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How about the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, produced by the WebKit developers?

The latest Firefox 3 nightly beat Safari 3.1 as well as the latest WebKit nightly on my iMac (2.0 GHz C2D, 2 GB RAM). You might want to run your own tests; you'll find that Firefox 3 is pretty damn quick.

What a lot of people forget is that Safari uses the Webkit rendering engine which is also used in a variety of other browsers whose developers also contribute to it. The stable version of Konquerer 3.5.8 uses the same rendering engine and scores a 52 on the Acid 3 test, better than either Firefox or Opera. So Webkit is being updated and did, in fact, do better than Gecko or Presto for stable release versions when Acid 3 was published.

Actually, Webkit is a fork of KHTML (Konqueror's rendering engine) and the two codebases have diverged quite a bit. If you read the Safari weblog post regarding Acid3, you'll see that Webkit was missing support for some CSS 3 selectors that Konqueror supported. The Konqueror developers provided patches, which is why Safari improved support here, not because it already supported it in an unreleased version.

In my own personal experience every browser other than IE works just fine for rendering everything I create to the standards. There might be the occasional bug or edge case, but I never run across them.

There's plenty there. If Internet Explorer didn't exist, the bugs and different levels of support between the other browsers would be perceived as being huge, but because there's such an obvious extreme outlier, it skews the perception of them.

You mean Safari, WebKit and KHTML developers: http://webkit.org/blog/158/the-acid-3-test/

You're confusing intent with result.

The difference is that the teams working on Safari, Opera, Firefox, et al want to improve their product. Microsoft didn't care for a very long time. In fact, the Safari team even have a bug filed for the rendering issues Safari has with Acid3. Further, they're communicating frequently with their user base and anyone else interested with regard to their progress.

You're confusing intent with result.

The difference is that the teams working on Safari, Opera, Firefox, et al want to improve their product. Microsoft didn't care for a very long time. In fact, the Safari team even have a bug filed for the rendering issues Safari has with Acid3. Further, they're communicating frequently with their user base and anyone else interested with regard to their progress.

So either it's OK for Apple and Microsoft to do these things (and to be honest, given how mundane most undocumented APIs actually are, I'd say it is) or you decide you do care, and it's not OK for either of them to do that.

Or you could come back to reality and realize that here Apple crippled nothing and documented everything. TFA even linked to the documentation. And there's even source code from WebKit containing a working example.

This is utter bullshit. There's no "there" there.

Do you still feel the same way?

Hmmm... i know the JS performance is obviously system performance related, but still i am wondering why i am getting:
Total: 9801.6ms +/- 3.8%
for FireFox 2.0.0.12 (c2d e6600@3.15/xp)

i mean thats just a lot lower then what i have seen elsewhere so maybe there are some other factors too, i.e. configuration/cache or something?

Indeed. Ever since Apple "opened up" its WebKit development, they've made quite a few cool innovations. In addition to cleaning up their JavaScript engine (which has been a sore point for Safari for the entirety of its existence), they're beginning to implement functions commonly provided by many of the increasingly popular Javascript Libraries.

Long and short, Safari's native implementation of getElementsByClassName is astronomically faster. Firefox 3 shows similar improvements over the JavaScript implementation of the same function.

On the other hand, it *does* beg the question of why on earth we haven't begun to design something a bit more friendly and efficient than JavaScript, which is (at best) an obfuscated nightmare, and pitifully slow on even the fastest of machines when performing simple tasks.

Then again, I haven't actually run comparative benchmarks...

I just ran some JavaScript SunSpider benchmarks with IE 7 FireFox 2 and

Then again, I haven't actually run comparative benchmarks...

I just ran some JavaScript SunSpider benchmarks with IE 7 FireFox 2 and

Then again, I haven't actually run comparative benchmarks...

I just ran some JavaScript SunSpider benchmarks with IE 7 FireFox 2 and

I have a Pentium M 1.86Ghz running Gutsy and I got 6867 with last night's nightly. Full benchmark results:
Benchmark Results

That's why that line in my comparison reads, "Safari with Nightly Webkit r30628." Safari is an actual browser, I just replaced the back end. It's not like I'm going to write my own minimalist front end for it, after all, when it is so easy to plug into Safari. In fact, if anything I'd say Firefox was getting the advantage since I tested the newest versions of their front end and back end whereas I used the old front end for Safari which could, theoretically, be optimized to work better with the latest version of WebKit.

