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Mozilla Unleashes the Kraken
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released the first version a new browser benchmark called Kraken. Mozilla's Robert Sayre writes on his blog, 'More than Sunspider, V8, and Dromaeo, Kraken focuses on realistic workloads and forward-looking applications. We believe that the benchmarks used in Kraken are better in terms of reflecting realistic workloads for pushing the edge of browser performance forward. These are the things that people are saying are too slow to do with open web technologies today, and we want to have benchmarks that reflect progress against making these near-future apps universally available.' On my somewhat elderly x86_64 Linux system Google Chrome 6.0.472.55 beta completes the Kraken benchmark in 28638.1 milliseconds, Opera 10.62 completes it in 23612.4 milliseconds, and the current Firefox 4 nightly build completes it in 19897.5 milliseconds."
How about IE performance? Too bad to even mention?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Shame it only benchmarks one small part of the browser - Javascript.
What about IE9? Safari?
ways suspicious when someone releases a benchmark that shows that their software is better than others, especially when other benchmarks have shown FF as slower than Chrome or Opera. I hope this isn't one of those M$ style tests that find the bits that their own software does well and others badly and test that.
What sort of time measurement is '28638.1 milliseconds'? Would it not be more sensible to say 28.6 seconds?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Am I the only one who has had enough of these benchmark tests? I don't care about your milliseconds! What I want is low RAM usage (how about concentrating on THIS Mozzila?) and more features/plugins.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
If you hadn't noticed, every synthetic benchmark released from a browser vendor favoured their engine, at time of release. At least Google had balls to call it v8bench.
While I believe all benchmarks (and non-comprehensive ACID tests) to be 3dmark-style pissing contests where they encourage developers to fast-path specific used functions, I have more confidence in Mozilla producing another (Dromaeo also tried to have a more realistic workflow).
Its not like only MS and Mozilla as browser vendor released their own benchmark in with their product is doing good.
Besides, whats so bad about it? Ain't it obvious they are gonna include in their benchmarks stuff that they feel is important and as a consequence - made it good during browser development?
It just shows that other browsers than FF lack in some areas, with might - or might not - be important.
Why compare stable versions (opera) to nightly builds (firefox) ?
As made popular in the Pirates of the Caribbean films? Fortunately theres plenty of prior art on this legendary sea monster, so they can't sue you.
One of Mozilla's longstanding issues with some of the other benchmarks is that they test toy problems that take longer to set up than to run. Yes, that favors browsers with JS engines that set up for execution quickly, and that portion of the engine is important. It doesn't show the real speedups for intensive applications in the browser, though. Optimizing the slow parts is the priority of most people right now, and getting the application set up a little faster at the beginning isn't as big a deal unless you have a lot of small scripts in one page.
An earlier blog post by Sayre and some of the comments to it display some of the issues.
Why don't they just grab the (say) 200 most visited sites on the internet, copy the JavaScript and use that to benchmark instead?
Simples.
Lies, damned lies and benchmarks.
No sig today...
You'd still have to come up with a pattern of javascript calls that represents normal use of those sites. The test is on running javascript, not loading it.
Because the amount of time it takes to run the javascript on the top sites is pretty small (which is what the IE team was talking about around IE8's release). Performance on those sites mostly doesn't depend on whether your JS engine is the one in Chrome dev or the one in IE7. I only say "mostly" because I wouldn't be surprised if gmail is in the top 200. ;)
If you're going to worry specifically about JS performance (which is an assumption; the IE team is still saying that this focus is a mistake and to some extent they're right), you want to be benchmarking things that are gated on JS performance. That means identifying t the things that are slow with current JS engines and that people would like to be doing but can't because of said slowness, whatever those things are, and benchmarking those.
You look good, Moz..
Google wins in their test! (that curiously heavily exploit recursion and other good parts of the V8 engine)
Microsoft wins in their tests! (that curiously heavily test only DirectX acceleration)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Comparing the FF4 nightly builds against the latest released versions of the other browsers is quite unfair. So I tried this thing on my Intel Core2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53GHz laptop, and Opera 10.70.9046 (the most recent alpha available from Opera) and that gives me 12841.5 ms +/- 2.5%. OTOH I don't have FF4 nightly builds here ... can somebody actually run a comparison on the _same_ hardware to check all the most recent available builds of all browsers?
