next »

[isthisthingon]

Interesting trends here that seem perfectly uninteresting and entirely linear.

Though IE remains disgustingly dominant, all the other players have their own little victories and defeats (Chrome rising up to grab more market share than Safari, for example).  But recently I posted about open source being like "water through the Grand Canyon."  Well, in this case Microsoft is the Grand Canyon and all the open source players are definitely the water.

Firefox closes in on 25% of the market

As much as I try to primary Safari or Chrome for their blinding fast rendering, FF has the stability I want and the plug-ins I need with reasonable performance.  I think FF is the only real competitor to IE in terms of robust functionality and stability.

[kurdt]

FF has the stability I want and the plug-ins I need with reasonable performance.

Yeah, for me FF became so stable that it took it many seconds to do anything. FF's performance is not even near reasonable for me.

I recently did some research on realities based on these speed claims. I found this awesome site called Dromaeo.com which has A LOT of different javascript tests, all different and focusing on different type of computing. I benchmarked Firefox 3.6.3 and Safari 4.0.5 earlier this month and I tried to do Internet Explorer 8 in Win7 (WMWare) to get it here too but it just hangs in Base 64 Encoding & Decoding test so I have no idea about the score. I don't have Chrome and I never will so you have to test it yourself. My guess is that it's similar to Safari. Computer specs are also part of the equation so here's mine: Quad-Core Xeon 2.8Ghz, 6GB memory, latest updates on Snow Leopard. Both browsers used only 1 core out of 8 and tests were done separately with just opened browsers.

Here's some results:
Firefox 3.6.3 : 107.01runs/s (Total)
Safari 4.0.5 : 219.55runs/s (Total)
Webkit r57509 : ~250runs/s (Total) - I forgot to save the results url for this

Conclusion:
Well, it's pretty obvious that Safari's/Webkit's javascript engine is just beyond Firefox's. If you look at the tests it's obvious that both engines have their strenghts and weaknesses. While Safari absolutely kills Firefox in 3D Mesh calcs (s:488.31 vs. f:109.85), it works about the similar in Tag Cloud creation from JSON (s:140.11 vs. f:92.23). Interesting bit of info is that Safari just kills Firefox when it comes to executing jQuery DOM traversal scripts (s:168.31 vs. f:67.62).

[isthisthingon]

Wow that's warped.  Try comparing Safari with Chrome and FF with IE.  Ok throw an Opera bone at Safari for good measure and to secure your preexisting beliefs about Safari's performance dominance. 

Dude try comparing Safari's plugins with Firefox's   Apples and Orangutans.

[kurdt]

Wow that's warped.  Try comparing Safari with Chrome and FF with IE.  Ok throw an Opera bone at Safari for good measure and to secure your preexisting beliefs about Safari's performance dominance. 

Dude try comparing Safari's plugins with Firefox's   Apples and Orangutans.

Opera 10.10 : 35.42runs/s (Total)

So much for worthy alternative...

Have you checked Glims? It fixes some stuff missing from Safari/Webkit. Built-in Inspector is also nice alternative to Firebug but I have to say that I still prefer Firebug when it comes to javascript debugging.

*edit* This just came in: WebKit Inspector Improves Again: Timeline, Audits and Dedicated Console

[isthisthingon]

Yeah but I'm just saying that your comparison from Safari to FF would yield similar results if you compared Safari to IE.  Try comparing Safari to Chrome and the story changes dramatically 

[kurdt]

Yeah but I'm just saying that your comparison from Safari to FF would yield similar results if you compared Safari to IE.  Try comparing Safari to Chrome and the story changes dramatically 

Ok, just for you I downloaded Chrome and tested it. Of course I blocked all contact to Google.com that it does when you start it . I don't get your point. 263.07runs/s (Total). What's the big deal? Newest Webkit scores about 250 so 263 vs. 250 isn't that big. I value my privacy more than using marginally faster spyser.

[isthisthingon]

In terms of performance...

FF more like IE
Safari more like Chrome

Want food now, grunt.

[nutballs]

Interestingly that chart is inversely proportional to speed...

[kurdt]

In terms of performance...

FF more like IE
Safari more like Chrome

Want food now, grunt.

That's what I said? My issue with FF was mainly your comment about performance which is nothing even close to reasonable AND the fact that they made a big deal out of that 3.6 is so so fast.