The 2020 Browser Battle: Surfing With Speed
by Brett Howse on September 10, 2020 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Software
- Browsers
- Mozilla
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Edge
HTML 5 Compatibility
Finally, to see how many HTML 5 features are supported by each browser, each one was run against http://html5test.com/ which compiles a score out of 555, with scoring being based on how many HTML5 specifications, popular draft standards, and WebGL, and IndexedDB / Web SQL. A higher score means the browser supports more of the tests, which in theory means that the browser should be more compatible with more websites, although that is certainly not always the case.
Web Browser Battery Life
It would be hard to argue with how pervasive and important the internet is, so “browsing the web” is a critical function for laptops. Gone are the days of browsing static content on Geocities and instead the web is now the home to critical business applications, communication, and of course, entertainment. Finding a few more minutes of battery life just by using a different browser might be the difference between getting through a workday, and not.
To see how each browser performed, the Surface Laptop 3 15-inch had the brightness dialed into 200 nits, and each browser was run through our quite demanding web workload until the system turned off, and then the test was repeated to ensure there were no anomalous results. All the browsers were tested at least twice, with the exception of Internet Explorer 11, which was not tested, because you should really not be using it.
One of the biggest questions going into this was what impact Microsoft would see moving from their EdgeHTML and Chakra based browser in the classic Edge, to the Chromium version. Microsoft touted their battery life significantly when Edge was the new browser on the block, and for good reason. As you can see, classic Edge provided significantly better battery life than any other browser used. When your pool of energy is a fixed size, squeezing out extra runtime is not a trivial undertaking, and Microsoft has certainly given up some battery life to provide a more compatible browser.
Looking at the Chromium based browsers, which are the new Edge, Chrome, and Opera, and they all more or less fall in the same range, with only twenty minutes of runtime between the three, but as we saw with the scripting tests, Edge was able to provide just a bit more battery life than the others.
Firefox, while competitive, is over thirty minutes behind its closest competitor. It is likely not enough of a difference to spur anyone from moving away from Firefox if they are happy with its other features, but the Mozilla team is not quite up to par in terms of energy use.
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Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
If we get complacent and stop testing, the quality will go downhill.TheJian - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
ROFL. That already happened. It's why I'm still on firefox 50's (ESR stopped at ~53.x before jumping to BS new versions). A browser without multi-row tabs in 2020? WTF? You all failed. Firefox=chrome now...Again, firefox, you failed to realize who you are. DIFFERENT, CUSTOMIZATION. Now, you're just chrome lite, I mean, chrome sh!te. LOL. My family hasn't ENJOYED the web since firefox gave up. Dad's on opera now (minor complaints, he just suffers through with lots of groaning all day), moms on new firefox (accidently updated) and wants to kill her PC, and I'm on old firefox which even rottentomatoes is attacking now as not being supported...WTF do you care about my browser for anyway RT? RT is just the new GAY IMDB now anyway as if IMDB didn't own that title lock stock and barrel already. We need a new TV site...LOL. But yeah, start doing browser articles on how each has destroyed their users fun. Start doing articles highlighting what they are NOT doing, as what they ARE doing sucks already and I have no need to read about how much worse they're getting. I can see that daily. They all suck now.lioncat55 - Monday, September 14, 2020 - link
Man, who hurt you. Your family can't enjoy browsing the web now? WTF is that. Unless your compiling your own browser, most people don't remotely care about the browser they use.Also, stacked tabs? F that, that just adds on more tool bars, what are you using a 800x400 crt, do you want your browser window to be 80x400 with all the old tool bars.
Carmen00 - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Definitely not! The browser wars are still ongoing, and I hope that there will continue to be choice in the browser world. We've seen the terrible things that happen to standards and software when a single dominant browser decides to do its own thing, just because of its market position ... looking at you in particular, IE and Chrome. I hope that we never end up in a "Best Viewed With Browser X" scenario again — and if you don't know what I'm talking about here, thank your lucky stars. But with choice comes the necessity of seeing how good all the choices are, and this article is exceptionally useful in that regard.From the article,
"There was a years-long PR war with Microsoft begging developers to write websites to standards and features, rather than just based on a User Agent String, but that war was lost, and in a surprising, but also necessary move, Microsoft abandoned its browser and joined the Chromium gang."
Now, for those of us who remember (and had to code for) the IE6 days, this "write standard code" attitude from Microsoft was preceded by YEARS of completely ignoring the standards and telling developers to suck it up and ONLY write for IE6. They trained devs to look at the user-agent string. They created the problem, and ironically, they're the ones who had to abandon their own technology because of it!
lmcd - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Microsoft abandoned its browser way before then, when the Windows team or whoever is above them decided the Edge team should be stuck on a 6-month release cycle with no backports to old Windows 10 feature versions.grant3 - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
Would you mind clarifying: is it your opinion that it's GOOD or that it's BAD for a dominant browser engine to ignore web standards and force developers to look at user-agent strings?Or is it only bad in 2001, but good in 2020?
Or is it only bad when Microsoft does it, but good when Google does it?
Carmen00 - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
?? It's bad, period. Developers should never have to look at user-agent strings. What part of my post made you think that I think it's a good thing?It's just funny and ironic that it's Microsoft who made the problem and is now decrying it.
Lord of the Bored - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
Before Internet Explorer, we had "best with Netscape Navigator". Only diffrence was scripting to detect useragent wasn't really possible, so we put animated buttons in to make sure people knew what they were supposed to run.flyingpants265 - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
Firefox is clearly faster than Chrome but I don't understand why the UI sucks so bad. Just give us the option to make the UI identical pixel-for-pixel to Chrome, and I'll switch to FF instantly.JfromImaginstuff - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Well there some themes that you could use if all you're after is looks else I don't know