I guess I don't see the difference between running a nightly build of Firefox (including Gecko) and running the nightly build of Webkit plugged into Safari. I didn't compile either one and both are just a download and then you double click on them. It is one of the nice things about separating the rendering engine and the front end. Try it yourself. This page has links for Windows and OS X. You just download the image and run it like you would any other application.

Ok parent shouldn't have been modded offtopic, as the linked article does compare different browsers, but anyway...

The benchmark is linked from here, nightly builds of Safari are available here, and a build of Firefox with this enabled is available here.

Ok parent shouldn't have been modded offtopic, as the linked article does compare different browsers, but anyway...

The benchmark is linked from here, nightly builds of Safari are available here, and a build of Firefox with this enabled is available here.

The Safari team recently introduced some native javascript functions, which showed very impressive speed. It looks like the next release Safari will be up there as well (if not even faster still).

I'm off to download the latest Firefox to see how the two compare (on both Windows and OS X platforms).

OK, I hold my hands up to the cheap dig and I apologise for it. However, in mitigation, I personally feel more comfortable with open source simply because, while I may not understand all of it nor will I ever have the time to read the entire source of, for example, Konqueror, I am sure that people far more skilled than I who would never have seen the code had it been proprietary HAVE seen it collectively. That makes me more confident in that code and the resulting binary.

As this shows, it's not perfect, but large projects rarely are. It does get fixed quickly, though, which is another advantage of open source: You don't have to beg the one guy who understands that bit of the parser (who happens to be on vacation, has slipped on the ski slope and won't be back until the bones knit) to fix it when you have the source. You can file a patch with the bug report.

WebKit, upon which Safari is built, isn't closed source. It grew from the KDE project's KHTML and parts of both keep going both ways. MacOS X, yes, you have another valid point, but we're not talking about OSen here, we're talking about web browsers.

It wasn't a deliberate cheap shot. I have thought about the issues long and hard but I shouldn't assume what works for me is universally acceptable so, again, I apologise.

If you want fast, check out the latest build of Safari for Windows. I downloaded it a couple of days ago after hearing that WebKit is getting closer to a native Windows implementation being possible (their blog has more details on the progress; its quite interesting).

Safari/WebKit is really, really fast. I know, you always hear people talking about how their browser is better/faster/stronger/whatever, and you try it and the difference is negligible, if you can even notice it at all. I've had a few people try Safari though to make sure I'm not mad, and without fail they all notice a big speed increase over Firefox.

Once the WebKit guys finish their work on it (this other blog has more info on what is happening) I suspect we'll see some nice implementations of WebKit-based browsers on Windows - and if they can get it up to a decent base level of functionality without affecting speed, I'll definitely be checking it out.

Although if you have a mac, be sure to install the proto theme. Although if you have a mac, you also should try the latest Webkit build too. Its ridiculously fast.

That is all.

And did you read the actual comments to that A List Apart article? Almost every single one of them rejected the proposal. In fact, both Opera, Mozilla, Apple and Google have rejected it. As well as most web developers who have spoken up.

If you would only educate yourself instead of spouting uneducated nonsense...

Read here for the WebKit team's response

Followed your link, and this paragraph made me laugh:

"We Don't Really Need It

Finally, while we sympathize with the tough road that the IE team has to travel to achieve a high degree of standards compliance, we haven't really experienced the same problem. The IE team has mentioned severe negative feedback on the IE7 release, due to sites expecting standards behavior from most browsers, but IE6 bugs from IE.

But WebKit already has a high degree of standards compliance. And we are not in the enviable but tough position of being the most widely used browser. The fixes we do for standards compliance rarely cause widespread destruction, and when they do, it's often a sign that the standards themselves may need revision. We do not get complaints from web content authors about their sites breaking, on the contrary we get a lot of praise for each version of the engine handling web sites better."

