WHEN Apple released a beta test version of Safari 4 last week, it claimed it was the world?s fastest browser. Some tests have supported that claim; others have not. These speed contests remind me of the gunslingers of the Old West?being the fastest draw was usually an ephemeral state.

Like Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 and Opera 10 Alpha, Safari 4?s claim to speed is based on how quickly it can process JavaScript, the language that powers many of today?s Web-based applications such as Gmail and Google Docs. This really isn?t the only measure of how fast or responsive a browser is, since memory usage also has a huge impact on performance.

Curiously, CNET News and CNET UK came up with completely different results, using the same SunSpider benchmark, presumably running on Windows. I make this assumption because Chrome still doesn?t run on anything but Windows. (CNET UK should really stop referring to non-Mac systems as PCs and be more specific, since ?PC? describes the hardware, not the operating system.)

In his test, Stephen Shankland of CNET News found Google Chrome to be the fastest, followed by Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 and Safari 4.

Nate Lanxon of CNET UK, on the other hand, scored it Safari 4 first, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 second and Google Chrome third.

Two results were common to both tests, however.

First, Firefox 3.1 was consistently in second place, and only a few hundred milliseconds?or less than a second behind whoever was in the top spot.

Second, Microsoft?s Internet Explorer 8 release candidate and its current stable version, IE 7, were always in last place, several thousand milliseconds behind the leaders. Even at this early stage, it?s easy to see which browser not to use.

CNET UK went the extra step to test the browsers on Mac OS X, narrowing the field to four because neither Chrome nor IE will run on Apple?s operating system. Here, Safari 4 was ahead of Firefox 3.1, but only by 2 milliseconds. Firefox 3 and Opera 9.6 were third and fourth, respectively. Lanxon did not test the current release of Safari (3.2.2) or Opera 10 Alpha.

Out of curiosity, I installed Safari 4 on my Macbook and found it ran fairly well. Its Top Sites feature, reminiscent of Speed Dial on Opera and Chrome, loads thumbnails of your most-visited sites and enables you to visit them in one click. A clicked thumbnail zooms smartly to occupy the entire browser window while the Web site loads.

Another feature, Cover Flow, lets you scroll through Web sites you?ve visited as if you were browsing an iTunes collection.

Safari 4 looks a lot like the minimalist Chrome. Tab titles are now at the top of the window rather than sandwiched between the menu bar and the Web page, a feature that some people like but one that I find disconcerting. Safari 4 sheds the brushed metal look of its predecessor, but what I really miss from the earlier version is the progress indicator that was built into the address bar.

Safari 4 felt snappy and responsive on the Mac, but no more so than Firefox 3.1. In fact, I often found that Gmail pages would load faster on Firefox 3.1.

Even though Safari is the default browser on the Mac, I?ve always preferred to use Firefox for a number of reasons.

First, Firefox runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. This means I can configure Firefox to work exactly the same way on all three platforms and easily switch from one machine to another without adjusting to a different browser layout. In contrast, Apple has consistently ignored Linux, making Safari a non-starter on my home PC. I can run Safari 4 in a Windows virtual machine, but this makes little sense. For Top Sites and Cover Flow to work, you must have DirectX installed?a feature that VirtualBox doesn?t support. Why use all the overhead of running Windows inside Linux, simply to use a crippled browser?

Second, Firefox has the most extensive and useful collection of add-ons or extensions among all browsers, bar none. Most of these extensions work on all three platforms, too. With one of them, Foxmarks, I can keep all my bookmarks synchronized across different machines and different platforms.

Third, Firefox is open source.

Last but not least, even though Firefox 3.1 is still in beta, I?ve found it fast and stable enough for everyday use?on Linux and Mac OS X. The same just can?t be said of Google Chrome or the new kid on the block, Safari 4.

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In the mail: Gen Kanai of Mozilla writes that 20 percent of Firefox users in the Philippines still use Firefox 2. ?This is a big problem and we need Filipinos to understand that it is important to upgrade to Firefox 3 for a faster browser, more security features, [and] active support for bug fixes.? His point is well taken, but I wouldn?t be surprised if a good number of these Firefox 2 users are still running on Windows 98?which doesn?t support Firefox 3.

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