
Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance - dwgirvan
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9458/examining-microsoft-edge-browser-performance
======
vmarsy
Benchmarks are good but the overall experience is what matters the most. I'm
really impressed by the startup time of Edge. I type some query in the Cortana
search bar and press Enter, it launches Edge extremely fast. So far I really
love the performance.

However to make it my main browser I'm still waiting for adblocking
extensions. I browse with a few tabs opened, one of them start randomly
playing an ad video, at least it shows the sound icon on the tab so I know
which one to kill.

I also noticed a few UI problems: When pressing the back button with "Ctrl"
on, it does not open the last page in a new tab. Surprisingly, I use this
feature very often on Chrome & Firefox. Sometimes when opening a new tab, the
focus is not in the address/search bar, forcing me to click on it (or pressing
Tab until I get it)

~~~
viggity
I don't have edge, but opening last closed tab can also be triggered via
ctrl+shift+t. Perhaps they have that shortcut enabled?

~~~
liviu-
He means opening the previous page history-wise in a new tab.

~~~
gknoy
I didn't even realize that WAS a feature. Neat. I use Control-Shift-t VERY
often, but never thought about this one.

~~~
mahouse
You can also click the back button with the middle mouse button. I use it very
often.

~~~
gcb0
i always pressed back, middle clicked the link i had just clicked ...
/facepalm

------
cwyers
What I'd like to see are benchmarks that involve visiting some sample of sites
out of the Alexa top 100 and performing standard tasks (reading Gmail, finding
a certain thing on Amazon.com, etc.) I know that's dependent on things like
network conditions, so you'd have to run it a lot of times to get meaningful
results, but it'd still provide a more meaningful result than a lot of
synthetic benchmarks.

~~~
pcwalton
I agree that major improvements are needed. SunSpider, Octane, and Kraken are
all pure JavaScript benchmarks, very microbenchmarky (look at bitwise-and in
the SunSpider suite). Oort Online is a benchmark of WebGL performance—WebGL is
definitely worth benchmarking, but how common is it in people's daily
browsing? HTML5Test tests whether a bunch of "HTML5" features are sorta
present, not whether they actually work or anything—it encourages broken
implementations that support just enough to pass the test.

The state of browser benchmarking is pretty bad. Right now the common suites
of benchmarks overwhelmingly focus on what is _easy to measure_ , not what
reflects real-world perception of browser performance.

~~~
cwyers
It feels to me like current benchmarks all measure execution time, not user
time. Let's say you go from a reasonably sized web page to another, and then
hit the back button. How long to load the previous page? Right click on a link
and select open in new tab. How long does it take to open a new tab? It's
definitely part of the user's perception of the browser's speed, but I don't
think stuff like SunSpider and Octane even tries to measure it.

~~~
pcwalton
Heavily related to this, one key insight that I think has been neglected is
that JavaScript benchmarks do a bad job of measuring cold code. Most code on
the Web is cold, because much Web browsing consists of fresh page loads.
Heavily optimizing JITs are exactly what you _don 't_ want for cold code: time
spent compiling is time you could have been spending running the code. But
benchmarks consist of running the same code repeatedly in a long-running loop,
which encourages development of sophisticated, highly-optimizing JITs that
spend a lot of time in up-front compilation, which end up being totally
pointless for JS whose sole purpose is to run once to place an ad somewhere on
the page.

It's easy to forget that JavaScript is still primarily a scripting language
used to perform high-level application tasks. It's awesome that JS has gone so
far low-level, and we should continue to push it as far as it can, but I think
the bread and butter that users care about is not so much heavy number
crunching but rather quick cold code that needs to run once or twice and get
out of the way.

~~~
haberman
> Heavily optimizing JITs are exactly what you don't want for cold code: time
> spent compiling is time you could have been spending running the code.

I agree with your overall point of cold cold performance being paramount. But
I don't think this follows. A heavily optimizing JIT can have very good cold-
code performance if the JIT is especially fast and/or it makes especially good
decisions about when to JIT.

The important trait is short break-even time: how long after JIT-ting some
code that you break even on the investment of JITting time.

When all I knew was the JVM I assumed that JIT-compiling inherently had a long
warm-up / break-even time. Now that I've experienced LuaJIT I know this isn't
true. I haven't benchmarked the major JIT-ting JS engines but they seem pretty
good at this too?

