New Version Of Chrome

Wow, just as I was commenting that the new browser wars were resulting in some serious improvements in web browsing, Google released a new version of Chrome.

Latest Chrome version: Total: 837.4ms +/- 1.3%

This convincingly gives Chrome the Javascript performance lead in SunSpider.

Competition is awesome for the consumer because in the end we get a better product. =)

Google Chrome Vs Firefox 3.1 (Minefield)

The browser wars are pushing browser technology to progress much faster than before. For example, a lot of work has been put into boosting JavaScript performance. Under Google Chrome or Firefox 3.1 (Minefield), web pages load incredibly quickly. One of the industry standard JavaScript benchmarks is SunSpider. This is a side by side comparison of the two running on my computer:

Google Chrome: Total: 1138.8ms +/- 0.9%
Firefox 3.1 (Minefield): Total: 984.6ms +/- 1.4%

You can see that Firefox is overall just over 10% faster than Chrome on this particular benchmark. Both of these versions are beta status.

For reference:
Firefox 3.1 Minefield) (JIT off to simulate slightly older versions of Firefox): Total: 1899.6ms +/- 0.7%
Internet Explorer 7: Total: 23412.2ms +/- 2.4%

Both Chrome and Firefox 3.1 are over 20x faster than Internet Explorer 7 at JavaScript in this benchmark. That's a pretty big improvement over last generation browsers. ;)