Does anyone know why KM fairs not as well a Opera in the http://www.24fun.com/ speed tests! It is only half as fast as opera but more than twice as fast as FF and we won't even go there with poky IE! KM is a very fast browser but cannot compete with Opera for some reason! Maybe someone knows an easy way to speed up our KM browser????

There are a few threads about KM and speed tests when comparing it to other browsers. My own personal view is that a browser is as fast as it feels to you on your PC while surfing the net, opening & closing windows/layers/tabs and regular page rendering. I have multiple browsers on my PC. KM & Avant feel the fastest overall for me, with Opera being close behind. FF & Mozilla are the slowest. If you have a modern PC and a broadband connection, you probably won't notice much of a page rendering difference. I can't. So the tests don't mean much to me. The main noticeable differences between browsers on a modern PC w/broadband connection appears when opening the browser, dialogue windows and context menus.

Perhaps I'm just blowing smoke, but if my memory doesn't fail me, Opera does something like "look ahead" cache - For example, in a file download operation under windows, windows will ask you if you really want to download the file, and then it will ask you which folder you want to put the downloaded file, and so on. The few second it takes you to do the clickety clicks in windows, Opera already starts the downloading process. Therefore, the very moment you specify the folder location, Opera may have already downloaded several hundreds of kilobytes of files already.

On the other hand, KM doesn't do that, at least, not yet. Maybe someone may implement the Opera "download ahead" feature on KM. Just maybe. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thanks both of you I agree with the page opening speed and you are right a test is only a test and I learned something new about Opera's operation at the same time!! It would be nice to have that lookahead cache feature or "download ahead" feature built into KM!!!

Cheers!!

Also, these kind of speedtests only measure Javascript performance.

I agree with jsnj´s view: what feels faster for You is faster for You.

the speed tests are primarily for when You can not feel which is faster
(and "feel" starts for most people when difference is more than 25%).

/ speed on individual pc depends on many factors - including hardware, OS the type of pages You visit..... that is AFAIK the yeast of many threads here/

Penang´s description and memory did not fail. IMHO&AFAIK: Opera starts to print visible part of pages to monitor before it finishes rendering. Gecko browsers finish rendering and print then.

Speedsters talk about how they prime their favorite browser and OS for the tests.
I had a look into threads what fans of other browsers advocate.

For k-m usable? Well allocate much memory, give much cpu time and priority & minimize windows as fast as You can click -
that would give You good resultz on the mentioned tests.

No, the real browser "speed test" is at:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

It does use the 24fun Javascript speed test, but the above site actually tests other browsing (images, CSS, tables, etc.) and not just scripting. It's also the fairest test setup I've seen so far because the tests are very broad across browsers and platforms. He didn't test K-M 0.9 because it's a minor iteration, but I'm sure he'd add results from 1.0.

Also, that Opera is faster in downloads is just one little part; when people say Opera really is "fast," they're probably talking about tests like the above. I like both Opera and K-M as my top two browsers, followed by FF and some other things. What jsnj is completely true, of course; Opera just happens to be the fastest on my machine in all tasks.

Er. "What jsnj SAID is..."
Blah.

Hello wiseman.

I use both Opera, and K-Meleon daily for surfing, so I have some experience with both of them. I am on a 1.2celeron, 256ram, xp home, 56k dial-up(aol), and I use no "speed tweaks" on either browser. I have tested k-meleon, and Opera at 24fun.com before. I too was suprised when Opera came out MUCH, MUCH faster on the speed tests there. However, it was/is not an accurate representation of real-time browsing. I tested a variety of sites real-time in each browser(empty cache), and found that they were both about the same in speed. Both stayed within +/-10%(timed) of each other on all sites tested, alternating slight victories.

So I don't put much stock in the results from 24fun.com. It just doesn't accurately reflect real world browsing, at least for me. Opera, and k-mel are virtually the same on my comp.

I also have firefox installed, and though I don't/wouldn't use it, it's also pretty equivalent in speed to Opera, and k-mel also. IE6 however, is 15-25% slower. But it doesn't matter to me, for like firefox, I don't use it at all.


I must add though, that with each new beta, and preview release lately, Opera keeps improving it's speed slightly each time. And with it's instant back/forward(draws from cache), it has the fastest overall functionality.




Oh, Penang, you are right about the download operation of Opera. It does start downloading into cache before you select destination. As a matter of fact, on some sites I leave it in that state until the file is almost completely finished downloading before selecting destination, and can get a better overall d/l speed that way. Why I don't know, but it's a nice trick. 56k'ers need all the help we can get.

@tutu thx for interesting link.

p. s.
i was not much aware of recent Opera development since i stopped using it much
when 0.7 came out and almsot stopped when k-m 0.8x performed best with my
favorite web pages. I only remember that opera 7 started out to be very fast
and slowed with bugfixes.

Opera is faster. If they can sort out stuff like the ads... and I do not want to buy the thing...