~~~
pcwalton
By "a heavily optimizing JIT" I mean "the specific mode of a larger JIT-
enabled engine that compiles slowly but emits good code". So IonMonkey,
Crankshaft, SpeculativeJIT/FTL are all JITs that live inside a larger engine
that switches between them as needed. In JS land we usually call the
individual modes "JITs" even though they may (or may not) share a bunch of
code.

------
kyriakos
Running on a 7 year old HTPC with 2gb ram edge feels extremely smooth compared
to chrome.

They should do benchmarks on lower end systems, such as atom based tablets.

~~~
joshuapants
I've also been fairly impressed with Edge on a low-spec machine.
Realistically, once there is extension support and I can get an ad-blocker
(ideally uBlock, and since it's rumored to be easy to port Chrome extensions
I'm hopeful) I would have no issues using Edge as my daily browser.

~~~
pothibo
I run exactly zero extension and used an ad-blocker for maybe 1 month in my
whole lifetime.

With that being said, I am genuinely curious how these 2 things are necessary
for you to consider a browser. Are there extensions that I don't have that is
crazy for me not to have?

~~~
taco_emoji
I'm genuinely curious how anyone can spend any significant amount of time
reading on the web and _not_ use an ad-blocker. Even mostly-benign animated
sidebar ads are too distracting for me.

~~~
0xFFC
Not going to non-standard site ? I never ever go to site which its developer
put ads every where he/she liked.

I have very restricted list of sites which I think are good enough my
attention and time.

p.s. and I spend 7 8 hour a day sitting and reading material and documents
from net.

p.s-2. And I am okey with standard ads.Site owners has right to make living
to, and I think using ads-blocker is selfish act.

~~~
joshuapants
> Site owners has right to make living to

Site owners have the right to make a living. They do not have a right to waste
my bandwidth, damage my hearing, or compromise my security.

> I think using ads-blocker is selfish act

Perhaps, but it's a reaction to the considerably more selfish trend in
advertising.

~~~
0xFFC
Did you even read whole comment?

~~~
joshuapants
I did.

------
skrowl
No amount of speed matters until you have extensions. Without uBlock, it'll
just be an ad filled mess.

~~~
recursive
That's not really true. I don't use ad blockers, but I still care about my
browser speed.

~~~
Loque
I am curious why you do not, have you tried? Life is bliss.

~~~
robmcm
You may also want a website you a reading to stay in business and proffit from
their work.

I think ad blocking days are numbered, the more mainstream it becomes the more
likley the ad networks are to respond.

~~~
kiiski
How would ad networks respond to that? I can't think of any technically
possible way for them to do that (except somehow getting operating systems to
build in some crazy DRM scheme).

~~~
kedean
Sure there is, you start making the distinction between ads and regular
content impossible. If all of the images on the site and all of the ads all
map to something like www.sitename.com/resource/somekindofhash, then how would
you tell programmatically whats an ad? You could even assign each visitor a
mapping seed, so that caching still works. Blocking would have to be done on a
user-by-user basis, turning this into a MAD-scenario, where some users just
start blocking EVERYTHING that isn't textual or generated.

------
DigitalSea
As great as Edge is in the benchmarks, the engine beneath seems to be solid,
the browser is shipping in a half-completed state. The lack of support for
extensions I think is going to do more harm than good. I don't get the rush to
release Edge, wouldn't it have been better for Microsoft to just hold off a
couple of more months until the browser was ready feature wise?

