Browsers Ahoy
Filled with activity in the browser industry, internet users have increased options to choose from. We look at the latest happenings with Opera, Safari and more
Opera Unite

We seriously doubt all the hype that Unite will reinvent the web. Services such as Windows Live Sync and Dropbox have been allowing file-sharing and similar services for a long time, albeit without browser integration. In fact, many of the little services offered by Opera Unite are already being offered by different players independently. All Opera is doing is consolidating all of them under its browser’s umbrella – hardly ground breaking.

Safari 4
Yes, we know it released at the beginning of June but it’s never too late to take a crack at something that claims to be the “World’s fastest browser”. Also, the recent update (4.0.2) to the browser’s Java engine released mid-July, is supposed to make it stable, and so, worthy of being pitted against fellow contenders in the browser world. Whether it lives up to Apple’s ambitious claim, we shall see later; for now let’s look at the user experience that the browser provides and the improvements it offers over the previous release. Even with a cursory glance, you’ll see the similarity with Chrome. In particular, the page control and settings buttons at the top right corner of the screen. The drop down menus that they produce are almost identical. So is the position of the forward / back navigation button as well as the refresh button. The only difference in the navigation bar is that the search field is independent of the Address Bar, while in Chrome they’re clubbed into one.

The improvements however are not all visual dazzle. There are improvements under the hood and even in terms of usability. An example of a usability tweak is the ability to grab tabs into new windows; again this one comes from Chrome. The Java script engine Nitro, has gone through a revamp with this version contributing greatly to its speed and stability.
Now for the speed. Since Safari is so similar to Chrome (uses the same rendering engine) we decided to pit it against only that browser for the speed comparison. Besides, Chrome is also regarded as the strongest contender to the title of “fastest browser around” so we figure it should be an interesting bout. For some quick results we put both browsers through a benchmark and a real world page loading test. The browser benchmark tool from future mark is quite popular. It is a six step test process that takes the browser through the grind of loading, sorting and searching for data and even measures your browser’s ability to render and modify specific HTML elements used in typical web pages, amongst other things. On a P4 system running Windows 7 Safari 4 secured 1,999 Points, while chrome got 1,748. Interestingly, the overall scores accumulated on the web site also showed Safari to be the fastest browser. The scores were from PCs based on the most popular processors around (i7 920, Core 2 Duo E8400, and Phenom II X4 940). Another interesting point to be noted in terms of rendering benchmarks is that Chrome scores 99 (with a linktest fail) on an Acid 3 test while Safari gets a complete 100. This makes it only the second browser yet to hit the mark.
As for the page loading test we decided to note the time taken to load a single tab of techquark.com. To time it we used the XNote stopwatch application which was started simultaneously with a mouse click corresponding to hitting the enter key for the address bar of the browser. The results were quite inconclusive as both browsers did a mighty fine job of rendering the page quickly. As for start up time however, Chrome was much faster on our system.
What about memory usage? Some memory usage charts online showed Safari 4 to be significantly low on resource consumption, coming in very close to Opera. When we checked our process manager with three tabs open pointing to techquark for both Safari and Chrome, we found Chrome to be lighter. Oh well, the complaint for bloatware is always there, but as long as the application is fast and does what it’s supposed to, we’re not too bothered.
Indian web startups back again?
Since the dot com bust of yesteryears, several interesting concepts remained just that – interesting concepts. For a while now webpreneurs have been venture shy, but things have probably started looking up. This month, we came across two new startups that seem quite interesting and worth checking out.
TweetKnot is a Bangalore-based web startup that offers a simple way of creating groups or communities on Twitter. The groups are called Knots. Every member of Knot can send messages to all other members. There are options to make private knots and even select the members whose updates will appear in a knot. To use the service you will have to give TweetKnot access to your Twitter account. TweetKnot seems somewhat similar to another service we had come across called Twibe. Yet, unlike Twibe’s clunky appearance, TweetKnot’s interface seems like a natural extension of Twitter. You can post updates to groups from tweetknot.com or even from your Twitter account using the syntax [D TweetKnot