Well, nicely put :-P

It's a simple, elegant and practical solution to this very real problem.

It's a problem, though, that only Microsoft has. Everyone else is just expected to conform to the standards.

Read here for the WebKit team's response to this and why they're not going to define or obey any such tags themselves.

Wow. You are clueless. If you believe what you write regarding Apple's stance on open source software, you have some research to do to remove some of that ignorance.

I did the test on a dual-boot Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz with 2 GB RAM Comparing Vista and IE 7 with Ubuntu 7.10 and FireFox 2. Vista took 17461.6ms and Ubuntu took 12532.4ms for a 15% improvement.

Here are the links to the full reports:

Windows Results and Ubuntu Results

I did the test on a dual-boot Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz with 2 GB RAM Comparing Vista and IE 7 with Ubuntu 7.10 and FireFox 2. Vista took 17461.6ms and Ubuntu took 12532.4ms for a 15% improvement.

Here are the links to the full reports:

Windows Results and Ubuntu Results

My own Camino using mtune=nocona and mssse3 flags:
Total: 7171.4ms +/- 0.4%

http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:%5B358,351,350,355,353%5D,%223d-morph%22:%5B573,574,574,567,575%5D,%223d-raytrace%22:%5B253,252,249,251,251%5D,%22access-binary-trees%22:%5B124,117,121,121,122%5D,%22access-fannkuch%22:%5B371,372,377,375,377%5D,%22access-nbody%22:%5B354,348,352,353,351%5D,%22access-nsieve%22:%5B162,160,168,158,157%5D,%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:%5B160,157,158,156,155%5D,%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:%5B168,168,167,166,169%5D,%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:%5B619,609,570,576,570%5D,%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:%5B194,195,195,193,194%5D,%22controlflow-recursive%22:%5B80,77,79,74,75%5D,%22crypto-aes%22:%5B216,219,220,218,219%5D,%22crypto-md5%22:%5B115,115,115,112,117%5D,%22crypto-sha1%22:%5B127,127,126,129,126%5D,%22date-format-tofte%22:%5B355,364,362,360,361%5D,%22date-format-xparb%22:%5B212,213,209,210,206%5D,%22math-cordic%22:%5B339,331,336,342,341%5D,%22math-partial-sums%22:%5B313,293,301,310,313%5D,%22math-spectral-norm%22:%5B153,154,157,158,156%5D,%22regexp-dna%22:%5B357,368,364,363,364%5D,%22string-base64%22:%5B340,328,336,334,341%5D,%22string-fasta%22:%5B359,360,357,360,358%5D,%22string-tagcloud%22:%5B255,255,257,258,256%5D,%22string-unpack-code%22:%5B489,489,487,492,486%5D,%22string-validate-input%22:%5B165,171,173,167,168%5D%7D


Standard Camino 2.0alpha from today:
Total: 8211.6ms +/- 0.3%

http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?{%223d-cube%22:[449,423,421,438,425],%223d-morph%22:[707,700,693,696,691],%223d-raytrace%22:[302,298,298,284,296],%22access-binary-trees%22:[124,125,124,132,124],%22access-fannkuch%22:[425,425,425,423,425],%22access-nbody%22:[538,518,517,527,525],%22access-nsieve%22:[179,172,173,172,172],%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:[183,180,184,183,181],%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:[189,191,187,189,190],%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:[687,704,728,719,702],%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:[226,221,224,223,222],%22controlflow-recursive%22:[91,92,93,98,93],%22crypto-aes%22:[230,229,229,226,225],%22crypto-md5%22:[144,122,138,143,141],%22crypto-sha1%22:[140,140,131,131,130],%22date-format-tofte%22:[396,408,395,396,398],%22date-format-xparb%22:[220,221,234,216,222],%22math-cordic%22:[377,375,375,376,376],%22math-partial-sums%22:[387,389,396,398,393],%22math-spectral-norm%22:[173,170,172,170,174],%22regexp-dna%22:[392,393,393,391,388],%22string-base64%22:[366,365,355,363,361],%22string-fasta%22:[379,377,397,375,378],%22string-tagcloud%22:[276,293,277,291,296],%22string-unpack-code%22:[472,469,503,474,466],%22string-validate-input%22:[164,196,162,198,196]}


Both on a MBP 2.4GHz stock.

