Less crazy than the Acid Tests is www.html5test.com

Here’s what I get from a few random browsers I have lying around the place:

Firefox 3.5.9 scores 100 out of 160.

Chrome 4.1 scores 118 out of 160.

IE6? 11 out of 160.

IE8? Surprisingly, only 19 out of 160.

The browser on my Nokia N95 phone doesn’t load the page properly; it just says “Working…” and 0 out of 4 (eg it stalls on the first round of tests).

Interestingly, I also tried IE6 with the Google Chrome Frame in it; it scored 137 out of 160, better than Chrome itself. Weird.

Obviously all the browser authors have a way to go to support this if it’s going to be the bold new standard on the web.

(Found via Andrew)

I’ve run the Google Chrome on Linux beta since it first become available, and my impression is: slow. I might be unusual, in that I typically have dozens and dozens of tabs open, and that may break Chrome’s model of shoving each page into its own process, and this PC has “only” a gig of RAM, but it’s slower than FireFox for the same task. Things were a lot worse before I loaded AdBlock and FlashBlock for Chrome. Now my CPU isn’t pegged at 100%.

Embedded JavaScript is affected by this performance hit, so that particular tools that I have help do my stuff, well, don’t anymore.

Most annoyingly, it seems, although I haven’t confirmed it, that the back button causes a page reload: it doesn’t come out of the cache. Or the slowness could make it look that way. But how long can it possibly take to render a page anyway?

On the upside, it hasn’t crashed, and I would have expected FireFox to mysteriously die without any explanation by now (a sign that Firefox is going to die soon is that tab-swaps/page loads become very slow, indicating a similar root cause which I’m guessing is memory exhaustion). Firefox has always done the mysterious death thing, and I was hoping that upgrading to 3.5 would fix things, but no dice.

I’m trying to decide whether it’s preferable to have my browser snappy, but occasionally fall in a big pile and get back up again, or a laggard that rolls with the punches. Perhaps I’ll split my browsing between them simultaneously; vital stuff on Chrome and throw-away stuff on FF, but that’s going to be a bit tough on my brain.

[UPDATE]
Well, it turns out that Chrome is a memory hog. I bought another gig of RAM, and wouldn’t you know it, the PC is flying. My suspicions were tripped when all of the RAM was in use, most of the paging file and the little orange disk activity light was slowly burning a hole in the wall on the other side of the room.

Chrome fast. FoxIt reader fast. But by default they don’t work together so well, insisting on PDFs being saved to disk before FoxIt will open them.

Here’s how to get read PDFs inside Chrome using FoxIt reader:

• Copy the file npFoxitReaderPlugin.dll from C:\Program Files\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\plugins to C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\plugins
• If the plugins directory doesn’t exist, then create it
• C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome… only exists if you’ve used the Google Pack version of Chrome. If instead you’ve got the version that (oddly) shoves it into C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\ then you’ll need to find the right place under there for it.
• Restart Chrome

(Source: Chrome forum post, and some fiddling/experimentation)

UPDATE: As commenters have noted, unfortunately the relevant files may be in place only if you installed the Firefox plugin with FoxIt Reader — which may not offer to do so unless it detects Firefox is installed.

Is it just me who sees Firefox continually mixing up its favicons on the Links toolbar?

Surely it can’t be that hard to keep track of them correctly?

Lifehacker has an updated set of Windows web browser speed test results: Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE and Firefox.

Seems Safari and Opera are the fastest, though they also note Firefox uses the least memory.

Is it just me who’s having stability problems with theage.com.au? Sometimes when I’m loading pages, it crashes the browser completely. Locks it up. It happens at home, on both my PCs, in both IE7 and Firefox on XP SP2, and appears to be linked to a video player Flash applet displayed on some pages, particularly at night and weekends when they appear not to have other content such as adverts to show.

Oddly it doesn’t occur at work, but it causes big problems at home. I’ve updated to the latest Flash plugin and that doesn’t seem to help. I haven’t found any other Flash applets that cause the issue.

I’ve put theage.com.au into IE’s Restricted Sites list. That neatly zaps the use of plugins like Flash.

There appears to be no equivalent method in Firefox. Flashblock would do the job, but is a little like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. AdBlock Plus should do better.

Of course, none of this solves the root cause. I wonder if it’s just me.

If you’ve upgraded to Firefox 3 and are wondering when Google will update Browser Sync to work with it, you’d better find an alternative product.