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
These are my results
All with up to date browsers (no betas)
FireFox 25635.6ms
Opera 12984.8ms
Chrome 16415.6ms
IE 8 A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly, continuously.
So yay for opera and no surprise there for internet explorer
Just tried it on chromium nightly build 7.0.522.0 (59180) on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64bit and it got 11180.7ms looks like the chromium developers aren't sitting still either
-= Technomancer =-
They are testing speed from A to B and other tests calculate speed from C to D. Lies, damn lies and statistics in both cases. Firefox is optimized better for A-B path and Chrome is optimized for C-D path. Biggest question is which path is more realistic.
Slashdot uses javascript.
Indeed. Does anyone know wht happened to slashdot? It used to be bearable with no Javascript, but since about a week ago, the whole formatting has become a mess for those refusing to run with javascript on.
Have you considered that it may well be the other way around?
If Mozilla, Google, MS, Apple or whoever truly believe that those particular aspects of a browser are the most important, doesn't it make sense that they would optimize their browsers for those aspects? I think it makes sense that they would write tests for the exact same aspects that they have been optimizing their browsers for, -because- they believe these are the key aspects.
Lacking an objective measure, all you can do right now is decide with whom you agree the most and probably use their browser or another browser that ranks well on their test - if these benchmarks are a critical decision factor for you.
Try writing a web application in pure javascript. No, no HTML tags allowed. Not even a canvas. See how useful javascript is.
We had an internal test, building a treeview with several thousand nodes, built in Javascript (the output of the serverside control was javascript that would build the tree, to avoid sending the HTML tags, of which there was a lot). Running it on Firefox 3.something, IE 8, Chrome 5 (or so), you'd expect Chrome to be the fastest, and IE to be the slowest. Turned out to be the other way around. IE was the fastest, building the treeview in around 2 seconds, Firefox took 9 seconds to build it, and Chrome was measured in minutes.
When we split it up, we found out that, yes, Chrome was the fastest processing the Javascript. Displaying the result was what took all that time.
You are right that javascript is necessary for most stuff on the web nowadays, but fast javascript does not make the browser fast if everything else is slow. Currently (3.x), everything is slow in Firefox. IE can do some things fast, others are just as slow as Firefox. Chrome is the overall fastest browser, winning on startup time and javascript performance.
Making Firefox do javascript faster than Chrome doesn't help a lot, if Chrome has finished processing the javascript before Firefox starts up.
While I believe all benchmarks (and non-comprehensive ACID tests) to be 3dmark-style pissing contests
I want a benchmark that shows a large Slashdot article loading over 3G (at -1, no Javascript). For some reason it still completely freezes Firefox.
Sadly, it's the only browser out there with Noscript and Adblock.
Who would have thunk it?
We believe that the benchmarks used in Kraken are better in terms of reflecting realistic workloads
Or just better in terms of reflecting where their product is strongest?
Isn't it just a little bit suspicious when the browser people release a benchmark that scores their own browser as the fastest? Intel's benchmark in 2002 was known to have emphasized performance traits specific to Intel chips.
How did mozilla leash the kraken in the first place? or maybe it was godzilla that did that?
My browser's performance has always been "good enough". Can we talk about ergonomy, reliability, compatibility, please ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Are you the submitter? If not how do you know if your system (as a whole) is not faster than the submitter's system to begin with (i.e. running Google Chrome 6.0.472.55 beta would have produced the same time on your system/setup as the submitter's)?
I got 16519.8ms in a 7.0.520.0 (58924) nightly build on a 64 bit Slackware 13.1 so does that mean we can conclude chromium has sped up dramatically after my version?
I would guess that parts of Chromium have changed speed between versions but we need more results before we can make an assertion like "Chromium is fastest in this benchmark". Maybe it is but...
