What makes a browser slow?

[JKilez]

In a number of threads here, people have mentioned that they have switched to Firefox because IE is too slow, or switched to Chrome because Firefox is too slow. This has me at somewhat of a loss because regardless of what browser I use, my pages load in under 1-2 seconds. This is not a sufficiently significant enough amount of time for me to appreciate any difference in load times across various browsers.

So, my question is: what exactly is slow about a browser? Could someone give an example of a page that is slow under IE but not Firefox? Is this something that is only experienced on certain types of pages or people with slow network connections or slow computers?

[Discipline]

The rendering engine and the javascript engine all sorts of other stupid technical crap.

See here for a good start.

[elfkin477]

It can also be your network adaptor that slows things down, too. My old g-series adaptor was faster to load internet pages, but a hell of a lot less reliable than my new n-series one.

[JKilez]

Thanks for that, but I believe I have a grasp on the technical side of the improvements in the engines, which is great in theory. What I do not personally observe is what practical difference this make to the average browsing experience. Since the loads times are so short, can you really appreciate the difference between a 1 second render time and a 1/2 second render time? For web-based apps, sure, I could see that it may be significant, but what about just normal surfing? What are people experiencing when using a browser that makes them say “Hey! This is just annoying slow. I need to find a faster browser.”

[Jragon]

I only feel it after switching. I can go back to IE7 and the fact that I’m expecting a page to load in x time can make IE seem really sluggish. However, when I switch from slower to faster I never really notice (again, until I switch back).

[BigT]

@JKilez

Thanks for that, but I believe I have a grasp on the technical side of the improvements in the engines, which is great in theory. What I do not personally observe is what practical difference this make to the average browsing experience. Since the loads times are so short, can you really appreciate the difference between a 1 second render time and a 1/2 second render time? For web-based apps, sure, I could see that it may be significant, but what about just normal surfing? What are people experiencing when using a browser that makes them say “Hey! This is just annoying slow. I need to find a faster browser.”

Most people I know use a lot more web apps (particularly Gmail and Facebook) than they do anything else. Okay, so there’s YouTube and

My own experience is problems with Wikipedia or Wikia. Wikia worse, as the Google Analytics often hold it up. But an all text page from Wikipedia should not take so long to load. (Yeah, it’s only 10 seconds or so.)