Google has decided to dump the product.

It appears that for now, Mozilla’s Weave might be the best substitute (though it’s in beta at present). Or Foxmarks, though apparently it doesn’t play well with the Web Developer Toolbar.

FF WTF — is the AU English dictionary written by volunteers or something? How can it be missing so many basic words? It doesn’t know reminds for instance?

Is this fixed in FF3 then?

I saw today is FF3 download day, world record, yadda yadda yadda and jumped over to download it. Bzzt. 10am is too early here. Apparently it’s all based around US time. Blargh.

Now it’s well after 11pm AEST, and it’s still not there. What time does this thing kick off? Even the Pledge bit doesn’t work; keeps resetting the region dropdown every time I choose something.

No matter, a post in the forums on spreadfirefox has revealed where the FF3 download is: it’s here.

Is it just me who’s finding Firefox 2.0.0.13 (on Windows XP) freezing way more than previous versions?

Drive.com.au’s used car search is a particularly notable crashing site; ditto NineMSN Video. Both are fine in IE6/7. But there are others too, and if I had to point to a pattern, it’s that many involve multimedia components on pages, such as during Flash video playback.

Ah, I see Firefox 2.0.0.14 has just been issued. The main thing seems to be correcting a bug called “Crash in JavaScript garbage collector”… hopefully that fixes it. (Why does every update need the inline dictionary re-installed?)

By the way, anybody else notice how on Blogspot comment pages in FF (but not IE), it refreshes itself after loading, so if you’re quick at starting to type your comment, you have to start again? Annoying.

Normally you can only get two downloads from any one site happening at a time. But it can be overridden. I know, I know, you’re not actually meant to do this, as it breaks some HTTP standard or other. But occasionally it’s warranted… umm, if you’re talking to your own web server. Yeah.

Firefox: In about:config, go to network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

IE 4+: Get in the registry and alter HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
– MaxConnectionsPerServer for HTTP 1.1
– MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server for HTTP 1.0

Apparently you can’t change it in Safari. (Anybody know better?)

I’m liking Thunderbird. Ditching Windows Desktop Search and installing Google Desktop Search has worked well — suits my filing system. Well, except for the occasional __GD_something_or_other process that wants to keep running when I’m shutting down the PC.

Things I’ve had to get used to in the switch from Outlook:

Alt-S to Send doesn’t work. Alt-Enter does (Outlook supports that too.)

The column sorting icons being upside-down.

It defaults to sending from the account you’re looking at when you start the new mail, rather than a fixed default. Easily changed if you remember to check it. It also inserts the signature automatically when you change the From account, which is neat.

It didn’t take long to get used to the vastly better IMAP performance in Thunderbird.

I don’t use a Calendar plugin. Tony pointed me to a Nokia phone sync, but I haven’t tried it yet — I do backup my phone contacts, but for most of them I don’t have email details, so syncing is not really a priority for me.

That’s about all at the moment. I’ve imported all my old Outlook folders into Thunderbird, which took ages, but works fine. So, byebye Outlook!

Works as advertised. A little slower than my local ISP IMAP/SMTP servers, but not too bad, and because Thunderbird will happily wait for a server while you do other stuff, it’s not painful at all.

Gmail’s tags don’t quite translate into IMAP folders, but it’s probably close enough.

Conversations display as separate email messages in Thunderbird. You can use View / Threads to make it similar. Filing stuff in Thunderbird only does one message though, whereas in Gmail that’ll do the whole conversation.

Deleting from Thunderbird moves it to a folder (eg gives it a Label) called [Imap]/Trash — which is how it appears over in GMail. Ideally it would move it to [Gmail]/Trash which seems to match the “real” Gmail Trash, but TB doesn’t have that option.

Sent messages by default go into the TB folder Sent, but this can be changed to match Gmail’s [Gmail]/Sent Mail in TB: Gmail account properties; Copies & Folders; When sending messages; Place a copy in: Other / Sent Mail on Gmail.

Moving messages to [Gmail]/All Mail appears to be the equivalent of pressing the Archive button in Gmail.

There’s a bunch more help on comparing Gmail and IMAP actions.

All in all, works well.

(Reminder: Gmail IMAP is rolling out this week. If your Gmail preferences say “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” then you’ve got it. At present you’ll need to switch to US English for it to be given to you.)