Arora – Speedy Cross-platform Web Browser. Benchmark Chrome, Firefox, Epiphany

Are you tired of slow and sluggishness of Firefox when you need it the most? Try Arora, and you won’t regret.

It is a Cross Platform – Windows/Mac/Linux/Embedded Linux/FreeBSD – Lightweight web browser uses the same rendering engine as Google Chrome and Safari, but works on almost any platform. Arora uses the QtWebKit port of the fully standards-compliant WebKit layout engine.

Apart from the must-have features, Arora also Features that browsers like Firefox and Chrome do:

  • blazing fast startups
  • smart location bar , session management
  • privacy mode
  • download manager
  • Set of tools for web developers – Debugging
  • 30 Regional Languages

The browser offers most of the features of mainstream browsers, including private browsing, session management, and a smart location bar—all in a lightweight browser that opens nearly instantly. It’s unlikely that Lifehacker readers will leave their precious Firefox behind for this, but it’s a nice, functional, and fast browser that’s definitely worth a look—especially for Linux users interested in a functional WebKit browser with a private browsing mode.

In my testing on Windows, Mac, Linux the browser worked without a problem, blazing fast startups, and rendered pages extremely fast (just like Chrome 3).

Tot test the real world scenario, I did some Benchmarks for Chrome 3 (Fastest browser yet on Windows) vs. Arora.

The benchmark was based on FutureMark PeaceKeeper –

Higher is better – Epiphany, Midori runs only on  Linux.

Results: Midori is fastest on Linux, and Chrome 3.0 is fastest on Windows followed by Arora. 🙂

Arora kicks Firefox’s ass badly. The REAL Fact is – Gecko cannot hold a candle to WebKit when it comes to performance. And mercifully, WebKit brings decent browser performance to those of us who have been suffering on Linux under the growing weight of Firefox. Though I love my Firefox extensions, I will happily bid them farewell in favor of the speed Midori and Epiphany are currently delivering.

I was delighted to see the results, Arora.

Site:http://code.google.com/p/arora/

Download

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9 thoughts on “Arora – Speedy Cross-platform Web Browser. Benchmark Chrome, Firefox, Epiphany”

  1. i have vista,firefox full of extensions, tens of game and like 50 programs and i dont give a **** about that little performance.Why?cause i have quad core 4gb ram nvidia gtx260
    buy a better computer next time
    all the browsers open at the same time:i cant even notice it

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    • So. Freaking. What.

      Some people don't have rich parents/rich job/ability to steal easily.

      All browsers do *not* open at the same time. They are wildly different. If you can't tell the difference, that's an error on your part. Most browsers don't have “YOU LOADONATED TEH PAGE IN 9000 SECONDS!!!!!!!” popping up constantly. Buy a better brain!

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  2. what about this –
    I own a quad core machine with 4GB RAM and i am a hardcore developer.
    At any instant in time, I have multiple instances of eclipse, Oracle databse, my product server components, one virtualized OS in virtualbox, vc++ debugger, weblogic server, jms watcher -HermesJMS, multiple browsers(for crossbrowser compatibility), my thunderbird, Google Desktop, gtalk, office messenger, MS Office tools, some sql client like squirrel and several other tools are running.
    It cries on it like anything.
    Firefox gives up totally at times.
    Though Chrome and Arora gives me confidence – they live upto the expectations of running in performance critical scenarios.
    And what about netbooks and notebooks? Alot of developers use those too. Do they have a quad core to spare?

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  3. I’ve been berating the shoddy performance of Firefox for some time – it is really that much noticable.

    My browsers are on Mac, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox, in that order.

    On linux, Chrome, Midori, Firefox. I was using Arora, I will go back now (they changed the spelling?)

    I just realised this was your blog (I’ve read your javafx stuff) – I think you replied to the wrong guy above.

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  4. ok:D first you must get minimum 8gb ram:). second switch to lamp:D and how many monitors do you have?

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  5. I cant do that, its not my personal system.
    Also it’s 32 bit, since I’m developing 32bit apps only, upgrade from 4gb to 8gb is not beneficial keeping in mind the total memory addresses 32bit can map.
    Some quote 3Gb is the usable limit, but i’ve found 4gb beneficial over 3GB.
    That’s why I need to save resources by switching to a lighter browser 🙂
    64bit is still a dream for most applications. But I foresee the urgency.

    BTW, I use two 21″ extended screens via Nvidia.
    I would be delighted if Nvidia CUDA could offload my Java processes. It doesn’t yet!

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  6. I've been running Arora temporarily for a month now on FreeBSD, ever since the Firefox 2 port was discontinued as I didn't care for FF 3. It's a decent browser, better than many others, but I'm surprised that it benchmarked so fast, as it will often load pages slowly or not at all in daily use. Maybe that's because Qt 4.5 is a bit buggy on my system, with black artifacts in forms and other places. I'm helping port Chromium to FreeBSD as a longer-term solution, so hopefully I'll have that option soon. 🙂 Until then, I'm using Arora.

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  7. I've just tried Arora on my thinkpad x40, windows xp sp3.

    * Starts quickly, but slower than Chrome.
    * The scrollwheel thinkpad emulation doesn't work.
    * hulu.com videos show choppy, not in sync with sound, while working great on Firefox, Chrome and Opera on the same computer.
    * in general, flash integration is choppy
    * couldn't test netflix.com because the browser is not supported.
    * UI is not polished – ex. tab doesn't work to move from address to search.
    * reader.google.com – could not log in to the account, no errors, just doesn't log in (something with sessions probably)

    Basically, justifies the version number (0.10), unfortunately currently unusable..

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