Test Procedure :
In order to keep the test environment as constant (and thus fair) as possible, all individual test conducted in Vitual Machine with VMware ServerConsole version 1.0.6, installed the Windows OS, installed all the browsers, set all browsers’ start pages blank, restarted the system, opened taskmgr, and saved a snapshot of the Virtual Machine. Everytime I finished test a browser, I loaded the snapshot back to test the next browser, so the enviroment would remain the same before the start of each test. All browsers tested with clean installs, and English interfaces, unless an English interface is not available. All memory values are rounded to 1 digit after the decimal.
Host System :
Intel Core2Duo CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHz
3.0G RAM
Windows Vista Business SP1
Guest System :
Intel Core2Duo CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHz
1.0G RAM
Windows XP SP2
The Tests :
1) Blank Page
The memory usage after starting the browser with a blank start page and wait for the memory usage to stabilize, and record the value.
2) One Page
Open http://www.msn.com/, IE’s default home portal page, wait for the memory usage to stailize, record the value.
3) Six Pages
Open five other pages, wait for the memory usage to stabiize, record the value. The five other pages are :
1. http://www.yahoo.com/, one of the biggest portal sites in the world
2. http://www.sohu.com/, one of the biggest portal sites in China, and as many Chinese portal sites, (in)famous for heavy animated pictures and flash stuff, and tons of non-standards-compliant stuff.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/, the largest encyclopedia in the world
4. http://www.zol.com.cn/, another Chinese site, one of the biggest tech portal sites in China, and again tons of animated pictures, flash, and non-standards-compliant stuff.
5. http://www.apple.com/startpage, the default Safari home page, and quite heavy HTML stuff.
4) Trident Memory Leak Bug Test
Using the memory leak bug test here ( http://im.qq.com/tt/images/release/testpage.html ), provided by Tencent, if the browser’s memory usage doesn’t imcrease constantly, or the browser can do garbage collections thus periodic decreases in the memory usage during the test, to keep the total memory usage under less than 10M extra as compared to before the test during the entire test, then it counted as not affected by the bug. Else it’s counted as affected by the bug.
The Candidates and Results :
===== Trident-based =====
1) Internet Explorer 7
The market leader and most widely used web browser
Home Page : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx
Download size : 14.7M
Blank Page : 17.8M
One Page : 32.4M
Six Pages : 109.1M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
2) iRider 2.52.0018U
A commercial web browser based on Trident, with interesting thumbnail interface rather than tabs. Claims to have better memory management.
Home Page : http://www.irider.com/
Download size : 3.72M
Blank Page : 11.3M
One Page : 27.3M
Six Pages : 95.7M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
3) Crazy Browser 3.0.0 RC1
A Trident-based MDI browser
Home Page : http://www.crazybrowser.com/
Download size : 691K
Blank Page : 14.8M
One Page : 27.6M
Six Pages : 96.5M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
4) SlimBrowser V4.10
Another Trident-based MDI browser
Home Page : http://www.flashpeak.com/sbrowser/
Download size : 1.84M
Blank Page : 15.5M
One Page : 29.1M
Six Pages : 98.3M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
5) Donut RAPT #126
A highly rated Trident shell from Japan.
Home Page : http://rapt21.com/download.php
Download size : 713K
Blank Page : 7.4M
One Page : 27.4M
Six Pages : 96.6M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
6) Donut L 32
Another Trident shell from the Donut family.
Home Page : http://rapt21.com/download.php
Download size : 255K
Blank Page : 6.0M
One Page : 26.4M
Six Pages : 95.6M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
7) Donut Q 77 (Japanese-only)
Yet another Trident shell from the Donut family.
Home Page : http://rapt21.com/download.php
Download size : 731K
Blank Page : 6.9M
One Page : 26.7M
Six Pages : 95.6M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
8) Sleipnir 2.7.1 w/Trident
The most popular alternative browser in Japan. With Trident engine.
Home Page : http://www.fenrir.co.jp/en/sleipnir/
Download size : 4.47M
Blank Page : 27.5M
One Page : 41.3M
Six Pages : 116.4M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
9) Grani 3.1 (Japanese-only)
Another Trident based browser from the maker of Sleipnir.
