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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12

January 15th, 2013Top Story

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12

By Whitson Gordon

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12Windows 8 is out with a new version of Internet Explorer, Firefox has boosted its JavaScript power and memory usage, and Chrome's been slowly improving its speed. How do the new versions stack up against each other? We found out in our latest round of browser speed tests.

We've been testing browsers for awhile, and we've refined our method pretty well. It's a good mix of both manually timed user experience measures and hardcore JavaScript benchmarks, plus some new tests aimed at features like Chrome's prerendering or Firefox's on demand tab loading can really do. All tests take place on Windows (which is why we didn't test Safari—it isn't very popular on Windows, and testing the Mac version wouldn't give it equal footing).

As always, remember that speed is not the only thing each browser has to offer. Each browser has a number of unique features and characteristics, all of which you should factor into making your choice of which to use. However, while most features can be listed on their home pages, you can't easily compare their speed just from each browser's changelog, and that's why we've put this together. It's just one more way to compare the browsers as you make your decision. Also keep in mind that everyone's computer is different, and your numbers may differ from ours, but the comparison between the numbers should be the same.

Cold Boot-Up Winner: Chrome!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12Chrome had a shockingly fast boot-up time this time around, popping up just over two seconds after we clicked its icon, ready to go. Explorer was pretty fast as well, with Firefox close behind and Opera slowing down quite a bit to take last place.

Tab Loading Winner: TIE Between Chrome and Internet Explorer!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12Our test of loading nine tabs, from Lifehacker to Facebook to Hulu and Amazon, showed some interesting results. Chrome and Internet Explorer both dropped some time in this area, tying each other for first place, while Firefox absolutely crumbled under the weight of the tabs. Firefox's UI had so much trouble loading all nine tabs at once that its UI animations would completely stop while it caught up, finally loading them all after nearly 20 seconds. Whatever the Mozilla team has done, it makes the browser feel like its old, slow self again.

URL Loading Winner: Chrome!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12As usual, Chrome took home the prize for visiting sites from the address bar, thanks to its awesome prerendering feature. However, Firefox and IE have definitely sped up a tad, too, meaning most browsers should give you a pretty quick page load as long as you've been to that page during this session—except Opera, who still took over a second to load the page.

Cold Restore Winner: Chrome!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12Even though this test was originally determined to test Firefox's new on demand tab loading, it seems this feature no longer works during a cold boot—only during a warm boot. However, whether we tested cold or warm starts, Firefox still didn't seem to benefit from this feature at all. The Chrome team has really upped their game, making Chrome boot up super fast whether it has nine tabs in tow or not. While Chrome still had to load those tabs, it became usable nearly immediately after the window showed up, while Firefox took a little longer to boot and Opera kept us waiting quite a while.

JavaScript Winner: Chrome!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12We've gone back and forth about whether to include JavaScript benchmarks in this test, because they're pretty artificial, despite most test's claim to measure "real world performance". In the interest of completeness, we've included it here, with the usual results (Chrome smoking the competition), but don't put too much stock in this over our other, more real-world tests. Due to issues with Mozilla's Dromaeo test suite, we used the popular Peacekeeper test from Futuremark this time around.

Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs Open) Winner: Firefox!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12As usual, Firefox's memory management has improved greatly in the recent past, while Chrome's continues to shoot up to astronomical levels.

Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs and Five Extensions) Winner: Firefox!

Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 24, Firefox 18, Internet Explorer 10, and Opera 12.12Everyone's memory usage went up when we piled on five extensions, though Firefox's increased significantly less than Chrome and Opera's. As usual, Firefox took first place once again.

The Winner?

This time around, there was actually a very clear winner, but we've decided to stop tallying up the results and raking browsers in these tests. Why? Because we think you should decide for yourself! Everyone has different priorities, so we've decided to stop including a "winner" since the scores were impossible to weight fairly against one another. If you don't ever shut down your computer, for example, you can just ignore the cold boot scores. Don't like benchmarks? Throw out the JavaScript test. Have 12GB of RAM? Then memory management isn't really an issue. Check out the above results and see how the browsers stack up when it comes to your most important tests—and of course, weigh each browser's features—before you determine a winner.

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You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

January 15th, 2013Top Story

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

By Stephen Totilo

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney InfinityDisney Infinity sounds like it's going to be the biggest thing Disney has ever done with games, and it's coming out this June.

At a press event in L.A., Disney honchos are just pouring out details that matched pretty well with earlier leaks.

What is this thing?

It's going to be a massive series of interconnected games all based on Disney and Pixar movie universes, mixing and matching characters from all of them.