My own Camino using mtune=nocona and mssse3 flags:
Total: 7171.4ms +/- 0.4%

http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:%5B358,351,350,355,353%5D,%223d-morph%22:%5B573,574,574,567,575%5D,%223d-raytrace%22:%5B253,252,249,251,251%5D,%22access-binary-trees%22:%5B124,117,121,121,122%5D,%22access-fannkuch%22:%5B371,372,377,375,377%5D,%22access-nbody%22:%5B354,348,352,353,351%5D,%22access-nsieve%22:%5B162,160,168,158,157%5D,%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:%5B160,157,158,156,155%5D,%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:%5B168,168,167,166,169%5D,%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:%5B619,609,570,576,570%5D,%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:%5B194,195,195,193,194%5D,%22controlflow-recursive%22:%5B80,77,79,74,75%5D,%22crypto-aes%22:%5B216,219,220,218,219%5D,%22crypto-md5%22:%5B115,115,115,112,117%5D,%22crypto-sha1%22:%5B127,127,126,129,126%5D,%22date-format-tofte%22:%5B355,364,362,360,361%5D,%22date-format-xparb%22:%5B212,213,209,210,206%5D,%22math-cordic%22:%5B339,331,336,342,341%5D,%22math-partial-sums%22:%5B313,293,301,310,313%5D,%22math-spectral-norm%22:%5B153,154,157,158,156%5D,%22regexp-dna%22:%5B357,368,364,363,364%5D,%22string-base64%22:%5B340,328,336,334,341%5D,%22string-fasta%22:%5B359,360,357,360,358%5D,%22string-tagcloud%22:%5B255,255,257,258,256%5D,%22string-unpack-code%22:%5B489,489,487,492,486%5D,%22string-validate-input%22:%5B165,171,173,167,168%5D%7D


Standard Camino 2.0alpha from today:
Total: 8211.6ms +/- 0.3%

http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?{%223d-cube%22:[449,423,421,438,425],%223d-morph%22:[707,700,693,696,691],%223d-raytrace%22:[302,298,298,284,296],%22access-binary-trees%22:[124,125,124,132,124],%22access-fannkuch%22:[425,425,425,423,425],%22access-nbody%22:[538,518,517,527,525],%22access-nsieve%22:[179,172,173,172,172],%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:[183,180,184,183,181],%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:[189,191,187,189,190],%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:[687,704,728,719,702],%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:[226,221,224,223,222],%22controlflow-recursive%22:[91,92,93,98,93],%22crypto-aes%22:[230,229,229,226,225],%22crypto-md5%22:[144,122,138,143,141],%22crypto-sha1%22:[140,140,131,131,130],%22date-format-tofte%22:[396,408,395,396,398],%22date-format-xparb%22:[220,221,234,216,222],%22math-cordic%22:[377,375,375,376,376],%22math-partial-sums%22:[387,389,396,398,393],%22math-spectral-norm%22:[173,170,172,170,174],%22regexp-dna%22:[392,393,393,391,388],%22string-base64%22:[366,365,355,363,361],%22string-fasta%22:[379,377,397,375,378],%22string-tagcloud%22:[276,293,277,291,296],%22string-unpack-code%22:[472,469,503,474,466],%22string-validate-input%22:[164,196,162,198,196]}


Both on a MBP 2.4GHz stock.

At that point you wouldn't be testing string concatenation.
But yes. Dropping stuff was silly, not testing most of stuff javascript actually needs to do in a web browser was silly.
Here is some equal sillyness.

Windows->VirtualBox->Linux->Wine->Internet Explorer 6
Minimised the window and checked back once my CPU stopped crawling.

FF3

BS IE results

At that point you wouldn't be testing string concatenation.
But yes. Dropping stuff was silly, not testing most of stuff javascript actually needs to do in a web browser was silly.
Here is some equal sillyness.