Home Page : http://www.fenrir.co.jp/grani/
Download size : 4.47M
Blank Page : 27.0M
One Page : 41.6M
Six Pages : 109.6M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
10) Lunascape 4.6.1 w/Trident
Another popular alternative browser in Japan, with a lot of extra toolbar and scrolling news stuff, and apparently a custom garbage collector that works best with fewer pages. With Trident engine.
Home Page : http://en.lunascape.tv/
Download size : 8.10M
Blank Page : 7.2M
One Page : 34.2M
Six Pages : 102.1M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
11) Bura 1.2.04 (Japanese-only)
A tabbed Trident shell with a funny icon, from Japan.
Home Page : http://www.geocities.jp/tabbrowser/
Download size : 467K
Blank Page : 6.2M
One Page : 28.4M
Six Pages : 94.5M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
12) Maxthon 2.0.9.1640
The most popular alternative browser in China, based on Trident engine.
Home Page : http://www.maxthon.com/
Download size : 3.8M
Blank Page : 18.3M
One Page : 34.8M
Six Pages : 101.9M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
13) Avant Browser 11.6 build 11
A popular tabbed browser by a Chinese programmer, based on Trident engine.
Home Page : http://www.avantbrowser.com/
Download size : 1.90M
Blank Page : 19.6M
One Page : 34.4M
Six Pages : 105.2M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
14) TheWorld Browser 2.1
A light-weight Trident-based browser from China.
Home Page : http://www.ioage.com/en/index.htm
Download size : 558K
Blank Page : 16.9M
One Page : 31.0M
Six Pages : 98.1M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
15) GreenBrowser 4.5.0423
Another Trident-based browser from China.
Home Page : http://www.morequick.com/IndexEn.htm
Download size : 1.23M
Blank Page : 13.2M
One Page : 27.6M
Six Pages : 89.4M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
16) GOSURF v2.81
Yet another Trident-based browser from China. With some custom memory saving technique.
Home Page : http://gosurfbrowser.com/?&ln=en
Download size : 2.15M
Blank Page : 4.0M
One Page : 27.3M
Six Pages : 48.2M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
17) Acoo Browser 1.84.640
Another Trident-based multi-tabbed browser.
Home Page : http://www.acoobrowser.com/
Download size : 1.71M
Blank Page : 17.1M
One Page : 30.0M
Six Pages : 95.5M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
18) EnjoyIE 3.0 build 080401
An interesting Trident shell from China that integrated a preview function similar to the popular Coolris Preview. In the Chinese version, the search box also has inline real-time translation function.
with preview in action :
Home Page : http://www.enjoyie.com/en/
Download size : 737K
Blank Page : 7.4M
One Page : 24.4M
Six Pages : 101.1M
Memory Leak Bug : Yes
19) Tencent Traveler 3.8 (Chinese-only)
A Chinese Trident-based browser from Tencent, the maker of the memory leak bug test, which predictably passes the test. Has some very aggressive memory saving technique and custom garbage collector.
Home Page : http://im.qq.com/tt/
Download size : 2.75M
Blank Page : 3.4M
One Page : 10.3M
Six Pages : 22.6M
Memory Leak Bug : No
20) MiniIE V1.5.668 (Chinese-only)
A minimalist Trident-based browser from China, claimed to be the smallest (GUI) browser with the fastest startup time. Has a funny nickname Naked Run Browser. Implements some extremely aggressive custom garbage collector. The only other Trident-based browser that passes the memory leak bug test.
Home Page : http://www.miniie.com/
Download size : 2.36M
Blank Page : 1.8M
One Page : 2.6M
Six Pages : 69.6M
Memory Leak Bug : No
===== Gecko-based =====
21) Firefox 2.0.0.14
THE Gecko-based browser.
Home Page : http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Download size : 5.8M
Blank Page : 21.1M
One Page : 29.9M
Six Pages : 80.9M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : Apparently Firefox doesn’t like those Chinese sites. The interface temporarily locks up when opening those Chinese sites, even when the CPU has plenty of idle time. Seems to be some problem related to the XUL interface instead of Gecko.
22) Firefox 3
The next generation of Firefox browser.
Home Page : http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
Download size : 7.19M
Blank Page : 30.3M
One Page : 38.5M
Six Pages : 83.5M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : Again Firefox doesn’t like those Chinese sites. The interface temporarily locks up when opening those Chinese sites, even when the CPU has plenty of idle time. Seems to be some problem related to the XUL interface instead of Gecko.
