Browser Speed - Reaction Time Measurement

I’ve written a web app which shows text and takes reaction time measurements from keypresses. The app and the browser are both on the same machine running on http://localhost

On mac/safari it feels very fast - no noticeable pauses.

On windows/chrome it feels sluggish.

This is not mission-critical software, but I’m curious: does anyone have a favorite Windows browser for running web apps, in terms of low latency / high performance?

Cross-browser testing of web apps on Mac vs. Windows suggests you’re using different machines (or a VM), so maybe the PC specs are not up to your Mac specs?

Chrome is generally considered one of the faster browsers on Windows. But if you have Windows 10, Edge can also perform quite well.

Another point to consider is browser plug-ins and antivirus. Either or both of these can make a Windows browser crawl along quite poorly.

I don’t know what sort of web app you’re building, but in my experience it can actually help to test your web app using the “lowest” performing OS/Browser combination - because it sort of reminds you (or forces you, depending on your perspective) to think of optimization in your code design at all times.

Web app optimization requires considering all three tiers, database, app logic on your server & client-side goodies (like HTML5, CSS & JavaScript, etc…).

I hope that helps.

As Safari is actually ranked as slower than the others (http://www.toptenreviews.com/software/internet/best-internet-browser-software/) there may be two things at play here:

  1. You run Windows in a VM and Mac not, hence the speed difference. Try running it on a real windows pc.
  2. The Xojo web framework favorises Safari over the other browsers. Using normal html, css, javascript, php and Chrome will always be better than Safari.