Only the nightly builds of Firefox 4.0b7pre have the new Firefox javascript engine included. Firefox will be slower than Chrome, Opera, Safari and even IE9 beta unless you run Firefox 4.0b7pre.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/
If you are prepared to run a nightly build, which comes with a warning that it may well be very unstable (depending on which night you run it), only then will you get a feel for what Firefox 4 will be like.
Right now, the new javascript engine in Firefox has just about caught up with Safari's engine, and it is chasing after Chrome.
arewefastyet.com
Chrome has a builtin capability to disable scripting on a host basis or globally, and it also has a functional adblock extension. Oh, and in terms of UI speed it leaves Firefox in the dust. The only real downside: it crashes more often.
on a MBP c2d 2.4ghz with OSX 10.6.4
firefox 4.0b6 Total: 13459.0ms +/- 0.2%
opera 10.62 Total: 15670.1ms +/- 1.0%
chrome 6.0.472.59 Total: 18582.1ms +/- 0.6%
safari 5.0.1 Total: 17107.3ms +/- 0.1%
firefox 3.6.9 Total: 23792.1ms +/- 0.4%
RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!
Who cares? Here's a truly useful benchmark: how long does it take Firefox to render SVG or XForms?
Would be funny is someone releases a benchmark which shows that their software is less capable than others.
I use Firefox exclusively on my laptop. Speed is not its strong point. The main reason that I use FF is for a few add-ons that I now find necessary (mostly Vimperator to get vi keybindings). Speed is a reasonable trade off for me to have such a customizable browser, and I always assumed that the speed loss may have been due to the XUL stuff.
I think that FF being slow is common knowledge these days. I think that Mozilla is trying to show that the reason their browser is slower on some (most) things is because it is optimised for other things. In that case, I don't mind the test being skewed. If I thought that they were saying that FF was the fastest browser, I might laugh and move on.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
compare http://bit.ly/bFQ17C
They're using their grammar skills there.
Of course if you're testing the last nightly build of Firefox, the last test version of Chrome, and the OLD release of Opera, Opera comes out badly.
I just tested with a recent (not the most recent) build of Opera 10.70, and I get a result of 20894.1ms +/- 5.9% -- very close to Firefox.
Mozilla Unleashes the Kraken https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kraken_botnet. I just wonder if this is somehow a 'Freudian slip', just to remind the world of how vulnerable the competition is?
Meanwhile, when I actually use my web browser in the real world, Chrome seems much faster than Firefox. So what do I need any kind of synthetic benchmark to tell me what I already know? I'll find out who's faster when they release a non-beta. If performance matters that much to my experience, I may switch, but whoever I use better support the types of plug-ins that I want. Chrome is just about there. It's nice to see rapid innovation and competition in the browser again.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
other benchmarks were released by Apple (sunspider) and Google (v8) (and the last one is actually from Mozilla)
I believe Mozilla is actually always striving for the best of the community unlike the 2 big giants, they've always proved to do so. (afaik!)
Sunspider shows Safari as fastest, V8 Chrome as fastest (at least last I checked), and the Mozilla bench was a more mixed result.
but anyway back to the point, why would you believe Google and Apple and not Mozilla?
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
Total: 14829.3ms
I'm not sure it's really a case of Mozilla trying to trick anyone... after all, they happily (well, probably not _happily_) admit that they aren'tfastyet
So I saved a few seconds on opening the browser. Now I can waste twenty by waiting for graphic and java bloated pages to open down a congested line on a badly configured web server!
The charitable way to look at it is that each vendor writes a benchmark for the aspects of the browser which they think are most important, and those aspects are also obviously what they've put the most development emphasis on since they're regarded as the most important.
If you write a benchmark against your top development priorities and a rival eats your lunch despite having a different set of development priorities, you're probably not a top-tier vendor.
.evom ton seod gis eht
with linux (kubuntu 10.04 64 bit). Completely froze Firefox 3.6.10pre. While it might be faster on Firefox, you can still use the browser while benchmarking with Chromium. Mozilla seriously needs to give each tab in Firefox it's own process. Try opening an article on slashdot with 300+ comments, while browsing at -1 and using the option that displays all comments. On my Quad Q6600 with 6GB Ram Firefox freezes for almost 20 seconds and is completely useless, unlike Chromium that let's me read other tabs while loading the article.
