Browser Speed on Render or Load

A discussion about browser speed broke out today on Google Blogoscoped. The case was made that XHTML Strict creates smaller pages than Google's old-school, non-standards HTML, which will load faster. I agree that pages are smaller, but I got to thinking about page load times.

Page load, as perceived by humans, is affected both by download times and render time. So yes, lighter pages download faster. But does the old-school HTML render more quickly? I asked the same in the forum for Google Blogoscoped and got summarily shut down. But I asked in #firefox on irc.mozilla.org, and it turns out in quirks mode, the browser (at least Firefox anyway) begins rendering immediately and may appear to render quicker. It does, however, have to make adjustments as it renders. With XHTML, Firefox waits until the page loads to begin rendering, but can then render quicker. Mossop's comment on #firefox — [old-school html] "may appear faster."

Who knows, really? Which is why I raised the question. I wonder if Google has done any work on this, actually testing the perceived speed in human terms, rather than just raw download times?

DISCLAIMER: I am a believer in standards and XHTML. I just point this out due to my own curiosity, not to question the validity of smaller download times with XHTML Strict.

Posted by deryck on August 10, 2006

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