As more people switch to software-as-a-service (SaaS) web applications – web sites like Google Docs, GMail, Salesforce, etc that replace programs installed on your desktop – arguments about web browser speeds are moving from the geeks’ locker-room to the real world. So, with the major browsers recently upgraded, we compared them on a real site.
The result was a surprise. According to the special tests used in developing browsers, Google’s Chrome is the rampant winner, with Safari and Firefox a little way behind and Internet Explorer 8 left in the dust. But these tests aren’t real world – we wanted to know which is fastest in the office.
The web application we chose was NetSuite – it’s what we use at Conosco. An all-in-one ‘SAP for small businesses’ in your web browser, it runs our accounting, helpdesk, projects, CRM, marketing, mail merges and much more; think Sage + Salesforce + Goldmine + Heat +…
NetSuite is great, but like all of these new browser apps it’s a bit slow… any speed improvement is a godsend.
Here are the page load times in seconds for NetSuite’s dashboard – a complex page with plenty of data and some client-side javascript:
IE8 on Windows 7 is the fastest. The “dog” wins.
It feels fast too, like Chrome and Safari which aren’t far behind, but unlike even the latest version of Firefox which lumbers along.
(We took an average of times as measured by NetSuite’s built-in page timer; there wasn’t much variation. We used a fast Mac Pro desktop, with VMWare for Windows.)
