Google Frame Benchmarks 9x Faster than IE8 152
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Early tests with Google's Chrome Frame found IE8 runs 9.6 times faster than usual. The testers ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite." The other question is what is the performance hit of using the Frame plug-in instead of running the browser natively.
benchmarks always forget the user experience (Score:5, Interesting)
However it seems like they only measured JavaScript engine, which by no means contribute everything to how fast browser or browsing feels. And everyone probably knew already that Google's JavaScript engine outperforms MS's (and being one of the main thing Google's thing use, they have a reason to optimize it till its dead)
This seems to be the usual thing with other browser benchmarks too, they only benchmark the javascript engines and similar under the hood things. Yeah it's easier, but it doesn't really tell the truth.
User interactions and GUI responsiveness contribute a lot, actually even more so, to how fast browsing feels. IE is horrible with this and has always been; everything lacks behind, scrolling is galaxies far from smooth and the general feeling is just bad. On that note, Firefox suffers a bit from the same things. I think only Opera and Chrome have done UI responsiveness good. Which also brings the question, does Chrome Frame improve it on IE too?
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Nonsense. Aside from the retrieval of a page, rendering said (static) page will be instant in almost all cases, regardless the browser. If it doesn't, either the page is way way way too complicated or you are using an antiquated machine.
So... when benchmarking a web browser, the only real target to measure is javascript performance.
Re:benchmarks always forget the user experience (Score:5, Interesting)
There are actually other points you can look at. Things like how fast the browser starts rendering the page while its loading makes a huge difference too. If you sit there waiting for the page to load and looking at white/previous page, its slow. If the browser starts immediately rendering the loading page, atleast something is happening. MS improved this a lot in Win7 too. Just if you see that something is happening or whats loading, it feels faster than just waiting. Of course feel is hard to benchmark, so they usually don't, but it counts a lot too.
Re:benchmarks always forget the user experience (Score:5, Interesting)
This! ^
Benchmarks aside, I feel like Chrome is the slowest thing on earth, because I see NOTHING until the page is finished loading. I try to be objective. I'll load the same page in Chrome and in FF. True, the page FINISHES about the same time, but with FF, I can see bits and pieces as they become available. Since I am interested in the text most of the time, it doesn't matter how long it takes for some other element to load - I'm never going to look at it. I WANT MY TEXT NOW!!
That said - I agree with those who say web pages are to complicated today. Add in useless bloat like flash, advertising, etc. I can't browse any faster today with DSL than I did a few years ago with dial up! Something is badly wrong here.
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Don't install flash, install AdBlock. Problems solved.
Re:benchmarks always forget the user experience (Score:4, Funny)
Correct - BUT, I am trying to consider the "average user". Like my wife, for instance. I finally weaned her from Microsoft, and she's perfectly happy on Ubuntu. But, HER Ubuntu looks nothing like MY version Ubuntu. If her flash don't flash, she'll throw a fit. She's not a fashion nut, but she still wants to see what's "hot" - meaning she READS those stupid advertisements! Did I mention that on a shared connection, her flash games and adverts slow down MY connection?
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Doesn't flash slow down everyone's connection? That's why I hate it as a video player, as opposed to quicktime. Navigating away from a youtube, vimeo, or gametrailers page with a flash player takes about 10-12 seconds. Navigating away from a quicktime video takes perhaps 0.25 seconds.
Yay! Proprietary crap! (Score:2)
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And, things like this are so aggravating. I see what's before my eyes, and AC experiences something quite different. WHY? If I were to make a "bug report", would this behaviour be reproducible, or not? GAHHHHH!!!
Maybe I need to look at configurations again....
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I get that sometimes... does the computer seem busy while it's waiting? Or does it seem to just stop, as if it's waiting for something to happen? I get the latter, think it's some kind of network thing (or that it's looking to the network for) that's timing out, as it seems to be a fixed period of time that the delay is. Not figured out the cause though :-/
Re:benchmarks always forget the user experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the world wide web, TheRealMindChild. Out here pages are "way way way too complicated". You can close your eyes and go "lalalala" but that doesn't mean those pages aren't there.
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But I'm sure the number of static non-javascript way-way-way-way-too-complicated pages is but a t
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"The fact you can get "There is a script on this page that is taking a long time [Stop Script] [Continue]" type dialogs probably says it all"
I find those usually triggered by bugs in the javascript causing infinite loops. I've not seen it occur otherwise, which would put a different spin on that.