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
That's a great start. If you can tell me how I could get the functioanlity of Vimperator, Web Developer, and Video Download helper, then I might be looking at a new browser.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
Took wel over 40 seconds on my 3.6.9 Linux Firefox, freezing my other tabs most of the time. But it did finish.
People are experiencing significant memory leaks when using Firefox, even with modern and the 4.0 beta versions, and even when not installing any extensions or other plugins like Flash. That's just a fact.
The steps to reproduce these leaks are simple:
1) Download the latest release or beta of Firefox from the Mozilla Firefox web site.
2) Install it.
3) Perform moderate browsing for 10 minutes.
4) Look at the memory usage of the Firefox process. Notice that it's totally unreasonable. The resident memory usage will often be greater than 5 or 6 GB, if you have a system with 8 GB of RAM! That's a memory leak, my friend.
But whenever somebody reports this sort of a problem, all we hear from the Firefox community is how "these leaks don't exist" or "we can't reproduce them" or worst of all, "it's some extension or plugin you're using" even when none are installed!
I stopped filing bug reports when it became obvious that the Firefox community does not take memory usage seriously. Instead of fixing these horrible problems, they just pretend these problems don't exist. Fuck that. I'm now a happy Chrome user, since the Google developers are clearly able to write code that doesn't constantly leak huge amounts of memory. And when a memory leak is noticed, they deal with it, instead of pretending that it doesn't exist.
Chrome has an adblock that now actually blocks stuff instead of hiding it (beta+dev I think). There's also 'notscript' for chrome, it isn't as good as noscript in some cases but it does a well enough job.
I thought the saying was "release the kraken", not "unleash the kraken".
JFGI...
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chromeextensions.org%2Fother%2Fvrome%2F&ei=xLiQTLf5C-GXONOl9NIM&usg=AFQjCNEriw416yt5gcX4TW6_xb_2V-7v1w&sig2=nzHj0k_EtnQ_Vp96K7N9GA
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fchrome.google.com%2Fextensions%2Fdetail%2Fbfbameneiokkgbdmiekhjnmfkcnldhhm&ei=4riQTJiMAcfuOfOluNUM&usg=AFQjCNEQYpzy5ZEfSOgvNAGsGB1FLv8PMA&sig2=crdVd_2_-_I9U6cMo3OPnQ
For a start, and you'll probably find Downloadhelper somewhere too...
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
Leave it to Timothy to eff up the headline. Hey Idiot - it's "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
As long as they don't release the Kiken, we'll be OK.
Microsoft (at least MS Research) have been doing interesting work in capturing the traces of javascript execution from real websites, with the intention of producing realistic benchmarks. It's a sensible approach though it only captures the type of JS web developers are prepared to use on the web right now (i.e. in an environment which includes substantial IE6 rather than made up of the best JS engines available). A sensible benchmark will also need to take account of the kinds of apps which are now written in flash (or just not deployed in browsers), but would use JS if it were fast enough.
The best link I can find right now is to a recent video presentation: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=136780
They do note that Mozilla is also supporting this effort. Hopefully this kind of workload will be part of future benchmarks.
Why don't they just grab the (say) 200 most visited sites on the internet, copy the JavaScript and use that to benchmark instead?
Simples.
That would likely be illegal.
Yeah, like Mozilla and dromaeo.
Mozilla's Kraken has just convinced me to switch my browser... to chrome. It's a shame Firefox doesn't understand that browsers should be designed to actually be used by humans. Firefox Test: I start up Kraken in Firefox. Immediately the window becomes nonresponsive for a few seconds, and I'm unable to use mouse-gestures to return to my slashdot tab, forcing me to manually switch. Then my performance in another tab is so severely impacted it becomes a chore to even attempt to read the article, as I'm unable to even scroll down without several second delays. I try to minimize the window resulting in a ridiculous delay, then attempt to maximize the now-nonresponsive Firefox, again getting an even greater delay. It's a pain to even try to close the offending tab while all this is going on. Finally Kraken is halted and I'm in control of my own computer again. Chrome Test: I start up the test in Google. No lag, no delays, no horrible loss of control of the browser. It seems to be taking significantly longer (still not completed), but I can *gasp* actually use my browser! What a novel idea. I'd much rather have a great time on a browser that I'd actually want to use, than a terrible time on a slightly faster platform.
