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This is to collect the UI performance experiences we have with browsers in OS X. I don't care about the benchmarks I care about how fast the UI responds to the user's actions.

I have come to the following conclusions:

  • Chrome tab switching is the fastest.
  • Safari sometimes is unresponsive (shows the waiting cursor) even for simple HTML pages with out having a lot of tabs open. This has never happened in Chrome.
  • Safari's Javascript Cancvas drawing is the fastest.
  • Safari's location bar recommendations is the fastest.

I expect your own observations.

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this is a question that can't really have an "answer", or even several excellent opionions! browsers are always changing and every user uses them differently! – Sebastian Good Dec 2 '10 at 18:39
but I think it's a good question and not ranked as subjective. – Am1rr3zA Dec 2 '10 at 18:43
Maybe it could be a Community Wiki where we add information as the time passes. – Martín Marconcini Dec 2 '10 at 23:49
Seriously, it's a matter of RAM. Get more RAM and you will see dramatic improvements concerning responsiveness when many tabs are open simultaneously. You need at least 4GB. I had 2GB and was frustrated like you and upped to 8GB and it's like night and day. Looking at Activity Monitor, I was ALWAYS using all 2GB and now that I have 8GB, I find that I'm usually using 3-5GB. So I recommend 4GB or, if you can afford it, 8GB. Anything more is overkill though. Got 8GB from Amazon for $130, by the way. – Randy6T9 Feb 2 '11 at 22:09

closed as not a real question by Philip Regan, Robert S Ciaccio, Chealion Dec 3 '10 at 3:16

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote

Lifehacker actually did an article on this with hard data:

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