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But that's just it: the browser shouldn't lock up just because a page is running Javascript. It should still respond to user commands, allow scrolling around pages, opening other pages in other windows/tabs, clicking on elements that are visible, stopppi
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Or you are using Firefox and hitting one of its bugs [mozilla.org]. And of course the whole browser UI often freezes for a few seconds while downloading a page in another tab.
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However it seems like they only measured JavaScript engine, which by no means contribute everything to how fast browser or browsing feels.
Yeah, we should include Average Time To Root in the benchmarks, too. Google wouldn't stand a chance.
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I often use Firefox to browse. I'll ctrl-click on maybe 20 links to load in the background.
Firefox ALWAYS freezes up. Sometimes it freezes so I can't even ctrl+click on links. Sometimes it freezes when I'm reading one of those links so I can't scroll down.
I wonder if the freezing is due to loading Flash on each page? I guess there are lots of these single-threaded bottlenecks within Firefox.
I don't really care about javascript speed so long as no one frame can freeze the other frames: process isolation is m
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Benchmark does not FORGET user experience. It's only that user experience is so subjective that it's not entirely benchmarkable.
And a 9x speed difference is certainly big enough that users will experience it.
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Yes, Chrome Frame improves the whole experience in IE. Everything is faster. It feels like running Chrome or Safari, not IE. You get the same hair-blown-back feeling that you get if you run IE for an hour and then switch to Safari or Chrome. But the feeling may be even more pronounced in Chrome Frame because you can view 100 pages in the IE renderer and then go to a page that asks for Chrome and immediately your hair is blown back. The page pops into view like nothing you've seen in IE.
The JavaScript benchm
EEE (Score:4, Interesting)
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
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that's an interesting perspective. It will create quite a stir if MS finds a way to degrade the google frame performance or outright refuse it.
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It would be very bad PR if it got out.
Re:EEE (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen several people mention this in the last mention of Google's plug-in as well. I don't understand and I have to wonder if the people saying this know what the strategy they're referring to is. The concept of "embrace, extend, extinguish" is to comply with a standard interoperably until you are popular. Then extend the standard in a non-interoperable way, counting on your popularity and the new functionality to drive adoption. Then, extinguish the competition by utilizing the standard ubiquitously and in a non-interoperable fashion so that anyone who does not have access to the proprietary extensions you added, is removed from the market.
So for IE the strategy was to implement HTML and other technologies interoperably until IE was very popular, then extend HTML with nonstandard elements and rendering and add ActiveX for more functionality no one else could use. Then extinguish competition by building lots of tools and that rely upon the proprietary version and relying on Web developers to target IE's broken version of HTML instead of the actual standard.
So I'm trying to understand how people think Google is employing this strategy. They are embracing IE, sort of by implementing Web standards within it. How do people think Google is going to extend those Web standards in a proprietary way? Do they mean by building proprietary Web applications that use the standards? Do people actually think Google's strategy is to make Google apps really popular and then break compatibility with non-chrome browsers by making them no longer use Web standards? Won't that be hard while maintaining backwards compatibility especially since they're using an OSS browser? I suppose this is possible, but I don't see why people would assume it is Google's strategy.
So basically, while I see that Google is extending IE to use Web standards, I don't see this as a likely part of an "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. Nothing stops Microsoft from creating a better implementation of Web standards in IE's rendering engine and out competing Google's plug-in and they have a lot of advantages if they do decide to compete. Rather, this is Google managing to chip away at MS's anti-competitive use of IE and make MS actually compete fairly a little more, pretty much the opposite of Google trying to kill fair competition which is what the EEE strategy is all about.
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You're right, but,
"Do people actually think Google's strategy is to make Google apps really popular and then break compatibility with non-chrome browsers by making them no longer use Web standards?"
To be fair, if compatibility with IE is broken (either by Google or by MS) then SOME people are going to realize they've lost something. I expect that IE would lose some measurable market share, in that case. Let's remember - there are two groups of browsers: standards compliant, and non-standards compliant. I
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Agreed, there are no signs yet. Which doesn't mean there isn't a threat. We can't say for sure at this point, but this doesn't feel like it to me, either.