Windows->VirtualBox->Linux->Wine->Internet Explorer 6
Minimised the window and checked back once my CPU stopped crawling.

FF3

BS IE results

Here is Camino: http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:%5B326,325,321,322,323%5D,%223d-morph%22:%5B1212,1215,1203,1209,1194%5D,%223d-raytrace%22:%5B265,265,260,267,256%5D,%22access-binary-trees%22:%5B153,148,145,142,159%5D,%22access-fannkuch%22:%5B291,287,288,287,310%5D,%22access-nbody%22:%5B271,295,305,299,297%5D,%22access-nsieve%22:%5B214,218,213,213,216%5D,%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:%5B278,267,266,266,270%5D,%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:%5B266,263,262,264,264%5D,%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:%5B3546,3533,3550,3553,3509%5D,%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:%5B205,207,201,203,201%5D,%22controlflow-recursive%22:%5B108,106,107,108,112%5D,%22crypto-aes%22:%5B218,220,215,217,218%5D,%22crypto-md5%22:%5B136,136,135,137,136%5D,%22crypto-sha1%22:%5B143,143,142,142,142%5D,%22date-format-tofte%22:%5B647,651,645,652,650%5D,%22date-format-xparb%22:%5B1230,1230,1229,1234,1244%5D,%22math-cordic%22:%5B304,300,300,300,302%5D,%22math-partial-sums%22:%5B342,344,336,324,343%5D,%22math-spectral-norm%22:%5B148,155,150,148,149%5D,%22regexp-dna%22:%5B561,557,560,555,560%5D,%22string-base64%22:%5B506,508,503,498,501%5D,%22string-fasta%22:%5B407,413,407,407,405%5D,%22string-tagcloud%22:%5B416,421,423,426,422%5D,%22string-unpack-code%22:%5B740,739,745,738,741%5D,%22string-validate-input%22:%5B203,200,202,202,200%5D%7D
Here is Safari:
http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:

Here is Camino: http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:%5B326,325,321,322,323%5D,%223d-morph%22:%5B1212,1215,1203,1209,1194%5D,%223d-raytrace%22:%5B265,265,260,267,256%5D,%22access-binary-trees%22:%5B153,148,145,142,159%5D,%22access-fannkuch%22:%5B291,287,288,287,310%5D,%22access-nbody%22:%5B271,295,305,299,297%5D,%22access-nsieve%22:%5B214,218,213,213,216%5D,%22bitops-3bit-bits-in-byte%22:%5B278,267,266,266,270%5D,%22bitops-bits-in-byte%22:%5B266,263,262,264,264%5D,%22bitops-bitwise-and%22:%5B3546,3533,3550,3553,3509%5D,%22bitops-nsieve-bits%22:%5B205,207,201,203,201%5D,%22controlflow-recursive%22:%5B108,106,107,108,112%5D,%22crypto-aes%22:%5B218,220,215,217,218%5D,%22crypto-md5%22:%5B136,136,135,137,136%5D,%22crypto-sha1%22:%5B143,143,142,142,142%5D,%22date-format-tofte%22:%5B647,651,645,652,650%5D,%22date-format-xparb%22:%5B1230,1230,1229,1234,1244%5D,%22math-cordic%22:%5B304,300,300,300,302%5D,%22math-partial-sums%22:%5B342,344,336,324,343%5D,%22math-spectral-norm%22:%5B148,155,150,148,149%5D,%22regexp-dna%22:%5B561,557,560,555,560%5D,%22string-base64%22:%5B506,508,503,498,501%5D,%22string-fasta%22:%5B407,413,407,407,405%5D,%22string-tagcloud%22:%5B416,421,423,426,422%5D,%22string-unpack-code%22:%5B740,739,745,738,741%5D,%22string-validate-input%22:%5B203,200,202,202,200%5D%7D
Here is Safari:
http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-results.html?%7B%223d-cube%22:

Bizarrely, Firefox for Windows running through wine runs faster than native Firefox. The wine installation doesn't have any add-ons though, so that might be the difference. Wine version is 0.9.51 and windows firefox version is 2.0.0.9, same machine as my post above.
Wine results. Native results.