@Nicholas - i guess they can not - they are a company -
k-m is supported by volunteer work. regards

I fully agree with everything you said here! I have KM as my default browser and will be keeping it that way! Java tests are just tests and don't really reflect on browsing speed as I find KM and Opera almost identical for browsing speed! I was just taken back by the speed results and that is what prompted me to start this post!

Since I started this post I have learned a lot from all of you and under advise of a couple of the members have installed and tried out Avant, Mix Browser and NetWorker!! I really love NetWorker! In my books any of them is a great replacement for IE and I did just that!

Thanks everyone for the advise and help it has been a learning experience here as usual!!:-D

Sorry, the above post by me was in response to the post by rjf but intended for all of you as well!!

Cheers!!

Well, I love and use both Opera and K-Meleon. But Opera has a very good and effective Kill "Flash-Trash" and others freaks plugins, which makes it faster loading so many webpages.

I managed to remove the annoying ads from within opera. Altho not as customizable as KM, it is generally faster. But some sites that display normal in KM, will not even load in Opera. Opera's [Reload] is super fast; KM does not even come close. I suppose it has to do with KM's cache? GMail only displays in HTML in Opera. :-(

I only used it for a couple of hours, so my comments about customization might be incorrect.

The issue concerning GMaill not working in Opera is really Gmail's fault (using some kind of protocol that's not in an official spec, kind of like IE likes doing). There are some threads on the Opera forum that talk about it, and there's a way around it in the new Opera 8 beta. Opera actually does support the Gmail features, it's the fault of a bad browser-sniffing script that Google uses.

This is actually true for a lot of sites that appear 'broken' in Opera--you can change the Opera browser UA to another browser string with only two keystrokes, and I've accessed many "IE-only" sites this way. Of course, if a site uses ActiveX or some other idiot-proprietary MS thing, no third party browser will work...

Oh, yeah, regarding customization -- just try right-clicking anywhere on the GUI and choose "Customize Toolbars," and visit http://nontroppo.org/wiki/Opera7/ and look at custom buttons, commands, etc. I use the keyboard shortcuts a lot (in Opera, try hitting Ctrl-, and all of them are customizable through the Preferences GUI.

Tutu> Opera is highly customizable. ".ini" files

And Gmail works with Opera: "http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser";

if it doesn't work, try::> sign in -> close tab (NO sign out!) -> and use the link http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser



2 guenter
IMHO&AFAIK: Opera starts to print visible part of pages to monitor before it finishes rendering. Gecko browsers finish rendering and print then.

:you can try this (add this code to user.js)
// Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

work in Mozilla/Firefox
see MozillaZine
for Fx is nice utility: FireTune...

Opera starts to print visible part of pages to monitor before it finishes rendering.
Not entirely true, there's a redraw delay setting in opera. It defaults to a fairly long time for no apparent reason. This makes it nearly impossible to scroll a page in opera until it's fully loaded. However, this setting can be changed to 0 (why it doesn't default to 0 is beyond me), and then opera becomes blazingly fast.

So what i sthe exact setting ion opera.ini that does this speedup ?

Zorro

Go into opera's prefs screen and click on windows, you should see and option that says "redraw in [NUMBER] seconds". Setting that option to immediately is the fastest setting.

Just to clear up some points:

1) The 24fun benchmarks test very specific parts of DHTML (the combination of HTML, CSS and javascript) performance. These results are relevant for surfers who frequent sites rich in DHTML, but won't be so relevant elsewhere.

2) Opera's download cacheing is *specific* to downloading files, it does not use a look-ahead cache for general web surfing. That is a good thing, as pre-fetch on the web is simply wasteful IMO.

3) Turn on pipelining in KM to get a major boost, especially on slower connections. Opera pipelines by default, and uses heuristics to control its functioning. Try increasing persistent connections to 4-8 in KM also.

4) "However, this setting can be changed to 0 (why it doesn't default to 0 is beyond me), and then opera becomes blazingly fast." -- It doesn't because this setting, just as with Gecko, can slow down page loading!!!!!! People don't realise this is just a perceptual trick that doesn't even work on everyone. Setting it to 0 means the browser engine must do more reflows of the page, potentially taking more CPU and delaying full page loading. My tests in Gecko show setting it to 0 can really delay e.g. table rendering (which gecko is sluggish at to start with) significantly. Setting it to 1000 reduces total load time in these cases.

5) "IMHO&AFAIK: Opera starts to print visible part of pages to monitor before it finishes rendering. Gecko browsers finish rendering and print then." -- They both start displaying data before that data loads. The major difference is that Gecko waits for the page styles (CSS) to come in before initiating rendering of incomplete data, whereas Opera places emphasis on the page text (HTML) and will show it as soon as possible.

Regarding the redraw setting in opera: The default setting is absolutely frigging slow as hell!! It is set so high that you absolutely CAN NOT scroll the page, click on anything, or do anything at all until it is fully loaded. If you're on a high speed connection and can load the whole page in 0.3 seconds, you won't even notice, but on dialup, opera's deafult redraw setting make it the slowest browser in the world. The total loading time might be less, but the practical loading time is much more.