Opera's Web Browser on OS X--How Fast Is It?

In April we tested several web browsers to compare how well they performed with Mac OS X 10.0.1 and we updated the tests for Mac OS X 10.0.2 in May. The tests showed substantial improvement in the timed events, reducing substantially the basis for complaints about the speed of applications in Mac OS X. Since then Mac OS X has been updated to 10.0.4 and several of the browsers have been updated as well. In addition, Opera recently released its version 5.0TP1 beta web browser, carbonized for Mac OS X.

Yesterday, we checked out Opera 5.0TP1 and were very impressed with what seemed to be exemplary speed in moving among web sites and loading pages. So we ran the timed events on it and a number of other web browsers in Mac OS X. The timed events are launching the browser and timing until Macs Only! is fully loaded, clicking the down arrow and timing how long it takes to scroll Macs Only!'s 7/2 edition, loading the QuickClicks (popularity) table on SiteLink.Net and clicking on Macs Only!'s entry on SiteLink.Net to return. The state of the web connection and wireless network affect performance so these times are not strictly comparable with the previous runs. We went through the sequence twice to make sure that there was no major changes during the test--there weren't.

Since we last tested the browsers, Internet Explorer was updated to v5.1.1 and OmniWeb was updated to v4.0.1. We used the latest browser versions and our 400 MHz PowerBook 2000 with 512MB RAM on a wireless network. Here are the results:

Average Time in Full Seconds (Mac OS X 10.0.4)

Action	NC 4.77	IE 5.1.1	Opera 5.0TP1	OmniWeb 4.0.1
Launch/Load Macs Only!	5	15	7	10
Scroll Macs Only!	3	5	8	3
Load SiteLink.net	8	5	3	5
Back to Macs Only!	1	2	2	4

The general observation is that web browsers are fairly quick now except for the initial launch and load by Internet Explorer 5.1.1. The Classic mode Netscape is still the fastest to launch and load. Opera was the slowest in scrolling, Netscape was the slowest to load SiteLink's popularity table and OmniWeb was the slowest to load Macs Only! from the link on SiteLink.

Opera is the winner among the Mac OS X compatible web browsers despite the slow scrolling speed, previously a complaint about OmniWeb.

Opera renders well for a Carbon app but it doesn't come close to OmniWeb, the only Cocoa app. The only complaint we have with Opera so far is that it crashes when one tries to import bookmarks/favorites from the other web browsers.