Bizarrely, Firefox for Windows running through wine runs faster than native Firefox. The wine installation doesn't have any add-ons though, so that might be the difference. Wine version is 0.9.51 and windows firefox version is 2.0.0.9, same machine as my post above.
Wine results. Native results.

I tried the same benchmark with my browser and it seems to beat them all, only 17 ms to pass the test !!!

~$ time lynx -dump http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-driver.html
SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark (In Progress...)

real 0m0.017s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.004s
~$

here

AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB, Ubuntu 7.04, using FF for 4 hours, listening to last.fm.

CC.

There are at least two really good options here:

a. Don't make us write HTML. If you want to let me write rich text, give me a rich text editor. I can buy stuff on the web (which consists of database queries/updates) without typing in SQL, so why can't I write stuff on the web without typing in HTML? (Cue the army of geeks to say "But that's completely different! It's OK to make one hard on the user, but not the other...")

a'. Use a different (non-HTML) text-based language, like Markdown or Restructured Text. I don't know if these can generate XHTML, but if not it wouldn't be that hard to add. A ton of blogs use processors like this already.

b. Have slashdot validate it. Obviously there are plenty of HTML parsers out there that can take tag soup, and make it into a DOM, and from there it's trivial to filter tags you don't want users to use, and output valid XHTML. Slashdot (and every other website) must do something like this already, so what's so hard about fixing it to generate XHTML? This is really no different from a CMS, except instead of getting data from an RDBMS record, you're getting it from a DOM tree.

I really don't see how your scare scenario could be a problem, or rather, any more of a problem in XHTML than HTML. No website in the world "allows someone to post a comment on a forum, like, say, Slashdot, and allow any HTML code whatsoever". This problem was solved already. All we need to do is tighten up the output a bit.

XHTML V2 and related modules are officially supported by the W3C, and the related modules are becoming key ingredients for other XML specifications that the W3C maintains. Unfortunately, official W3C approval is no guarantee of support by major Web browsers.

It wouldn't be the first time browser vendors were ahead of official recommendations.

The FAQ doesn't even try to give a serious answer about the expected date of approval

Current browsers support both HTML V4 and XHTML V1.

Similarly, future browsers might support both HTML V5 and XHTML V2.

• Safari: For a long time, the HTML standards process has been moribund; the W3C's HTML Working Group has focused almost exclusively on XHTML2, a new standard that was highly incompatible with existing practice. The people working on the major browsers have largely abandoned the HTML Working Group.
• Opera: So, I don't think XHTML is a realistic option for the masses. HTML5 is it.
• Mozilla: In the near term, only Mozilla-based browsers come close to having all the integrated infrastructure needed by XHTML 2, and not all bundled by default. There is no sign of XHTML 2 support from Microsoft, Apple, and Opera.

The only way we will evolve on the web is with another bloody tag war.

I agree in general – though fortunately we've learned from last time, and there is more negotiation and less bloody war. One example is CSS animation: the WebKit developers designed and implemented a first draft, and provided it in their nightly builds, and sent a description to the CSS group to get feedback from developers of other browsers and from other people with relevant expertise.

Similarly, Opera proposed a <video> element earlier this year, and released an experimental alpha build with the feature. The HTML5 group developed a specification for it, and significantly extended the functionality based on feedback from relevant people (Apple, Google (YouTube), etc). Now Apple and Mozilla have experimental implementations of the same feature. There has been very little blood (except over the issue of codecs), and it seems a much better model than the old idea of simply releasing features in a new browser version and expecting your competitors to reverse-engineer your implementation. So there is some hope for the future.

Heh, that's funny. I like the part about the tricycle.

Unfortunately, your post is completely void of any actual content to respond to so let me just say this. Sometimes you don't want to be stuck with the space shuttle - its old 70s technology that is being retired.

Turns out you actually get more when you dump the old crufty architecture and start with a clean slate:

Acid 2 support (back in April 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

Mobile support
Safari has a code base that is small and fast enough to be used in Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Nokia's S60 series phones.
Nokia funded Minmo for years and realized that they couldn't get the bloat out of Gecko and moved to WebKit. Google is a huge supporter of Firefox and I'm sure they had some strong technical reasons for doing so.

