Among the geek news items this week was the announcements that Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 has been released. Firefox 4.0 Beta is also released. Google Chrome hasn’t changed much but is updated regularly.
Internet Explorer and Firefox, although each have a larger market share than Google Chrome, are chasing Chrome on performance and usability. My own bias is towards Google Chrome. I had been a long time Firefox fan but when Google added extensions to Chrome they won me over. Google has been winning speed and security tests against other browsers with the next best thing being Apple’s Safari.
However, one of the features I have loved most about Google Chrome is it is a streamlined design that does hog precious screen real estate on my wide screen laptops or monitors. Internet Explorer 8 (and 7) were terrible hogs. When I’m browsing the web I want to see as much of the web page as possible. Don’t take up a big chunk at the top with toolbars, menus and other things I can’t hide and don’t need.
I downloaded Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 Beta and compared them to Chrome 10 with regard to real estate they used at the top of their windows. You’ll have to go elsewhere to compare other performance parameters.
The winner is still Google, but Internet Explorer now uses up less screen real estate at the top than Firefox.
Methodology. This is not a rigorous analysis. I measured the height of the space used by the browser at the top a window by using an adjacent Google Chrome window and the MeasureIt! extension. The error is probably about 1 to 3 pixels. I measured each at least twice but I haven’t bothered to do statistics.
Below: Internet Explorer 9 measured by Chrome. Space before web content is about the same as in Chrome.
Google Chrome space before web content.
Firefox 4 beta space before web content.
| Browser | Height no bookmarks |
Height with bookmarks |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome 10 | 79 | 100 |
| IE 9 | 79 | 107 |
| FF 4 | 86 | 114 |
| IE 8 | ND | 180 |
| FF 4.6 | 140 | |
| Opera 11.01 | 116 | |
| Safari | 88 |
Measurements are pixels as shown in the examples above when measured with a Google ruler extension, “MeasureIt!”.
Notice that that Safari with a bookmark bar beats all the others for saving space. However, this test was run on Windows 7 and neither Safari or Opera are among my standard browsers for everyday use.