I haven't been using the Windows 10 development builds, so I have yet to use
Edge. As a front-end developer, I am excited we are getting a browser that
seemingly supports all of the essentials (and prefixless too).

~~~
wluu
My guess is, they figure that most non-tech people will continue using IE 11
if Edge was not shipped with Windows 10 rather than moving to Edge when Edge
shipped.

------
citalan
I'm excited to try out Edge, from what I've read it looks like a great browser
but the key feature in Chrome that keeps me from switching is the shared
history. I use Chrome on my Android phone and tablet, and on my desktop and
laptop so all of my browsing history and currently open tabs can be accessed
from any device. I rely on this day-to-day, particularly the "Recent Tabs"
option from other devices.

Until another browser implements that (and supports Android phone / tablets),
or I can find a third-party service that seamlessly offers the same options, I
can't see myself switching from Chrome any time soon.

~~~
omaranto
I agree that "recent tabs from other devices" is very handy. IE11 does have
that, so I guess Edge will too (at least eventually). This doesn't help you
since you probably don't want to trade your Android phone/tablet for Windows
phones/tablets.

If you insist on Android devices, Firefox also has the "recent tabs from other
devices" feature. The feature is so useful it made me switch from Chrome to
Firefox in fact: I used to use Chrome on my laptop and when I bought an
Android tablet I used Chrome on it to share tabs between devices, but then
Android Chrome introduced some change that made MathJax render incorrectly, so
I switched to Android Firefox on the tablet; this in turn made me switch to
Firefox on my laptop, to be able to share tabs again.

------
bepotts
I wonder how much the Edge's performance will affect the average person's
decision to use it or not. Browsers one up each other all the time and I'm
sure Google's next major Chrome update will show improvements over the Edge.

Renaming your browser won't change peoples' memory of Internet Explorer, even
if Microsoft built Edge from the ground up. The average person is still going
to be thinking IE when they see it.

Without extensions, I personally am not leaving Chrome - even if it's a
resource hog. But it is nice to see how Microsoft is changing their behavior.
Competition between products is always a good thing.

~~~
liviu-
>Renaming your browser won't change peoples' memory of Internet Explorer, even
if Microsoft built Edge from the ground up. The average person is still going
to be thinking IE when they see it.

Maybe I'm underestimating how culturally aware the average person is, but I
doubt most people will care to make this connection between IE and Edge.

~~~
bepotts
How could they not?

You upgrade your OS or buy a new computer, and you see a new application (
that you didn't install ) and you ( presumably ) can't uninstall it. Wouldn't
any rational person assume it's a pre-installed application? Wouldn't it make
sense to believe that the OS developer created it?

There's an old joke about IE when people purchase a new computer: It's the
browser I use to install another browser. What are people going to think when
they don't see IE anymore and they see a new browser?

Everyone will know the Edge is Microsoft's new browser, and everyone knows
that Microsoft's previous browser was IE.

~~~
Encosia
> Everyone

In my experience, you're dramatically overestimating how many people really
understand what a browser is, what IE is, or can disambiguate between Chrome
and Google.

~~~
bepotts
"Everyone" wasn't the literal everyone, "everyone" is the group of people that
buy a Windows OS and install another browser. Those people know what a browser
is.

~~~
Encosia
Maybe I misunderstood, but I was replying to your overall message about:

> I wonder how much the Edge's performance will affect the average person's
> decision to use it or not.

About half of people using Windows continue using IE right now. So, "everyone"
and "average" definitely refer to a lot of people who have absolutely no idea
what any of us are talking about in this entire page of comments. It's so easy
to underestimate how little truly "average" folks understand or care about
these nuances in the real world outside of a few tech bubble areas.

~~~
Mikerad1979
I have an excellent example of this. Despite having both Chrome and Firefox
installed on my home desktop computer, my wife continues to use IE 11. Even
with her own profile for Chrome, and using an Android phone with Chrome, she
still sticks with IE for some odd reason.

