Video: Opera response to Google Chrome's speed test video

Remember the Google Chrome speed / performance test video? Well, Opera responded with an own performance test video as a reply to Google.

As known, the Opera browser and Google's Chrome are fighting for the fastest-browser-in-the-world crown and Opera is catching up right now with a faster Javascript engine in Opera 10.50. Time do do a little performance testing:

But though both tests do compare the respective performance using the all-known-potato-method, you cannot be exactly sure if a comparison can be done really accurately. Judge yourself.

Chrome performance better than lightning (or a potato canon)

Well, everyone already had the idea that Google's Chrome browser is one of the fastest browser out there. Be it rendering (by using the WebKit) or JavaScript (with the V8 engine), even giving every tab an own process seems to help.

But, until today, I did not know that Chrome is faster than sound or a flash (thunder and lightning). Or even... an ordinary potato gun.

Evidence needed? Watch this video, it explains how that is possible (scientifically).

Who would have thought that a browser outranges a potato canon? Well, now we know.

Google Chrome without data sniffing: Iron is here.

A german software company named srware took the GPLed source code of Google's chrome and ironed it down to create a browser that does not phone home to Google any more. The latest release of Iron (1.0.155.0) from December 14 already contains WebKit version 528.5 and JavaScript engine V8 version 0.4.4.1 and therefore is slightly newer than the respective versions in Chrome.

Your data is private again

The goal creating a Chromeclone was simple: Although Google Chrome delivered fantastic rendering and JavaScript speed from scratch and is pretty stable and compatible, criticism arose because the new browser shared it's data with Google.

Every time a new URL is entered this data is sent to Google. And Google can match these with the browser because every browser gets a unique id when it is installed. Furthermore, the Google Updater is installed and runs in background every time you start your computer (check your Task-Manager for "GoogleUpdate.exe"). This and more is deactivated in Iron, according to this page.

BSD-licensed, USB-stick version and source available

The browser identifies itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/528.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Iron/1.0.155.0 Safari/528.7". The geeks at srware provide downloads for an Iron-Installer, an Iron-USB-version (without installation) and the source code they altered. The source is available under a BSD-license, so everyone can use it completely free even for commercial products.

Conclusion, language tips and full incognito

The rendering and JavaScript performance of Chrome attracted us from the beginning, alas the privacy drawbacks stopped us from using it. Iron does a good job here and comes, as a bonus, wit a USB-stick version and without installation but preconfigured with the german language.

To change the language choose the "SRware Iron anpassen" icon (top right in the tab of the browser) and click "Optionen". Then click the third button ("Schriftart- und Spracheinstellungen ändern"), choose the tab "Sprachen" and select your language in the "Iron language" - dropdown.

One more option at startup is the "--incognito" parameter. Start Iron with this (i.e. like "IronPortable.exe --incognito" to immediately switch into the anonymous mode. Have fun!

Google Chrome: A first little test with highly complex AJAX/Javascript web applications

Google Chrome - what is it's real performance for highly AJAX-based web applications?

Some five hours ago Google introduced Google Chrome and put it on their site for download. Google Chrome is a stand-alone web browser and therefore has to compete with browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Here at first a core Javascript test (as stated in a previous Javascript-post):

Chrome 0.2	FF 2.0.0.14	FF3 RC1	IE 7.0.5730.13	Opera 9.27	Safari 3.1.1
3471,8	26271,4	5447,0	40846,2	12358,2	6318,8

Time in milliseconds the browsers needed in this performance test

But Google Chromes main goal is (according to Google) an other goal than that of other browsers: Highly AJAXed Javascript "web applications" shall run faster and more safe with Google Chrome, thus enabling a new era of web based applications like Google Maps, Google Mail or others. Time to look at speed and compatibility issues with more complex applications, even though the browser is stated as a "Google beta". Again.

YAWB or not YAWB, that is the question.

Yet Another Web Browser? Or: Why is Google in the web browser market? Because that is Googles business, the idea fits. Why not presenting the browser as a gift and earning money with the applications they run?

Internas and testing environment

Time to do a kind of real life test using an internal application that makes heavy use of Javascript and AJAX. At the moment Google Chrome is too much of an early bird to do this excessively, but we can have a look under the hood and run a fairly complex application on it.

The new features include

• A new Javascript Engine called V8 is in use.
  
• Better performance through compiled Javascript, it is compiled into machine code and not necessarily always interpreted.
• The new Javascript VM has a better garbage collection included to preserve memory.
• Browser tabs or new browser windows run in dedicated threads.

The testing application has some thousands of lines of self-written Javascript-code and relies on Prototype and other frameworks. It (re)opens different "windows" as DOM-elements and is able to switch through them via ctrl-tab and shift-ctrl-tab. Data is drawn from the background via AJAX, the usability allows drag-and-drop of single (or multiple) elements from one window into others. The application "runs" on IE, Firefox and Safari. Pretty complex stuff for a first test.

Compatibility will be the key...

What use is a new browser if the sites you want to visit will not work with it? Right, none. So the browser has to be as compatible as possible. I was fairly surprised and impressed as I saw the application running smooth and dandy. There was no itch regarding the Javascript-compatibility, every function I tested simply worked. The whole Javascript-code ran without the need to apply a single patch or something similar from our side. You know the moments where you hope "ah, come on, it will work out somehow. I believe, I strongly believe..." and you run it and it works out? That was one of that rare moments. Impressive.

... and performance will be the door-opener.

So it seems to be pretty compatible, right, but the second side is, is it faster, more useable than other browsers? The rendering engine seems to be partly from the webkit.org - project, rendering was pretty fast and compatible (to say the pages looked like in other browsers). From the look and feel of the thing I would say Google Chrome is at least one of the fastest rendering browsers if not the fastest, anyway.

And the Javascript-performance was astonishing (see here for numbers of a normal Javascript test suite). The application, running pretty fast in Firefox 3 and Safari 3.1 got a little extra speed-kick. That way it really feels like a real application on the computer rather than rendered web results. The clear separation of tabs and windows into threads does its additional work: Because no tab has to wait until an other tab releases the processor you have the feeling that it works faster or smarter.

So is it worth the hassle?

I think it is worth giving it a try. I do not think that I will use it yet as a browser-user, because I need my Firefox-plugins or IE-updating. But I will definitely test it with/for Javascript and AJAX-driven pages and our own developments. The gain in there is definitely worth the hassle.