23) SeaMonkey 1.1.9
THE Gecko-based Internet Suite. Supposed to be a “bloat” compared to Firefox, its Navigator mode surprisingly takes less memory than Firefox, even when they are running on exact the same version of Gecko engine.
Home Page : http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Download size : 12.4M
Blank Page : 18.7M
One Page : 28.1M
Six Pages : 78.1M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : Yet again SeaMonkey doesn’t seem to like those Chinese sites. The interface temporarily locks up when opening those Chinese sites, even when the CPU has plenty of idle time. Seems indeed to be some problem related to the XUL interface.
24) Flock 1.1.2
The Social Web Browser, with lots and lots of extra functions, so it bounds to take some more resource as a price. But by how much? we’ll see.
Home Page : http://flock.com/
Download size : 10.6M
Blank Page : 36.3M
One Page : 51.9M
Six Pages : 94.4M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : Same XUL interface, same story with those Chinese websites.
25) K-Meleon 1.1.5
The minimalist Geck-based Browser.
Home Page : http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/
Download size : 5.19M
Blank Page : 16.4M
One Page : 25.4M
Six Pages : 72.2M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : It doesn’t have problem with those Chinese sites, and it’s not based on the same XUL interface as Firefox.
26) Sleipnir 2.7.1 w/Gecko
The most popular alternative browser in Japan. With Gecko engine.
Home Page : http://www.fenrir.co.jp/en/sleipnir/
Download size : ~20M + 4.47M
Blank Page : 30.2M
One Page : 39.9M
Six Pages : 85.9M
Memory Leak Bug : No
27) Lunascape 4.6.1 w/Gecko
Another popular alternative browser in Japan, with a lot of extra toolbar and scrolling news stuff, apparently its custom garbage collector doesn’t work with Gecko as well as with Trident. Or it just means Gecko has its own better garbage collector than Trident. With Gecko engine.
Home Page : http://en.lunascape.tv/
Download size : ~20M + 8.10M
Blank Page : 9.9M
One Page : 43.8M
Six Pages : 92.2M
Memory Leak Bug : No
28) Sylera 3.0.20 (Japanese-only)
A Gecko-based browser from Japan.
Home Page : http://dombla.net/sylera/
Download size : 12.2M
Blank Page : 14.7M
One Page : 25.7M
Six Pages : 75.2M
Memory Leak Bug : No
29) Orca Browser 1.0 RC3
A Gecko-based browser from the same Chinese programmer behind Avant Browser.
Home Page : http://forum.avantbrowser.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13104
Download size : 6.3M
Blank Page : 23.4M
One Page : 38.1M
Six Pages : 83.7M
Memory Leak Bug : No
===== WebKit-based =====
30) Safari 3.31
Apple’s web browser, based on KHTML/WebKit, ported to Windows.
Home Page : http://www.apple.com/safari/
Download size : 18.6M
Blank Page : 29.2M
One Page : 47.5M
Six Pages : 128.9M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : It seems Safari is not happy with those Chinese sites, after opening the two Chinese sites, its CPU usage jumps to 50% (full CPU usage for one processor) and the whole browser becomes very un-responsive.
31) Safari w/WebKit Nightly r32574
Safari with the latest WebKit nightly
Home Page : http://nightly.webkit.org/
Download size : 18.6M + 14.6M
Blank Page : 30.2M
One Page : 47.1M
Six Pages : 131.7M
Memory Leak Bug : No
Special Notes : Seems WebKit is not happy with those Chinese sites, after opening the two Chinese sites, its CPU usage jumps to 50% (full CPU usage for one processor) and the whole browser becomes very un-responsive.
===== Presto-based =====
32) Opera 9.27
My personal favorite browser Merlin engine.
Home Page : http://www.opera.com/
Download size : 4.7M
Blank Page : 15.3M
One Page : 24.9M
Six Pages : 72.9M
Memory Leak Bug : No
33) Opera 9.5
The next generation of Opera, with Kestrel engine.
Home Page : http://www.opera.com/
Download size : 4.99M
Blank Page : 20.9M
One Page : 29.1M
Six Pages : 91.4M
Memory Leak Bug : No
The comparison table :
The comparison chart 1 (Blank Page) :
The comparison chart 2 (One Page) :
The comparison chart 3 (Six Pages) :
