Browser;Internet Explorer. Luckily, for consumers, the market is now awash with browsers, meaning each one is competing for market share and continually refining their systems to make their browser do more and more clever and useful things. However, all this competition can make choosing the right browser for
your needs difficult. In this Article, we will be testing each major browser available for Windows Based Computers and ranking each one.
For these tests we will be using a computer with the following specification:
Microsoft Windows XP SP3
2.2 GHz AMD processor and 1GB of RAM
This system, before beginning the tests will be fully checked for viruses and system instability and other rogue elements to ensure results are affected as little as possible.
The Testing Process:
The Tests we shall be carrying out on each browser are shown below:
1, The time taken for each browser to load up to a predefined homepage - www.google.co.uk –
mainly chosen because it is a simple site and it is extremely reliable.
- This Test will be split into two sections. The first will test how quickly the browser can load the page from scratch, and the second will test how long it takes for a browser to load up and display the same site from cache.
2, Loading a video from YouTube – to test browsers efficiency with flash and imbedded media.
- It is known that Google Chrome has problems with running videos from YouTube, but there is a fix for this it is believed and we will endeavour to install this before testing to ensure greater fairness in our results. However, if the fix is cumbersome or does not work we will not attempt other fixes other than those provided by Google.
- Whilst it is not entirely relevant the video we shall be loading is a clip from the 2008 US presidential debate
3, We shall also be checking each browser is capable of displaying a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) approved website. Whilst it is acknowledged that these sites should be ensuring as much compatibility with browsers as possible, rather than the other way round, with this test we can ensure that browser producers are making their browsers compatible and allowing such sites to run correctly.
- for this test we shall be using a UK banking website homepage –namely
http://www.cooperativebank.co.uk/ser...Sweb/Page/Bank
-we will also review in this section the accessibility options available on each browser
4, Our final testing process will then to compare the usability and features of each browser and rating each browser accordingly – tests in this category will include things such as ease to add bookmarks and change basic settings. We shall also comment on any other feature a specific browser has.
For continuity, we will be using the most up to date version of each browser, with any patches as required:
Test 1 results; opening to google.co.uk:
From Scratch average times:
Opera (9.60 revision): 1.338666667 seconds
Firefox (3.0.3 revision): 1.119666667 seconds
Google Chrome (0.2.149.30): 1.297 seconds
Internet Explorer 8: 1.150666667 seconds


From Cache average times:
Opera (9.60 revision): 1.12 seconds
Firefox (3.0.3 revision): 1.036666667 seconds
Google Chrome (0.2.149.30): 1.010333333 seconds
Internet Explorer 8: 0.994666667 seconds


Test 2; Loading up youtube videos:
All the browsers seemed to do pretty well in loading up youtube.com and the US presidential debate video. Some lag in browsers, but this was fairly normal in several attempts in all the browsers so no major concern. It appears that lots of people have reported problems with Google chrome and YouTube. We understand this is a more general issue with Flash and Google chrome although lots of users on the Google chrome support group report that updating to the latest version(the one we tested) fixed the issues for them. We found, however, we needed to update our flash player and then the videos ran fine, we checked a few others to be sure.

Accessibility

All browsers seemed to cope very well with the WW3C website I loaded. They all presented the same looking page, although they all initially took a long time to begin loading.
We were impressed to hear that Opera has its own inbuilt screen reading tool which is what WW3C websites are meant to be compatible with, but we were less than impressed with trying to get it setup. All the opera documentation related to voice stated that we needed at least version 8 and we were running version 9.6. We duly updated to version 9.62 to see if having the latest version helped – it didn’t. But it
later transpired that after initially installing the voice libraries we had actually configured it correctly, the button just wasn’t there. When we then tried to use the commands by pressing the relevant push to talk
key, it beeped at us and told us it didn’t understand the command without any chance to input a command. We duly gave up with Opera voice.
No other browsers offered anything on the Screen reader front, but they all offered the means to zoom in on a webpage, which was reassuring. However, Google Chrome did something very weird. Unlike all
the other browsers, which enlarge the whole page, Chrome decides that zooming in should be restricted to text only, which made the page harder to read, thus defeating the object because this often made the
page unreadable. Regarding other accessibility options, Opera offered a plethora of styles related to accessibility, such as high contrast (both B/W and W/B) and a specialist Accessibility mode which is configured to make the page easy to read and work with. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 offered some options to change page colours and Firefox also offered an option to use a high contrast theme on all pages. This method required users to have their entire computer setup in high contrast mode. I guess this is common sense, as very few users will want high contrast WebPages if they don’t need other accessibility options, but the fact that this is hardwired does limit its functionality a little.
How to put your windows system into Compatability mode:
START  Control Panel  Accessibility options  Adjust the contrast for text and colours on your screen  Click the box that says “Use High Contrast”
We felt Google Chrome was severely lacking in Accessibility options, it had no contrast options and its zoom is a bit disappointing.

Internet Explorer 8: help facilities are poor - limited and very un user friendly. Orientated towards developers. Bookmarking and navigation were nice and simple, nothing complex and it works. Security features are detailed enough to protect users but not overly intrusive and can be turned on and off fairly easily. Limited amount of extra features, all in house development. RSS feeds were nice and simple to setup which was a bonus
Firefox: Dynamic support, user orientated. Masses of extra features with other developer input – open source development which is a good step. Security options are fairly wide ranging but not so extensive
as Internet Explorer 8 and not as easy to turn off and on. Navigation was fairly standard as it was with most browsers we looked at.
Google Chrome: Support is fairly dynamic but limited input from Google support teams. No support for RSS feeds which was bit disappointing, but Google are staking this browser at people who want a simple
browser that is fairly lightweight. Security options were fairly limited with only “basic” “minor tweaks” and “Under the hood” as classification tabs.
Opera: Fairly extensive support with dynamic support as well. Good range of extra features. Navigation is nice and simple, good implementation of mouse navigation. Security options are a little limited, which is surprising for a browser that has a fairly large following nowadays.
Conclusions:
So as we can see there is no perfect browser for everyone; it’s a case of picking and choosing what works for your needs. Whilst some browsers try and work for as many people as possible, some are more specific.