This article originally appeared on http://celtickane.com, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 2.5 license.
Sean Patrick Kane
has written 1 articles for JavaScriptSearch.
How does the speed of your browser compare with the speed of
competing browsers? Instead of testing page load times, or the load
time of the browser itself, I've decided to test the Javascript speed
of three of the most popular browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, and
Opera. How will your favorite browser compare?
Please keep in mind that any of the duration/time values listed here
are completely relative. The only way to effectively compare speed
values is to use the exact same machine, and with the same processes
running in the background. It is nearly impossible to test non-Windows
operating systems in this manner because you would introduce too many
new variables (operating system, total CPU load, etc.) -- for this
reason, I have not tested Safari.
If you'd like to try this test out for yourself, the table below is the
exact test I've used for the experiment. I ran each test fifteen times,
graphed the set of fifteen points, and took the overall average. You
are more than welcome to examine the Javascript code to see what each
test is actually doing.
Test Description
Duration (ms)
Try/Catch with errors
Layer movement
Random number engine
Math engine
DOM speed
Array functions
String functions
Ajax declaration
Total Duration
0
ms
The Results
How did each browser perform? Before I explain the results, I'd first like to say that I use Firefox religiously, and I am very
addicted to the extensions. With that said, I was expecting Firefox to
be ranked at the top, or perhaps even second place. Below is a graph of
the fifteen tests that I performed -- for any Firefox lovers, you may
want to cover your eyes.
Browser
Average Time (ms)
Firefox 1.5
1974
Internet Explorer 6 (SP2)
1622
Firefox 1.5 (Safe mode)
1752
Opera 9.0
442
Conclusion
Well, the conclusion is quite clear: Opera beat the shit out of
everything else. It's more than 3.5 times faster than all of the other
competing browsers. Your mileage may vary based on your machine and
version of browser. Although the conditions of the test are not typical
of the average webpage, there are webpages, like Digg,
that are extremely Javascript-intensive, and the difference in
Javascript speeds would be very noticeable. Perhaps a test like this
will convince someone to switch to Opera for performance reasons. I
cannot explain why Opera's Javascript is so much quicker than the other
two browsers -- perhaps someone would like to contact me with an
answer. For now, I believe I'll still stick to my Firefox because of
its extensions and interface -- but this test will certainly give me
reason to look further into converting to Opera.