Now that Apple’s Safari 3 browser is out for the Windows platform, there’s sure to be contention on whether the new browser really is faster than IE 7 or Firefox. Here’s one article from Wired.com that already makes the case that the browser is in fact not faster than the two other leading browsers. The case made is unfortunately based on downloads times for accessing Google’s Gmail and Calendar service. This is of course a flawed test since you can not accurately reproduce results based on download times from a real live website. There are so many factors that come into play when you’re talking about downloading content from a live website – everything from the speed of your pipe to the other server’s current performance, to the caching server that you or your ISP may employ. All of those things affect download speeds. Finally, Steve Jobs did mention rendering speeds – not download speeds. Additionally – one can not make the claim that a browser is faster than another simply by testing websites from a single vendor. You simply have to try a variety of sites, a variety of pages AND you must ensure that the vendor doesn’t have code specific to different browsers. I’m not a Apple fanboy myself – but I do know a flawed test when I see one.

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