Nitish Kumar Says: Opera 10.5-The fastest Browser in the world?

Here comes the another big challenge to competitors, when someone says that their product is best in the world. Yes!! Opera this time, with release of their Opera 10.5 on February 2, 2010 came the big claim “Fastest Browser in the world”.

Although I have installed many of the browsers in my PC, but most of the time, I use only two Chrome 4.1 and Firefox 3.6. My personal experience with Chrome been excellent and I rarely find myself using something.When I got to see the claim, then it was obvious to see myself that what’s going on actually.

The google search led me to two posts:

Google’s official post about why chrome is faster
Opera’s Official post announcing it as fastest

Used Opera for a while and sure not only speed but the other features also impressed me a lot. Specially, the desktop widgets. Now, I can keep a twiiter widget opened separate from browser like many of us used to do with our smartphone. Thanks for bringing the same widget experience here. Many things are new here with the same glassy finished looks.

Collected some facts to recall, I thought to put thoughts in a short and leave rest for yourself.

What a browser does now days?

Its not a job of rendering HTML pages only now days. In simplest words, it involves execution of complex scripts (Java Scripts, VB Scripts), CSS and many other things, when you get a page opened. Not only that counts in a faster experience, but also things like Cold Start (starting for the first time), Warm start (reopening after closing it), multiple tabs and RAM usages matters a lot.

So, you can understand that calling a browser faster than others can’t be something all the way. So many parameters to look for and so many scenarios needs to be consider. What may appear best to one, might not be the case with others.

How browsers are improving themselves now days?

Introduction of webkits, HTML5, increased use of CSS and Java Scripts really have made web experience more complex than ever and thanks God that browsers are responding to the same with the same pace. In recent past, we seen all of the browsers going for complete overhauling of their rendering engines for Java Script and other things. I am not sure, but first one was Firefox, then Opera, then constantly improving Chrome and then the latest one is opera again. Opera says “With Opera Presto 2.5, Carakan and Vega, get the fastest and most advanced browsing technologies”.

How to check the claims ourselves?

I might have some other views, some other preferences and habits and so are yours. Milliseconds might not be enough to notice or for unsettling someone’s belief, so better to take the technical ways. There are a number of popular tests out there online to test out rendering capabilities.

Easy tests are:

Easy because no need of setup, just run the test and get the results in the end. Do the same for browsers one by one and know, which one performs better. Try them and note the results yourself and get back to me. Let’s see what you find out.