The plan is vast, with Disney Infinity games coming to mobile, online and presumably every console shown at the event—Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, 3DS, and PC. The plan involves figures from each of the movie universes that will unlock games and characters (i.e. Skylanders, as predicted!).

Infinity will launch in June with "playsets" based on Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Incredibles. The $75 starter pack will launch with those three playsets, and other characters will run you $13 each.

One of the novelties is the "toybox," a version of the project that will let players mix and match characters, as if they're playing with these characters as toys in one place. That concept is designed to lead to all sorts of fun virtual-world what-ifs. Disney showed some examples:

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

John Pleasants, head of Disney Interactive, hyped this all as follows: Disney Infinity is not just a single game. It is a platform that will grow and diversify and improve over time." And: "You can play with your favorite Disney characters without limits. All of these characters, together for the first time, ready to play."

The conference is ongoing. Since some will surely ask, no word on whether Marvel or Star Wars characters will be in this.

UPDATE 1:

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

The starter pack will come with the three figures up top. There are two types of Portals of Power discs that characters can stand on to add them to games or the toybox. A developer from Avalanche Software, which is the main studio on this project, showed off an Incredibles-themed game. It's a third-person action game, as are the Monsters and Pirates-themed games.

It appears that in these movie-specific games, you'll only be able to use characters from that movie's world. The characters will interact with those of other movie worlds in the toybox mode.

All games in Infinity will be multiplayer.

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

Half of the Pirates game in Infinity is pirate-ship combat. (Huge naval combat. Take that, Assassin's Creed III!)

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

UPDATE 2:

Click to view Here's a trailer.

UPDATE 3:

The Toybox mode will include basic tutorial modes, adventure missions and a huge level-building mode that looks like it is taking aim at Minecraft. Developers working on the game already made a massive Starship Enterprise and another made the Bowser's Castle track from Mario Kart. There's even a "logic editor" which allows for rudimentary programming, which can allow players to create sidescroller games, top-down games... all sorts of things. They showed a Donkey Kong riff.

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

You'll Be Able to Play As Jack Sparrow, Woody, Or Any Other Disney Character In The Crazy Ambitious Disney Infinity

Infinity players will be able to upload their creations from the toybox mode and share them with other users, who can then download them.

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Find All Humans on Earth Who Like Trail Running with Facebook's New Magic Search Engine

January 15th, 2013Top Story

Find All Humans on Earth Who Like Trail Running with Facebook's New Magic Search Engine

By Adrian Chen

Find All Humans on Earth Who Like Trail Running with Facebook's New Magic Search EngineWe've all been there: It's a Tuesday morning and you've got a hankering for some trail running. But your wilderness survival class taught you never to trail run alone. What do you do? With Facebook's new search engine, you can instantly use your computer to search for anyone on earth who likes trail running. (You can also find other things. But why would you want to?)

Click to view Since the beginning of time, humans have wanted to find other humans to go trail running with them. But they were mostly SOL. The only way to find a trail running companion was to physically hike onto a trail, trip someone who was running on it with a tripwire, kidnap them, tie them up in your basement and blast AC/DC at them 24/7 from massive speakers until they got disoriented enough to agree to go trail running with you.

Facebook's new graph search, unveiled today before hundreds of tech reporters at their Menlo Park headquarters, aims to change all this. Be sure to check out the video to the left. (Menlo Park is, of course, known for its trail running.) Graph search mines Facebook's massive database of interests, people, photos and places, and replaces the old busted search function of Facebook which was pretty much useless if you were looking for someone to traipse along a rugged wilderness path. In fact, I just typed "trail running" into Facebook's old search bar and it brought me to a generic page that explained "Trail running is a sport which consists of running and hiking over trails." No crap, sherlock—this is why it's awesome.

You can use graph search in four main areas of Facebook, according to CNN: People, photos, places and interests. Here are just a few of the questions Facebook graph search can answer

  • Which of my friends who live in my area like trail running?
  • Can you find pictures of me trail running in 2010?
  • What restaurants do people who like trail running also like?
  • Are there any people on earth named T. Rail Running? Because that would be hilarious.
  • There are some sensitive privacy issues, of course. Luckily Facebook Graph Search is "privacy-aware" which means if you haven't come out to your friends and family as an avid trail runner, your status won't show up in Graph Searches. With Facebook Graph Search, the age-old dream of all of humanity networked together into a giant global brain, operating giant global legs, running along the trail of the Universe to a tripped-out soundtrack of Sigur Ros, is that much closer.

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