------
ajitkolathur
I think the most interesting feature is the ask cortana feature,
[http://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-cortana-in-edge-
browser](http://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-cortana-in-edge-browser), it
performs reasonably well on most queries and is pretty fast. Especially useful
when reading articles where you have no clue about some of the people
mentioned or phrases and expressions being thrown around.. Highlight the
phrase and hit the ask cortana option in the menu.

~~~
bentcorner
So funny, what's old is new again. I remember Encarta Factfinder back in the
day did something similar. Of course, it didn't have any NLP, but the core of
the idea is there.

[http://www.activewin.com/reviews/software/apps/ms/encarta/20...](http://www.activewin.com/reviews/software/apps/ms/encarta/2002_dvd/)

------
bztzt
These benchmark articles frustrate me because I rarely feel they tell me
anything. What do the benchmarks actually measure? When one tested product
benchmarks as better/worse than another, what specifically is happening to
make it better or worse? I feel like a good technical reporter ought to be
able to dig deeper, do some investigation and provide real insight.

------
GnarfGnarf
Edge is not ready for prime time. I have a desktop app that does the OAuth
dance redirecting to localhost. Edge didn't respond correctly, whereas
Firefox, Chrome and even IE handle it OK. Even if I make IE the default
browser, control is still handed over to Edge.

------
itsbits
I started using Chrome because it is fast in startup, load. But its not the
case anymore. Still I am using Chrome coz of awesome developer tools and
Chrome extensions.

------
liviu-
Are they really going the completely disregard Linux users?

~~~
TD-Linux
Why would you expect that they wouldn't?

~~~
liviu-
Cause a) recently they've been showing more interest in developing for
different platforms (OneNote, Visual Studio Code); b) the other major browsers
have a Linux release; c) IE had a release for Linux at some point; and d)
there is a market of people that might use their product.

~~~
smhenderson
They had a version for _Unix_. It probably ran on Linux through a
compatibility layer but it was not designed for any Linux distro.

And that was a long time ago when they were competing with Netscape. It was
easy for them to do that because the original IE was mostly a branded version
of Spyglass's Mosaic which was designed from the beginning to run on Unix and
Windows.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc).

------
mistermann
This is all I need to switch:

1\. Actually work (strangely, current IE can't accomplish this on some of my
machines)

2\. Tree Style Tabs

3\. Support for popular ad-blockers

4\. Easy on memory (including ability to unload a tab and _actually_ release
that memory, something FF can't seem to figure out)

5\. Don't constantly take a 45 second timeout with lots of tabs open (like
Firefox)

------
aesthetics1
Something about the icons used in Edge feel unfamiliar to me. The back,
forward, and refresh arrows even feel alien. I think they have deviated away
from recognizable icons for the rest of the toolbar too. Something just
doesn't feel right

------
ilaksh
What matters is HTML5 compatibility which is lacking.

------
benaston
If Edge is not on approximate feature parity with Chrome (it isn't), then the
benchmark is meaningless.

~~~
ryanlol
This depends entirely on what you want your browser to do.

I personally use my browser to, well... browse the internet?

------
aesthetics1
I'm worried about a few things:

Where will Edge take us? Is Edge replacing IE, or is it parallel?

I feel like this is going to cause confusion. Why did they choose a modern
evolution of the Internet Explorer logo (Blue "e" with an orbit)? Everyone is
going to expect that this is the new Internet Explorer. ActiveX plugins don't
work - are you using Internet Explorer? "Yes! The blue e!" Eek.

If IE is going to co-exist alongside Edge, I feel that we will just be forced
to support _another_ new browser.

Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