Sunspider shows Safari as fastest, V8 Chrome as fastest (at least last I checked), and the Mozilla bench was a more mixed result.
On my Windows 7 system (AMD 1055T) with latest Release versions, Opera edges ahead of both at their own games, and Firefox isnt even in the running yet on those but its performance has increased substantially in the last year.
I understand that Safari is much better on Mac's than it is PC's.
The thing about Dromeao, Mozilla's previous benchmark suite, was that it incorporated these others. Firefox's javascript speed improved substantially since Dromaeo.. and now I think that they have lost their way, as if they have unofficially given up matching performance and are now going to grade themselves on a curve.
"His name was James Damore."
I ran Kraken on Chrome 7 in one tab while browsing /. and working with a few other JS heavy pages. I experienced no slow down in my other pages and Chrome completed in 19.15 seconds. Then I started Kraken in FF4 with nothing else running in the browser. Every so often I came back to the browser to check on it's progress, each time the entire browser took 1-2 seconds to restore and FF4 was very sluggish in the UI. FF4 completed the benchmark in 22.54 seconds.
So FF4 is slower in their own benchmark versus Chrome 7 and the UI appears to use the same thread as the scripts.
Sig is on vacation
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Dammit, /., Get It Right!
"Release the Kracken!"
--Calibos
What is really wrong with the benchmarks is that they are benchmarking only one thing at a time. Attempt to open simultaneously 50 links to tabs (something that I do constantly - I have my daily links in one bookmark folder...) and you will start noticing how the tabs loading will start interacting with the performance of other tabs. In fact on some browsers (especially Firefox) this makes reading content in a tab sometimes even impossible while an other is loading in the background.
This is an area where browsers have never been optimized and it shows. It's also way more important for the usability of an ordinary user than shaving off couple measle percentages of some synthetic benchmark, especially as many users have slower internet connections and a lot of stuff loading often in the background.
IE8: Total: 331076.6ms +/- 15.9% (after setting the script timeout to infinity)
Full results: http://bit.ly/aIPloH
For reference, FF4b7 took 9452.1ms.
Too bad it's the backward-facing ones that give my browser all the trouble.
It is more likely that they are already using these benchmarks during development, and release them to the public once they get good scores on them.
If I were to complain about something, I have 2 issues
Sorry for ranting.
17360.8ms in Chrome 7.0.517.5, faster than Firefox
Sadly, it's the only browser out there with Noscript and Adblock.
Not so. Opera has both of these. Here is my assessment:
Opera's "Noscript" > Noscript
Adblock > Opera's ad blocker
I forgot to mention that my other 3G device is a Sprint aircard (Merlin EX720) and I use it as my primary connection when I'm home. I've never had Slashdot lock up my machine, although I have had problems with Flash sites (high CPU, fans going crazy, Firefox lockups etc). Current Firefox version I'm using is 4.0b5 on Snow Leopard if that helps; I always run the latest beta/stable.
Now when Firefox starts up in something less than 45 seconds, I'll start caring if they have marginally faster javascript. Right now I can click on Chrome and within a second or two, it's started. Firefox, assuming it isn't updating something, takes 30-45 seconds. Toss in the frequent update before it starts (something Chrome manages to do in the background) and it's more like a minute or two. I couldn't care less how fast the javascript is when Chrome is more than fast enough and doesn't take 1-3 minutes to start up. On my powerful desktop at home, it's more like Chrome is instantaneous and FF takes 10-15 seconds, 30 if it's updating, but even at 10 seconds it's annoyingly slow to start up. On my work laptop I have time to go get coffee while FF starts up.
Why don't they just grab the (say) 200 most visited sites on the internet, copy the JavaScript and use that to benchmark instead?
Simples.
Because 198 of them are pr0n.