If (and it's a pretty big IF) Google is going for "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" then they are still only in the "Embrace" phase. The "Embrace" phase is the most innocuous of all, and is impossible to differentiate from actually putting good product out in the marketplace for fun and commercial gain, in a very much "do no evil" way. Unless you start see
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If they really wish to start "Extending" the features, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. As a hypothetical sit
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Google has no interest in controlling the browser market. For one, there is no money in it. For two, Google is not a software company, they are an advertising compan.
The edict has come down from on top at Google, both in private and public many times - what is good for the web, is good for business. The more people use the web to accomplish everyday tasks, they more they will rely on ad-sponsored Google services. Google does not care a lick which browser they use to access those services, as long as the bro
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Gears is open-source software. If you implement it and Google decides they want to go another way with it, you can fork.
In fact, Google seems to be going out of their way to collaborate with open source developers (no doubt to get the free development, but it also means that they cannot, for example, start withdrawing support for all browsers but Chrome).
This is, possibly, an "Embrace" and "Extend", but I don't see how Google could turn Gears into an "Extinguish" except by making it so superior to everythi
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Google are doing this, because the prevalence of ie has hindered the delivery of web services for years and continues to do so. If ie disappeared today, you would see massive innovation in web services happen overnight, as developers no longer need to waste so much time trying to support such a crufty old browser, and can now use some of the modern feature every other browser has supported for years.
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You'll note the EU has been looking at the effects of actions, not the actions themselves. There is no magical get-out clause.
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They would have to do it quick, before this plugin and apps that don't work in regular ie catch on... otherwise people will blame the update for breaking the apps they use, and either stick to an older version or switch to a more modern browser.
Would Apple allow this? (Score:2)
If Google were to do something like this with Safari, would Apple allow it? Or will the next update break it? (I know both are based on webkit, and Safari doesn't need the feature and speed boost, but just wondering out aloud).
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If Google were to do something like this with Safari, would Apple allow it? Or will the next update break it?
Why would Apple care? They allow Java and Silverlight and a bunch of other plug-ins. I don't see why they'd care at all. They might like it for testing Google's JS engine without leaving Safari. Now they wouldn't allow it on the iPhone, but that's just the no interpreted code stuff they do for security, control, and to keep their phone company partners happy.
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Google have recently made major advances against Microsoft as a whole. Once the fascists and the Bolsheviks are done fighting each other, we'll all have to start worrying about when the victor is going to come after us.
The real question... (Score:5, Funny)
So, Google Frame upgrades the engines...on the Titanic?
Re:The real question... (Score:5, Funny)
So, Google Frame upgrades the engines...on the Titanic?
I'm the Bing of the world!
This speaks a lot for Google (Score:2, Interesting)
So just for giggles... (Score:5, Interesting)
...what's the ACID3 results for such a combo?
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IIRC, 100/100 in the frame.
Re:So just for giggles... (Score:5, Interesting)
100%, Fool!
Proof : http://static.macgeneration.com/img/2009/07/googlexhrometestacid-20090922-225255.jpg
Re:So just for giggles... (Score:4, Informative)
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IE8 still fails the Acid3 test even with Google Chrome Frame installed. I was curious and tested it out. Chrome Frame doesn't take over full rendering from IE8 unless the site includes a meta tag to use the Chrome Frame. Here is a link to the Chrome Frame page [google.com] [code.google.com] (chocked full of good info).
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PROTIP: Prepend "cf:" to any URL in IE to load it in Chrome Frame. I tried to make an anchor but /. eats it. Here's what to slap into the address bar: "cf:http://acid3.acidtests.org".
No Wonder (Score:5, Funny)
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FFS read the articles you post! (Score:3, Informative)
The other question is what is the performance hit of using the frame plug-in instead of running the browser natively.
FTFA: "Notably, IE8's SunSpider scores with Chrome Frame running equaled Google's Chrome browser"
Re:FFS read the articles you post! (Score:5, Funny)
Greetings and welcome to Slashdot.
Re:FFS read the articles you post! (Score:5, Funny)
Take me to your leader.
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You must be new here; we only read the comments. Obviously the submitter merely used his time machine to see the comments made on his article in the future, saw yours answering the question, and realized he'd need to ask it in the summary to ensure you would answer it in a reply. Simple, really.
Safety Warning. (Score:5, Funny)
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http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/09/24/1250228/Microsoft-Says-Google-Chrome-Frame-Makes-IE-Less-Secure?art_pos=1 [slashdot.org]
We knew already.
