Safari Browser Renders 30 Times Faster Than Internet Explorer

By: Bill Waters
Staff Writer
Published: Mar 25, 2009

Apple Safari 4 is now available as a beta for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. The company claims that it's the fastest Internet Web browser to date.

Apple Inc has released Safari 4 this week which features a new JavaScript rendering engine which delivers faster performance. The company said that it's the world's fastest Internet Web browser. The browser features a new preview for favorite Web sites and new tabs.

"Safari 4 Beta tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page," Apple said on it's Safari 4 Web site.

The new tracking is called "Top Sites" which lets users preview a listing of favorite Web sites without navigating to a new screen. It also presents 24 thumbnails on a single page for better viewing. The feature supports grid-style snap-and-place which is fully customizable.

Safari browser version 4 introduces new features including Cover Flow and the ability to run a full history search. Users can actually clip through minimal or full page previews during searches.

Apple Safari 4 debuts a new feature called "Cover Flow" which makes provides easy reviewing of site history and bookmarked Web sites. Similar to Top Sites, it presents previews on what the pages looked like when a user visited them. The Web browser is using advanced caching to display the Web sites exactly the way they were shown during visits.

Apple has added a new "Full History Search" for Top Sites and Cover Flow. This lets users search for Web pages or sites directly from the browser. Users can flip through minimal or full-page previews during searches.

"Safari introduces a dramatic new way to revisit sites, letting you flip through full-page previews of the sites you visited in the past. You may not have total recall, but Safari does, automatically storing all the text and a thumbnail of every page in your history," Apple said.

While Apple claims that Safari 4 is the fastest Web browser on the planet, we gave it a try and ran our comparison against Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Corp's Firefox verison 3. Much to our surprise, it did run faster and images rendered immediately upon each page view.

Apple uses the Nitro Engine which is the industry's most advanced rendering technologies. It can execute JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and 3 times faster than Firefox 3.

Safari 4 uses the "Nitro Engine" which Apple says it beats Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome. The new Web browser is prompted as the industry's most advanced rendering technologies. Apple Safari 4 executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and 3 times faster than Firefox 3.

"Using the new Nitro Engine, for example, Safari executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3 based on performance in leading industry benchmark tests: iBench and SunSpider," Apple said.

However, unlike IE and Firefox, Apple Safari 4 may be caching the images before they display. For example, the browser will display the background of a Web site, depending on what color the Web site set from its CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which can give the impression that it loads faster than Internet Explorer or Firefox. This is only speculation, but one that users should analyze.

The Cover Flow (seen in the photo) is one of the best features in the new Apple Safari 4 browser.