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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

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IE8 vs Firefox 3.0b5 : JavaScript Part 1

April 12, 2008 by ryan

Last time I posted on the latest browser from Microsoft vs. Mozilla's latest I had compared page download times between the two browsers. This time, I would like to take a brief look at how they stack up in regard to JavaScript.

John Resig (of jQuery / Mozilla fame) announced the Dromaeo: Javascript Performance Testing suite yesterday. The suite runs some of the same tests as the WebKit team's SunSpider, however, there are some improved methodolgies (see the suite's wiki for more info on this). I don't know how often I feel like doing DNA Sequence Alignment in JavaScript but I think it would be a good way to quickly get some metrics of how both FireFox and IE8 handle the code.

The Comparison:

I ran the tests in groups because there were certain ones that were not finishing under IE8. To be quite honest, I'm not 100% sure if this is an Internet Explorer issue, or an issue with the tests. Both are a work in progress so I would rather not make assumptions at this point. Anyways, the results of the tests are listed below:

Test Name	Firefox 3.0 beta 5	Internet Explorer 8
Fannkuch v122	802.80ms	1032.20ms
Base 64 Encoding and Decoding v122:	2942.00ms	Would not finish
DNA Sequence Alignment v116:	420.00ms	Would not finish
N-Body Rotation and Gravity v122:	270ms	529.40ms
Prime Number Computation (2) v122:	305.80ms	518.20ms
Recursive Number Calculation v122:	184.40ms	417.80ms
Traversing Binary Trees v122:	156.80ms	422.20ms

The Results

The initial results look like Firefox is performing the more advanced Javascript operations faster than Internet Explorer. That being said, Dromaeo, IE8 and Firefox 3.0b5 are still being developed so a lot could change before the release. For more metrics view a comparison on the Dromaeo site of Safari 3.1, Firefox 3.0b5, Opera 9.5 and IE8b1. Let me know what you think or if you've encountered different results.

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Comments

April 14. 2008 11:05

Ayup. Its about what I expected. IE8's javascript engine is pretty sad compared to FF.

Now compare IE8 to IE7! (this is fun)

Will Sullivan

April 14. 2008 11:38

There's a comparison of IE8 - IE7 (and 6) on the Dromaeo website http://dromaeo.com/?id=234,236,237 (the comma seperated list is part of the URL)

IE8 is a lot better than the earlier versions but hopefully it's running in debug mode and that's why it's looking slow =P

Ryan Lanciaux

April 14. 2008 14:06

Its pretty well understood that FF will beat IE8. Now do FF vs Safari and Opera..

CoryMathews

April 18. 2008 00:26

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Handling JavaScript Code, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 vs Mozilla Firefox 3.0 : mandown

mandown.co.nz

April 19. 2008 21:16

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Dew Drop - April 19, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

alvinashcraft.com

April 21. 2008 20:03

IE used to be the fastest thing around. I remember early Mozilla builds were many times slower. Some of the developers couldn't figure out how IE did things so fast. It is amazing that Moz is faster now.

Sam

April 26. 2008 09:40