CSS3 support that Firefox should be jealous of:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-3-and-css-3

HTML5 Client-side Database storage with SQL
http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/

HTML5 Media support
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/

CSS Animation
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

CSS Transforms
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

There is lots more info over at http://webkit.org/ and http://webkit.org/blog/ the website for Safari's open source engine.

Don't get me wrong Firefox has some great stuff too. I think its great to have as many people pushing for an open web as we can get. If you want to actually have a conversation with like, content, and stuff I'd love to hear why you're such a Firefox fan.

Till then I'm going to be having fun on my tricycle. Be careful on that 'ol shuttle.

    -cj

Heh, that's funny. I like the part about the tricycle.

Unfortunately, your post is completely void of any actual content to respond to so let me just say this. Sometimes you don't want to be stuck with the space shuttle - its old 70s technology that is being retired.

Turns out you actually get more when you dump the old crufty architecture and start with a clean slate:

Acid 2 support (back in April 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

Mobile support
Safari has a code base that is small and fast enough to be used in Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Nokia's S60 series phones.
Nokia funded Minmo for years and realized that they couldn't get the bloat out of Gecko and moved to WebKit. Google is a huge supporter of Firefox and I'm sure they had some strong technical reasons for doing so.

CSS3 support that Firefox should be jealous of:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-3-and-css-3

HTML5 Client-side Database storage with SQL
http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/

HTML5 Media support
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/

CSS Animation
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

CSS Transforms
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

There is lots more info over at http://webkit.org/ and http://webkit.org/blog/ the website for Safari's open source engine.

Don't get me wrong Firefox has some great stuff too. I think its great to have as many people pushing for an open web as we can get. If you want to actually have a conversation with like, content, and stuff I'd love to hear why you're such a Firefox fan.

Till then I'm going to be having fun on my tricycle. Be careful on that 'ol shuttle.

    -cj

Heh, that's funny. I like the part about the tricycle.

Unfortunately, your post is completely void of any actual content to respond to so let me just say this. Sometimes you don't want to be stuck with the space shuttle - its old 70s technology that is being retired.

Turns out you actually get more when you dump the old crufty architecture and start with a clean slate:

Acid 2 support (back in April 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

Mobile support
Safari has a code base that is small and fast enough to be used in Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Nokia's S60 series phones.
Nokia funded Minmo for years and realized that they couldn't get the bloat out of Gecko and moved to WebKit. Google is a huge supporter of Firefox and I'm sure they had some strong technical reasons for doing so.

CSS3 support that Firefox should be jealous of:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-3-and-css-3

HTML5 Client-side Database storage with SQL
http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/

HTML5 Media support
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/

CSS Animation
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

CSS Transforms
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

There is lots more info over at http://webkit.org/ and http://webkit.org/blog/ the website for Safari's open source engine.

Don't get me wrong Firefox has some great stuff too. I think its great to have as many people pushing for an open web as we can get. If you want to actually have a conversation with like, content, and stuff I'd love to hear why you're such a Firefox fan.

Till then I'm going to be having fun on my tricycle. Be careful on that 'ol shuttle.

    -cj

Heh, that's funny. I like the part about the tricycle.

Unfortunately, your post is completely void of any actual content to respond to so let me just say this. Sometimes you don't want to be stuck with the space shuttle - its old 70s technology that is being retired.

Turns out you actually get more when you dump the old crufty architecture and start with a clean slate:

Acid 2 support (back in April 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

Mobile support
Safari has a code base that is small and fast enough to be used in Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Nokia's S60 series phones.
Nokia funded Minmo for years and realized that they couldn't get the bloat out of Gecko and moved to WebKit. Google is a huge supporter of Firefox and I'm sure they had some strong technical reasons for doing so.

CSS3 support that Firefox should be jealous of:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-3-and-css-3

HTML5 Client-side Database storage with SQL
http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/

HTML5 Media support
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/

CSS Animation
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

CSS Transforms
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

There is lots more info over at http://webkit.org/ and http://webkit.org/blog/ the website for Safari's open source engine.