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In other words, just use Google Chrome itself. That way you do not have to worry about the additional IE vulnerabilities.
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The real risk would be a discovery that the combo is *less* vulnerable, or that all the vulnerabilities in the combo were on the IE side . . .
hawk
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This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take
Mom (yelling down into basement): This website says I need to install the Framey Goggle Control to see it? What do I do?
Slashdot using son: (mutters something about javascript benchmarks) (spends the next day cleaning spyware off mom's computer)
Browser UI + guts mix and match (Score:1)
I like the idea of segregating the browser's user interface/menus/controls skin from its rendering engine and plugin-model guts. Even better if there was a standard plugin API across browsers.
I would love to be able to pick any "shell" and put in one or more "guts," and even flip between them on a per-URL or per-site basis.
Of course, the security risks of this are not small. But still, it would be cool.
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So basically what you are describing is Internet Explorer? You have the rendering engine built as a standalone control that anyone can utilize in their (Windows) application. Internet Explorer itself is really nothing more than an interface built around the rendering control.
WebKit has similar properties. It is not tied to any one interface and has the added benefit of being open source which has lead to its popularity across many different browsers and integration into many interface toolkits.
Granted, ther
I don't think this is meant to undermine MS image (Score:1)
It's also undeniable that IE has a big market share, and Google needs to account for it. So this seems to be the only reasonable route they can take as this issue doesn't seem to be of much interest to MS at the moment.
Defeats the purpose of IE (Score:1)
However! Most of our corporate intranet applications will ONLY work on IE.
( *cough poorly written proprietary crap cough*)
So now with Chrome infecting my IE, I have no way to access vital corporate apps.
There is only one type of consumer who should be interested in this: corporate users who do not need IE for specific webapps, and whose companies will not let them install other browsers, yet will let them
Re:Defeats the purpose of IE (Score:4, Informative)
you have to add meta tag to make chrome frame work, otherwise it uses slow ie engine
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It only uses the Chrome engines for pages that ask for it, or that the user chooses to use it for, the rest get handled by the host IE.
The situation where a corp forces you to use IE because of crap intranet apps, but can't be bothered managing two browsers is exactly one of the prime use cases for this. Particularly if they then buy a brand spanking new application which would run 8 times faster in any browser other than IE.
Re:Defeats the purpose of IE (Score:4, Informative)
So now with Chrome infecting my IE, I have no way to access vital corporate apps.
But you have: The Chrome-frame mode is activated only if one either prefixes URLs with cf: (which your corp. apps will not do), or if one includes a <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1"> header in the HTML (or HTTP), which your corp. apps will not do either.
Only websites specifically designed to use the Chrome frame could force IE into Chrome-frame mode.
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The website has to explicitly ask IE to use WebKit/V8. Your cooperate intranets certainly won't be doing that.
A good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
What does this benchmark even mean (Score:2)
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It's not a full browser. It's just WebKit and V8. All of your network calls and any other related system functions are all passed back to IE to do the heavy lifting.
From an instability and memory footprint point of view, it's really no different than hosting, say, Flash inside IE. Flash essentially is it's own "web browser".
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Good, since that is what I want Chrome for. I need IE's container to do stupid stuff like authentication to Active Directory (barf) and Chrome can do what MS seemingly can't - render pages quickly and according to standards.
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This isn't about creating a good Browser design. It's about creating a technological work around to a human engineering problem, working around MS's anticompetitive bundling and intentional noncompliance and poor performance with IE. This lets Google create standards compliant Web applications that need new standards and good performance, while at the same time supporting those users still using the broken IE browser. Getting people to switch browsers when MS is leveraging their desktop OS monopoly is very
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IE is just transformed into a dumb container for somebody else's browser
IE is already a dumb container for the MSHTML control.
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Ok 9x, but are you willing to pay the price? (Score:2)
Don't forget, installing satan's chrome frame means your children and all their family will suffer for all eternity, in HELL!
For some reason yet undisclosed by MS.
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Don't forget, installing satan's chrome frame means your children and all their family will suffer for all eternity, in HELL!
For some reason yet undisclosed by MS.
All the good little satanists already run google chrome on linux.
Mmm... nothing like synthetic benchmarks! (Score:2)
Gotta love synthetic benchmarks!