~~~
Sgt_Apone
Edge is replacing IE and is the default browser for Windows 10. IE is included
in Windows 10, but it is buried in the Windows Accessories folder in the Start
menu. The current version of IE is 11 and that will be the last. Microsoft
will support IE until Jan 2016.

~~~
taspeotis
> Microsoft will support IE until Jan 2016.

Uh... [1]

    
    
        Beginning January 12, 2016, the following operating systems
        and browser version combinations will be supported:
        
        Windows Vista SP2         Internet Explorer 9
        Windows Server 2008 SP2   Internet Explorer 9
        ...
    
        After January 12, 2016, only the most recent version of Internet
        Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive
        technical support and security updates.
    

They go on to talk about how Windows 7's Enterprise Mode will be supported
until 2020 so you can still keep IE kicking around well beyond 2016.

[1] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/08/07/stay-up-to-
dat...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/08/07/stay-up-to-date-with-
internet-explorer.aspx)

~~~
Sgt_Apone
Ah, you are correct. I mixed up the dates with IE 10 for some reason.

------
dgcoffman
Still can't calculate height or fire mouseLeave events correctly.

~~~
wbkang
That's hard to believe. Can you give us an example? Also mouseleave is an
event IE invented and is non standard. How would it not work on IE?

------
pippy
Microsoft are coming out swinging at Google with their latest browser and
Operating System. Their Cortana search feature is impressive, and very well
integrated.

Even Windows 10 isn't shying away with a search field located in the main task
bar. These features are there to try and chip away at Google's search
dominance.

It will be interesting to see if it works. If Microsoft makes a browser people
want to use, Chrome will be in trouble. Chrome might end up like Google Maps
on iOS.

While many seem to be welcoming a 'new Microsoft' with their open source
efforts, it seems they still don't shy away from trying to kill off
competitors by leveraging their Operating System monopoly.

~~~
jevgeni
Why _wouldn 't_ you do it?

------
0xFFC
I definitely will be one of who which will switch from chrome to edge(or any
other viable competitor) very soon. The ridiculous path chrome team have
chosen for their path is enough for me already.I have said this so many times,
I don't want another OS on top of my OS.I just want a Browser , not an
application-platform which uses my 3 GB of ram for apps and extension.Even
when I delete all app and extension there is certain amount of overhead.

Chrome team can offer two distinct version , lightweight without extension and
app support and super fast start time , and complete version.

Chrome turned to new JVM recently.just instead of java you developer should
use Javascript.

I know this is google policy to push people to net (because it means more
profit for google) but I don't want some company dictate what should I do. and
at least with edge I have super fast load time and lightweight browser.

~~~
HaseebR7
Yep, same reason I'm gonna switch to IE

------
joshstrange
Benchmarks are largely useless, everyone makes up their own and none of them
translate into how it FEELS to use a browser IMHO. Great they made some stride
but so did every other browser also they don't have extensions yet and won't
at launch which is a nonstarter.

I used it VERY briefly in a WIn 10 VM (not to use it, just to go download some
tools) and wanted to pull my hair out. Little things here and there that were
a constant reminder that microsoft just is bad at browsers. Sure they can
piece together something that can access the web but it's not an enjoyable
experience. I had to go and download chrome because apparently browsing around
online, having multiple tabs open, and downloading files was a little too much
for Edge to handle. I'd say it was the number of ads on the sites I was going
to but I went to the same sites in Chrome without an adblocker (Vanilla
Chrome) and it handled it without a sweat. This is by no means a complete test
but I really wanted to try Edge and it felt like it was actively working
against me and unable to deal with websites that I might have to go to from
time to time that are covered in ads.

We will see what Win 10 ships with and what Edge looks like after extension
support is added but I'm not holding my breath for the IE/Edge team to put out
anything beginning to look like a real browser. Lastly no cross platform
support? Fuck off, don't expect me to test for it at all. And no, VM's are not
acceptable for testing. Don't misunderstand me Apple sucks with Safari and
their lack of browser choice (and engines) on iOS almost as much but at least
webkit is sane. Not to mention you can test webkit on Windows but I do agree
it's not the same as Safari. That said Safari is a LOT closer to FF/Chrome
than IE/Edge is to FF/Chrome which reduces needed testing substantially.

