When browsing the Internet speed is vital. Nobody wants to waste time waiting for sites to load. It’s something important to consider when you think about with website design and code practice to make sure people read your site and don’t leave before it loads (and make your site appear higher on Google)
But as a web browser, what efforts do you make to view your sites quicker? Do you think about how you can speed up your web browsing experience? Do consider what browser will load web pages quickest?
The speed wars in browsers are famous and Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explore all try to claim the crown, but there is an unknown player on the scene who makes claims to the crown.
Meet Waterfox.
Waterfox
Waterfox is based on Firefox’s source code, but focuses on 64-bit computers. This means it is designed for multi-tab browsing as well so you can view multiple browser pages quickly.
Plugins, Extentions and Addons
Because Waterfox uses Firefoxes source code it is highly compatible with Firefox plugins and extensions, but can only run 64 bit addons which at the moment are limited to Java, Silverlight and Flash.
Features
Some of the features that contribute to Waterfox’s speed include:
- Compiled in Intel’s C++ Compiler
- Intel’s Math Library
- Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
- Advanced Vector Extensions
- Jemalloc
- Profile-Guided Optimisation
- /O3 Switch
- 100% Extension Compatibility
- 64-bit Plugin Support
If you are a fan of Firefox, run a 64-bit computer and want to speed up your web experience then maybe you should give Waterfox a try.
WaterFox Speed Charts
What browser do you use?
[Image via TopTenReview and Waterfox]
Josh says
On windows, overall I like Chrome the best. Firefox would be a close second. IE isn’t worth my time. Safari is all I use on Mac.
Chris Wilson says
Snap! (although I don’t have a mac…) I use Dolphin on my Android, it’s pretty good.
Raoul Snyman says
If I want to qiuckly load a single web site, I’ll use Chrome, but doing my normal browsing I use Firefox. The reason? It uses less memory and CPU when you have more than about 5 tabs open. This is because Firefox uses the same main process for all of its tabs; it can share memory and other resources. Chrome on the other hand cannot share memory because each tab is a different process.
Firefox also has tab groups and lazy loading, so you can minimize the amount of memory it uses while still retaining all 200 of your tabs.
Chris Wilson says
Good to know about the difference in memory usage but that encourages me to use chrome more. Having too many tabs is far too distracting for me, I’d rather have 3 tabs moving fast than 20 moving at an okay speed.
Eric Dye says
Very cool.