The major browser Javascript engines (with the apparent exception of IE) are all now within the ballpark of each other. And they all make slightly different tradeoffs and are optimized for slightly different conditions, and have all released benchmarks that illustrate the strong points of their browsers.
If you look at v8bench (Google's Javascript benchmark), sunspider (the Webkit Javascript benchmark), and now Kraken (Mozilla's Javascript benchmark), you'll see that the latest browser versions are basically within 5-30% of each other on identical hardware. Which one comes out ahead depends on whose set of optimization parameters you think is most important.
Attacking Mozilla for doing the same thing every other major browser maker does (not that your post was, but other posters have) is silly.
Yes.
Mission accomplished.
As several earlier posts point out, the objectivity of Kraken is in question. Indeed, the Mozilla blog post says nothing about the substance of the benchmark. Why should we believe that this is a "step in the right direction"?
Some research has recently been published about the characteristics of popular JavaScript programs: An Analysis of the Dynamic Behavior of JavaScript Programs. At the end of the conference presentation, the first author (Richards) said that he was working on developing JavaScript benchmarks based on their analysis. I'd be curious to see how Richards' benchmarks compares to Kraken.
> I hope this isn't one of those M$ style tests that find the bits that their own software does well and others badly and test that.
Although that can be a propaganda tool, there can be legitimate reasons for it, too: if you think about it, a company should find particular kinds of functionality the most important, and should stress those in both its browser design and its benchmarks. If two browser authors select different areas, then you'll have browsers that are good at different things--and benchmarks that reflect that.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
On Mozilla's arewefastyet.com they've put up some nice comparison charts of the Kraken benchmark in various browsers.
I have started using Google docs, so Javascript performance is important to me.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It took 8 minutes to run on FF 3.6.9 on the same laptop.
It took 3.5 minutes to run on FF 4.0b7
Google is about 10-times faster than IE8 on this benchmark.
Minefield (FF 4.0b7 nightly development build) is over 20-times faster than IE8.
RESULTS
IE8
FF 3.6.9
Google
FF 4.0b7
Came here hoping for yummy black spiced rum. Left disappointed.
well they claim kraken uses sunspider's test but runs all at once instead of separated startups (roughly..)
the thing is each was the best of their game at release of the benchmark, then others used the benchmark to optimize and beat them if possible for PR of course
i don't think they've given up matching performance according to arewethereyet.com they're getting very near in the last days
Same with google docs. Sure sure, it don't do everything Office or even OpenOffice does, but I don't use 99% of the features.
How well does Google Docs work for you when a connection to the Internet is not available? At home, it might be an ISP outage. On a laptop, it might be the fact that you are riding a bus or train without a 3G card and plan.
Yes, there are downsides, but frankly the recent 20 years of needing a super sized OS installed with bloated software has its downsides too.
Can you get to a web browser without the super-sized operating system?
I'm guessing this is in response to the recent criticism of both the Sunspider and V8 benchmarks as not testing realistic workloads. I'd be very curious to see an "acid" test of javascript that's developed with input from all the browser vendors and the community. It looks like maybe Microsoft of all people is moving in this direction with their JSMeter app? In all fairness this is kraken version 1.0, it could change drastically with more feedback from the community.
Also, did anyone verify the numbers in the original post? On my x86_64 linux box I get 28631.6ms with Chrome and 38106.4ms with FF4 nightly. It seems to me that Linux really gets the shaft in JS performance. It significant underperforms the Windows version on the same hardware.
Mozilla made a new benchmark that their browser is the fastest on?
Seriously? Who would of thought...
So what's next, the Benchmark the AMD makes that blows Intel or Nvidia out of the water?
Be seeing you...
(Disclaimer - FF, with certain extensions, is, by far, my preferred browser, although Chrome is looking better each release)
So, IE9 beta will be unleashed unto the expectant masses in just a short while - since Kraken was under wraps until yesterday, that would have given
the Internet Explorer dev team no opportunity to test their codebase. Co-incidence? I think NOT!
