We recently conducted a training with a user group, and a member of the group asked, “Why does it matter if I use Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer as my browsers. Aren’t they all the same?”

This is a hard question because so many factors come into play. So for the sake of this article let’s assume you have a solid internet connection, and your browser is up-to-date and free of any extensions that could be slowing down your performance. Buckle in…this gets a bit technical but packed with helpful information.

 

In this day and age, most of it comes down to two things: your rendering engine and the JavaScript engine.

 

The rendering engine is the one that grabs all the information in a webpage and presents it to the user graphically. Although this used to be the more important thing regarding performance in the past, it is not that different among browsers anymore, with the exception of some enhancements that some websites use to speed up the rendering on a specific browser. This rendering process can be a bit frustrating for the those developing JavaScript as the browser gets to interpret the code and render it based upon their interpretation. This explains why some browsers or versions will display things slightly differently and is another reason to ensure you are using the most current version of a supported browser.

 

The JavaScript engine is the one that runs the website code on your computer. Nowadays the JavaScript engine is where most of the performance comes from. Each browser uses a different engine, for example:

Chrome uses “V8.”

Firefox uses “SpiderMonkey.”

Safari uses “Nitro”.

Internet Explorer uses “Chakra”.

 

Each JavaScript engine has its strengths and downfalls and although a single piece of JavaScript code will run faster in one browser, it is not possible to affirm that one browser will run all JavaScript code faster than the others. In short, it is not possible to say that a single browser is always faster than the others. However, both Chrome and Firefox are speedy and give you customizable options with a host of good features. Browsers like Chrome seem to load faster because they use cleaver loading and caching algorithms.

 

In the end, it’s important that neither you nor your IT department be afraid to change browsers and try others. A marginal difference to one user might be significantly different to another. As with all technology, it’s important not to get complacent. We also encourage users to always check their internet speed, click here using a tool like this one.

 

Agrian supports the following browsers: Chrome 50.0 or higher, Firefox 52 or higher, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.