Oh hai (Score:2)
I iz in ur browzr, fixn ur renderer
Something that would go a long way (Score:2)
Making this installable and usable under Win2k would go a long way to getting people to facilitate the move away from IE6. Firefox works but tends to slow down on lower end hardware. I tried it today and it didn't install. Maybe there's a way to make it work by manually copying files.
Plug-in vs Native (Score:2)
The other question is what is the performance hit of using the Frame plug-in instead of running the browser natively.
Well let me give you a hint: the native browser renderer is a plug-in itself (well known as mshtml.dll). The actual other question is, what is the point of this plug-in in reality. People who use IE can install Chrome today already. Those who keep IE mostly do it for two reasons: 1) it's a corporate policy and their business apps need it, and 2) they don't know any better. So the frame addresses none of those two segments adequately, since Google Frame is not 100% compatible with the standard MSIE stack, a
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Those who keep IE mostly do it for two reasons: 1) it's a corporate policy and their business apps need it, and 2) they don't know any better.
So for group one some of them can install this plug-in and render the pages they want with the faster frame, while still using the IE engine for the pages that require it, without having to run two whole browsers and interfaces and windows.
For the second group, a significant portion are used to installing pug-ins for every Web page under the sun. They install one more and suddenly Google Web apps run fast enough to be usable. Some of them would be happy to install and run Chrome, if they knew what that was
Rounding error (Score:2)
"Google Frame Benchmarks 10x Faster than IE8" is a more accurate headline, since no sane rounding scheme in the world would round 9.6 into 9.
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Integer rounding.
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Integer truncation is not rounding. It's a work-related injury for C programmers.
Nitpick (Score:2)
But, they were saying it was 9.6 times faster. That is wrong. It is 9.6 times as fast, or 8.6 times faster. It bugs me when people get that wrong.
Finally, I don't have to RTFA... (Score:2)
With FF (Linux and Windows), with heavily commented on article, I often get the message that says JS is taking too long to load, would you like to stop/continue loading it? The only sane choice is to stop. In that case, most of the comments become buried and I'll have to RTFA to know what's going on.
9.6 times faster than usual? No. (Score:2)
Re:Whats the point... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whats the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, I've seen javascript which manipulates large datasets, which takes the lion share of time to run; somewhere in the 30-60 second range. Recent javascript performance boosts have allows such manipulation of large datasets to become feasible and even practical.
The truth is, more and more people are attempting to use a browser as a general purpose user interface for many applications which were previously considered unattainable with older browser technology and I only see additional momentum building in this direction.
Fast rendering and javascript is a make or break for most of these types of applications.
Re:Whats the point... (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is, more and more people are attempting to use a browser as a general purpose user interface for many applications which were previously considered unattainable with older browser technology and I only see additional momentum building in this direction.
We are doing *exactly* this. We provide a hosted, vertical software system, and for years we've done everything in our servers.
However, recent builds of the FireFox JS engine are fast enough that we can start moving the processing out from our hosted application server cluster into the user's browser. The users love the results - applications that load in a few seconds, and run from their computer at near-native speeds, accessible anywhere.
But, rather than spend inordinate amounts of time trying to get stuff to work in IE, we simply require Firefox. That way, we can support Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and any other platform that runs FF 3.0+. It's not been hard for us to make this requirement, basically only minor complaining from techs.
Our customers are more interested in "Cross Platform" meaning "Can I get it to run on MY computer" than "Can I get it to run in MY browser".
The evolution of javascript performance is an industry changer - it's what makes hosted applications actually WORK, despite all its warts.
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I'd argue that the real metric is user perception, not raw performance. If you can keep the user entertained with a screenful of flying monkeys, you can actually load slower but be perceived as faster than a blank-to-full-screen transition.
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Improvements and optimizations like this are ALWAYS welcome from any quarter.
Sure, for a single page - w0000t, i saved 0.1 seconds doesn't do it many favours, but when you consider:
lots of users open multiple tabs and load many hundreds of pages a day those savings start to add up.
Additionally, any optimizations done usually go towards powersaving and extending battery life.
in a mobile embedded platform its vital (nokia maemo platform for me..) and I'm sure these improvements and benefits will trickle down
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In the real world its never the browser we're waiting on anyway. it's the connection or server on the other end that we're always waiting on.
I've seen Slashdot's home page freeze for a minute on Internet Channel on my Wii. I don't know whether it was a reflow or a JavaScript, but it was frozen.
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3. ???