Don't get me wrong Firefox has some great stuff too. I think its great to have as many people pushing for an open web as we can get. If you want to actually have a conversation with like, content, and stuff I'd love to hear why you're such a Firefox fan.

Till then I'm going to be having fun on my tricycle. Be careful on that 'ol shuttle.

    -cj

Heh, that's funny. I like the part about the tricycle.

Unfortunately, your post is completely void of any actual content to respond to so let me just say this. Sometimes you don't want to be stuck with the space shuttle - its old 70s technology that is being retired.

Turns out you actually get more when you dump the old crufty architecture and start with a clean slate:

Acid 2 support (back in April 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

Mobile support
Safari has a code base that is small and fast enough to be used in Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Nokia's S60 series phones.
Nokia funded Minmo for years and realized that they couldn't get the bloat out of Gecko and moved to WebKit. Google is a huge supporter of Firefox and I'm sure they had some strong technical reasons for doing so.

CSS3 support that Firefox should be jealous of:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-3-and-css-3

HTML5 Client-side Database storage with SQL
http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/

HTML5 Media support
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/

CSS Animation
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

CSS Transforms
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

There is lots more info over at http://webkit.org/ and http://webkit.org/blog/ the website for Safari's open source engine.

Don't get me wrong Firefox has some great stuff too. I think its great to have as many people pushing for an open web as we can get. If you want to actually have a conversation with like, content, and stuff I'd love to hear why you're such a Firefox fan.

Till then I'm going to be having fun on my tricycle. Be careful on that 'ol shuttle.

    -cj

Heh, that's funny. I like the part about the tricycle.

Unfortunately, your post is completely void of any actual content to respond to so let me just say this. Sometimes you don't want to be stuck with the space shuttle - its old 70s technology that is being retired.

Turns out you actually get more when you dump the old crufty architecture and start with a clean slate:

Acid 2 support (back in April 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

Mobile support
Safari has a code base that is small and fast enough to be used in Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Nokia's S60 series phones.
Nokia funded Minmo for years and realized that they couldn't get the bloat out of Gecko and moved to WebKit. Google is a huge supporter of Firefox and I'm sure they had some strong technical reasons for doing so.

CSS3 support that Firefox should be jealous of:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-3-and-css-3

HTML5 Client-side Database storage with SQL
http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/

HTML5 Media support
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/

CSS Animation
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

CSS Transforms
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

There is lots more info over at http://webkit.org/ and http://webkit.org/blog/ the website for Safari's open source engine.

Don't get me wrong Firefox has some great stuff too. I think its great to have as many people pushing for an open web as we can get. If you want to actually have a conversation with like, content, and stuff I'd love to hear why you're such a Firefox fan.

Till then I'm going to be having fun on my tricycle. Be careful on that 'ol shuttle.

    -cj

There is a few new features in the DOM, CSS and Javascript (including a good subset of XPath and XSLT) which will help offload some parts of the big script libraries to the browser.... now if only they'd get up to speed on the things that Webkit is doing!

Not that it matters really when IE7 is still light years behind ;-(

It looks like the article authors do not know what they're talking about. Yes, Android does use WebKit and they are feeding patches to upstream at a fantastic rate, suggesting that they're sticking with WebKit in the long term. Given that Opera is not even a member of the OHA, this looks like some really bad journalism, or worse, product placement.

Downloading and installing a plug-in ahead of time is a surprisingly heavy burden for users, so for now there's still a significant barrier. A lot of what Google Gears provides really ought to be standardized and built into the browser imho.

WHATWG's HTML5 working draft includes a specification for a client-side SQL database. Webkit's feature branch already has it implemented, and it works a lot like the local-storage part of Google Gears.

I'm hoping that once that bit of HTML5 gets finalized and built into mainstream browsers, a lot more web apps will be built to automatically fall back to cached local data when they can't reach their servers.

But that's likely to take a while, and at least for now there's a simple HTML5-GoogleGears bridge for people who want to write their local storage code for HTML5 and have it work on most platforms and browsers, even if it requires a plug-in.