Browser screen estate

A blog post at NRK beta tells about the recent popularity of Chrome, and mentions that the small pixel footprint the browser takes is an advantage. But how big is actually the difference? I decided to check out how much screen estate some of the most popular browsers use. Here is the result of this informal test on an OSX.6 machine (smallest at top):

  1. Chrome
  2. Safari
  3. Opera
  4. Firefox 4

See the screenshot below to check for yourself:

Browser screen estate comparison

Of course, screen estate isn’t all that a browser should be evaluated for, other functionality also weigh in. But I do agree that having more content and less application is a good thing.