Google Chrome 4.0: Fastest OS X browser by 34 per cent | Hacker News Reader

Google Chrome 4.0: Fastest OS X browser by 34 per cent

crave.cnet.co.uk

27 pointsdavecardwell25 comments

The author compares the JavaScript performance of a Chromium nightly build with Safari 4.0 based solely on the SunSpider benchmark.

Lousy article behind a sensationalist title.

I love Chrome. I now use it exclusively on Windows at work because Firefox is just so much slower compared to it. At home on Ubuntu, I use the Chromium daily builds which are now very stable and using --enable-plugins for Flash is becoming more stable every week.

This is just so great for browsers in general. As we all know, competition just makes everything better. I'm glad how Chromium has grown and I look forward to see how the other browsers begin innovating.

I love chrome, but it just can't manage tabs the way the Tree Style Tabs extension can.

I've used the Tree Style Tabs on Firefox, and I can say that I actually prefer the way Chrome does it. With Chrome, it looks like a standard list of tabs, but behind the scenes, it's a tree.

To each their own...

I'd add autopager & firegestures to that. I doubt I'll ever use a different browser.

If it's ok with you, I'm going to go ahead and mentally refer to it as Google Chrome 0.4.

After using Firefox 3 on Linux since the alpha, Chromium has reminded me what it is like to use a browser where all local operations are instantaneous. I just wonder how low the hardware requirements for Chrome OS will be.

Scrolling on Chrome is still really slow compared to Safari (uses 100% cpu!) Guess this test doesn't do any of that.

Because I’ve used Firefox and various add-ons at work for so frequently and for so long I think Chrome is going to take some getting used to, but from what I’ve seen so far it’s well worth the effort.

Firefox has served me well over the last few years but seems to grow ever-slower on my Macbook while playing with Chromium is like a breath of fresh air.

Next week I’m going to try using the built-in Developer Tools to see how they stack up against Firebug, but what I’ve seen thus far has been pretty encouraging.

Safari's Web Inspector (used verbatim in Chrome) is still missing a few features vs. Firebug (mostly with editing, and integration with webapp frameworks), but it's STABLE, and fully integrated.

Firebug crashes constantly, is unusable with many sites, and is never quite in sync with Mozilla's development plans. Mozilla blew it big time promoting their completely useless "Web Developer" extension for years (even shipping it in the installer), and completely ignoring Firebug.

I did a sunspider benchmark of safari and firefox (forgot which version, but I did it recently with the latest versions of both) and their speeds were almost identical.

So?

Well safari kept saying how it was the fastest browser around.

Faster than Opera too?

Edit: Yes, at least the Javascript engine is significantly faster on this benchmark.

On Chrome 2.0.172.39 on Windows I scored 1051.2 ms, on Firefox I scored 4633.8 ms, and on Opera I scored 6230.2 ms.

Safari should just take the V8 engine.

Why? The two projects have been swapping the performance lead back and forth since the start of this current period of insane browser development, and it would be an enormous undertaking to make the switch.

Ok, then understandably they shouldn't. But I wandered off and argued another point: why open source should take the best and incorporate it.

The problem with this approach is that there are large switching costs involved (due to the previously mentioned tight coupling between javascript engine and rendering engine) and the "whose JS engine is the fastest" crown gets passed back and forth between Mountain View and Cupertino so frequently they should just plant it somewhere around southwest Los Altos and be done with it...

I'm enjoying the constant competition. I'd like to see them continue to push the envelope.

The whole benefit of open source is so that stuff can be openly improved. If Chrome has a better javascript engine, then why not firefox and safari adopt it? They could always improve the Chrome version afterwards anyways (I'm assuming the V8 engine is indeed better). There really are only two browsers duking it out, Internet Explorer and the open source browser. Why? Because open source has no barriers to adopting it's own technology and can be considered one entity in theory. If one javascript engine is clearly superior why waste effort developing seperate open source implementations? It's not like the user interface where someone might prefer the style of firefox's javascript rendering over Chrome's. Competition even in open source is natural and should be encouraged, but they don't have to necessarily compete to improve. They can build on top of each other.

1) A browser's full JS implementation is pretty closely coupled with its rendering engine. Even Mozilla ties them together, and they have a long heritage of making chunks of browser functionality separate libraries for no goddamn reason.

2) In the real world open source software is about scratching your own itch, and has absolutely nothing to do with "what's best for users". Developers are highly invested in their own code, and are loath to rip it out and replace it with someone else's. It's extraordinarily rare for OSS projects to merge at all even when they are forks (and I can't think of a single example of non-forked projects merging).

1) A browser's full JS implementation is pretty closely coupled with its rendering engine.

Both Safari and Chrome use WebKit as a rendering engine..

2) In the real world open source software is about scratching your own itch, and has absolutely nothing to do with "what's best for users".

In this world, WebKit is open sourced by Apple and isn't some random user's side project that gets one patch a month. This means that decisions aren't made lightly, without second thought. Including the decision that was made to merge back with KHTML and Google's (slow) progress to move back to using WebKit trunk instead of their own fork.

Yes that's the problem: emotional investment in their own code. But still the idea of open source is that everyone is free to use everything so that if someone sees something done better they can incorporate it into their own project right? They don't have to copy and paste stuff, but they can take the concept, idea, etc. If they don't and can't get over their investment, then they are doomed to failure eventually because those who do take the best stuff out there and build on top of it will have a technical advantage.

So Firefox and safari are publicly contributed to, but they have different engines. Engines are probably the most difficult part of the browser right? It's essentially the definition of the browser. Well let's say the V8 engine is superior and Firefox and safari don't adopt it. Well they're operating not much too different from a proprietary source. Open source and commercial will both be invested in their products, the difference is that open source can pull from each other, and they should. So if V8 requires major code changes why not? And if Mozilla thinks it can improve it then they can fork it. But Mozilla probably won't do that. You're right most people are invested in their projects and so what happens in the open source world is that brand new projects get started instead, but I'm just saying it also makes sense to ditch when you known you've been beaten just because you can.

> (and I can't think of a single example of non-forked projects merging).

Merb and Rails.

Read the Update: at the bottom, and you'll get a feel for the technical / journalistic aptitude of the writer.

It really smacks of Mike Angelo's noisemaking at the early part of the decade: http://everything2.com/title/MozillaQuest

Edit: I really miss the tech-meets-timecube aspect of that site.

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