I've stated before that i find the latest round of the browser wars that ignited when Google first revealed revealed Chrome to be more exciting than the OS wars that have been fought since the '90s ( although, despite not being a Mac guy, Apple's shift, first to Unix underpinnings and then from PowerPC to Intel was simply astonishing). I'm not sure why the release of Safari 3 on Windows didn't cause the same seismic shift in browser development.
Very, very excited about what the future of browser-based apps, especially since HTML5 is ramping up in adoption.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
i think you're going a bit far, ff4 is not slow at all.
I completed it in 0.00s on the latest FF4.
Also I have NoScript.
Sorry had to.
If you're going to worry specifically about JS performance (which is an assumption; the IE team is still saying that this focus is a mistake and to some extent they're right),
There's another somewhat more sinister interpretation of that of course -- the increasing emphasis on javascript, especially with html5, is a direction that Microsoft really wishes things wouldn't go, because it represents a move towards platform-independence, and away from windows-only apps and technologies.
If people must run stuff in their browser, I'm sure MS would far prefer they did it using something like silverlight, over which MS at least maintains some control...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
s/arewethereyet.com/arewefastyet.com
absolutely!
js performance is not important if it just fires up, slides an advert across the page and then stop. It *is* really important if your webpage is full of javascript driving a rich "desktop-style" GUI.
Well, sure. Just because they have an agenda doesn't mean they're saying things that are completely false, though.
Sadly, it's the only browser out there with Noscript and Adblock.
Yeah, yeah. Firefox is the only browser that supports Firefox extensions. That doesn't mean it's the only browser in which you have mature tools for controlling Javascript execution and ad blocking.
Here you go, here's an ad-blocking proxy that works with all of your browsers, and has been developed for 9 years (that's longer than Firefox has been around, BTW):
http://www.admuncher.com/
That only runs on Windows, but I really doubt you're going to have a hard time finding an open source ad-blocking proxy to run on any OS.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Firefox takes first place in its own benchmark!
YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME!!
I bet if I time a race, I can be the fastest too.
Yes. It hardly makes much sense to remove IO as an issue for a browser and call that "realistic". Most browsers are not going to be CPU bound, rather it will be the interplay between the CPU at the times the I/O is both blocked or unblocked that will make all the difference in the world in term so browser experience. Nonetheless, distinguishing CPU bound performance from non-CPU bound performance is important in isolating unnecessary latencies. Also the challenge of determining what a benchmark should look like in the face of IO issues will be a difficult one that may not readily transfer across all platforms and networks. Different browsers may well be better in different circumstances. The trick for browser developers will be better establishing what those circumstances are more times than not.
Sure, and that's what Kraken is about: testing the sorts of JavaScript google docs or other actual applications need.
If you run Kraken in Firefox and Safari, and then compare the results of the subtests (by copying and pasting a URL), you'll see that Firefox does better at some of the subtests and Safari does better at others. So in one sense, Mozilla has done exactly that.
The shareholder is always right.
and when was the last time you actually used four levels (or more) of indirections?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I ended up converting a web page that I built with my daughter (back in March for her Birthday) as a benchmark when I happened to have tried it on IE and it was basically unusable. I accidentally created a benchmark when I did not want to.
Then, with lots of playing around, I got IE8 to run the page significantly faster than the original IE8 but still a few orders of magnitude less than other browsers.
You can try it our at http://sinz.org/Maze/ - it is a simple page that generates a maze that fills the browser window. Do this in a "maximized" browser window for most dramatic impact. Part of the problem is the performance of the layout engine in IE8 since it seems to do another layout when changing the background color. Chrome is actually rather good at this but Safari and Firefox are also relatively good.
Its the Internet! Beotch!!!
So if the real world sites (as in, the top 200) don't actually depend on javascript that much, why spend all that effort doing the silly e-peen thing rather than the actual slow bits? Whether it be splitting the content layout/rendering to a different process or thread or restartable or whatnot.
Sorry, saying that different people work on different things don't work when people like sayrer is perfectly fine working on non-JS things like omnijar.
To be objective - Opera and Google should create their own new browser benchmarks ;)
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
I'm posting this using Iron. You may just have changed my browser. Time will tell, but I love having the option. Thank you.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40