Chrome And Firefox Showing JavaScript Improvements

With new betas for both Firefox and Chrome being released, CNET decided to find out how good their JavaScript performance was. Both browsers got a performance boost with Firefox slightly edging out Chrome. You have to turn on TraceMonkey, Firefox’s new Javascript engine in 3.1b1, to get the improvement. We never thought Google was that serious about building a new browser. They just want wanted Firefox to get their act together and suck less. It seems to be working.

[via Lifehacker]

18 thoughts on “Chrome And Firefox Showing JavaScript Improvements

  1. My fear is that when they improve java speed the coders using it will just end up doing less effort to make their code fast and it’ll all equal out again for the enduser, just like with normal code, we have stuff that works as fast now as that the stuff that did the same worked on a 166MHz pentium. all the speed increases of the CPU are mostly nullified by poorly written code :/

  2. Oh one more observation, what struck me is that chrome from what I hear first compiles java and then runs it, it’s not doing the interpreting thing, so does it do that in these tests too? and if so I’m guessing tracemonkey (and opera if there’s even remotely truth to rasz comment) does that too then?
    And won’t that mess with some code that expects it to not be compiles, self-modifying code perhaps?

    Anyway I might not get the next firefox because of this: “Firefox 3.1 will introduce geolocation to the mix, streamlining the process required to get information from web sites based on your location. In the current release of Firefox, you needed to install the previously mentioned Geode extension to get this functionality, but it comes baked into 3.1.”
    That crap is totally unacceptable to me, even if I can turn it off I want to make a stand against it, I hate the localization of the internet, it’s the curse of so many sites and getting worse and worse and worse.

  3. Speed only matter so much as long as Firefox refuses to implement process isolation. When one tab hangs, the whole browser hangs. Chrome does not have that problem.

    It’s really amusing to see so many Firefox loyalists (I’m posting this from FF, BTW) so deathly afraid of a process improvement from a new browser. Kinda like how IE drones were with Firefox…

    Just relax, people. The more solid browsers there are contending for our usage, the better off we’ll all be.

  4. spork – “refuses?” Chrome has afaik pioneered the process-per-page browser, it probably is better (especially for dealing with buggy extensions) but it’s also a rather fundamental change. You can’t expect mozilla to re-engineer their huge and complicated source tree overnight.

  5. process isolation has been asked of the mozilla team for quite some time. check the forums, the listservs, and bug trackers. they have, to date, refused to explore it.

    yes. refused.

  6. Since some people spend every waking moment for years just monitoring every byte FF uses to bitch about it I think them separating the processes might lead to those maniacs blowing up their houses :) But I do agree they should separate the parts more, not every tab but at least the main program from the scripting and plugins like flash and such.
    I always wondered why people complain so much about the RAM use of FF, but when a mouse or keyboard driver like logitech’s uses 50MB for something that should take 0.5MB there’s much less complaining heard, perhaps it’s a leftover from legitimate complaints about memory leaks in old FF, because that’s something you can and should complain about but a lot of the complaining types probably don’t know the difference between ‘use’ and ‘leak’.

  7. Yeah I’m surprised that Opera is still in business too since it’s constantly being ignored in the polls.

    You know that Opera innovated most of the things you Firefox and Chrome fans love, right? And they perfected them years and years ago where they are still buggy on Firefox and Chrome.

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