This is the Part II of Benchmarks between Safari 3.1′s JavaScript engine and Firefox. Last Benchmark was done against Firefox 2, and Safari destroyed Firefox’s Javascript engine, in some aspects being up to 7 times faster.

So I was curious and I downloaded and tried the benchmark on Firefox 3.0b4. to see how much Firefox 3.0 will improve its Javascript performance, key to today’s web applications and the future of the web.

After seeing the results, I say Kudos to the Firefox 3 team, they’ve improved considerably their JavaScript engine and that only makes me glad cause I won’t have to switch to Safari. :)

I will not make any tests on HTML rendering, if you find any benchmark results on HTML rendering, please leave links on the comments section.

Once again, here are the results side by side:

FIREFOX 3.0b4
========================
RESULTS
(means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------
Total:                 3876.6ms +/- 0.9%
-----------------------------------------

  3d:                   489.0ms +/- 1.3%
    cube:               193.8ms +/- 1.2%
    morph:              138.2ms +/- 1.5%
    raytrace:           157.0ms +/- 3.8%

  access:               594.2ms +/- 5.6%
    binary-trees:        57.4ms +/- 5.9%
    fannkuch:           246.0ms +/- 0.8%
    nbody:              219.8ms +/- 13.6%
    nsieve:              71.0ms +/- 2.1%

  bitops:               470.4ms +/- 0.7%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   67.8ms +/- 1.5%
    bits-in-byte:        90.8ms +/- 1.8%
    bitwise-and:        177.4ms +/- 1.1%
    nsieve-bits:        134.4ms +/- 0.5%

  controlflow:           42.4ms +/- 1.6%
    recursive:           42.4ms +/- 1.6%

  crypto:               257.2ms +/- 1.2%
    aes:                 87.4ms +/- 1.3%
    md5:                 83.8ms +/- 4.0%
    sha1:                86.0ms +/- 0.0%

  date:                 412.0ms +/- 0.4%
    format-tofte:       251.6ms +/- 0.6%
    format-xparb:       160.4ms +/- 0.4%

  math:                 502.0ms +/- 2.2%
    cordic:             188.0ms +/- 0.5%
    partial-sums:       231.2ms +/- 5.2%
    spectral-norm:       82.8ms +/- 3.6%

  regexp:               275.6ms +/- 1.0%
    dna:                275.6ms +/- 1.0%

  string:               833.8ms +/- 0.7%
    base64:              98.6ms +/- 1.4%
    fasta:              228.8ms +/- 3.2%
    tagcloud:           166.2ms +/- 0.6%
    unpack-code:        218.6ms +/- 0.5%
    validate-input:     121.6ms +/- 0.6%

SAFARI 3.1
========================
RESULTS
(means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------
Total:                 3368.8ms +/- 1.0%
-----------------------------------------

  3d:                   414.8ms +/- 1.9%
    cube:               132.2ms +/- 2.4%
    morph:              144.6ms +/- 4.1%
    raytrace:           138.0ms +/- 0.6%

  access:               520.4ms +/- 4.1%
    binary-trees:        78.6ms +/- 11.3%
    fannkuch:           231.4ms +/- 2.0%
    nbody:              149.2ms +/- 8.1%
    nsieve:              61.2ms +/- 3.9%

  bitops:               449.6ms +/- 2.4%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   69.8ms +/- 9.6%
    bits-in-byte:        99.2ms +/- 4.6%
    bitwise-and:        167.2ms +/- 2.3%
    nsieve-bits:        113.4ms +/- 6.7%

  controlflow:           91.2ms +/- 4.7%
    recursive:           91.2ms +/- 4.7%

  crypto:               247.2ms +/- 2.3%
    aes:                 81.2ms +/- 2.5%
    md5:                 83.8ms +/- 4.6%
    sha1:                82.2ms +/- 2.0%

  date:                 306.4ms +/- 0.5%
    format-tofte:       146.6ms +/- 1.4%
    format-xparb:       159.8ms +/- 1.0%

  math:                 454.8ms +/- 1.3%
    cordic:             174.4ms +/- 1.6%
    partial-sums:       193.8ms +/- 1.2%
    spectral-norm:       86.6ms +/- 4.4%

  regexp:               209.6ms +/- 0.7%
    dna:                209.6ms +/- 0.7%

  string:               674.8ms +/- 2.2%
    base64:             103.8ms +/- 9.0%
    fasta:              177.0ms +/- 1.0%
    tagcloud:           136.0ms +/- 4.6%
    unpack-code:        136.0ms +/- 1.7%
    validate-input:     122.0ms +/- 2.6%

Almost there. Only in Flow control and recursion it beats Safari, the rest needs to improve, however, it’s improved a lot comparing to the previous version of Firefox.

The machine used for this test is a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X Version 10.4.11 with a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

So I downloaded yesterday the latest Software Update for Mac OSX and it included an update of the Safari Web Browser, which I had taken for dead ages ago, I’m a hardcore Firefox user.

Today I read about the new updates, and I read something that caught my eye at Mackinando.com.

it executes JavaScript six times faster than the rest

I go to the Safari Site, and they compare themselves with a previous version, Firefox, and Opera (not IE, not even worth mentioning)

I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I googled for “JavaScript Benchmark“, and tried the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark onboth Firefox 2.0.0.12 and the shiny new Safari 3.1.

The machine used for this test is a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X Version 10.4.11 with a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

Here are the results side by side:

FIREFOX 2.0.0.12
========================
RESULTS
(means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------
Total:                 15365.4ms +/- 1.7%
-----------------------------------------

  3d:                   2386.6ms +/- 7.9%
    cube:                733.0ms +/- 20.8%
    morph:              1269.8ms +/- 9.4%
    raytrace:            383.8ms +/- 37.1%

  access:               1386.2ms +/- 4.8%
    binary-trees:        201.6ms +/- 0.6%
    fannkuch:            294.8ms +/- 5.4%
    nbody:               691.2ms +/- 8.9%
    nsieve:              198.6ms +/- 1.5%

  bitops:               3461.2ms +/- 0.4%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   275.8ms +/- 0.6%
    bits-in-byte:        248.2ms +/- 0.7%
    bitwise-and:        2765.2ms +/- 0.5%
    nsieve-bits:         172.0ms +/- 4.7%

  controlflow:           153.4ms +/- 0.7%
    recursive:           153.4ms +/- 0.7%

  crypto:                527.2ms +/- 0.5%
    aes:                 230.8ms +/- 1.2%
    md5:                 147.4ms +/- 0.5%
    sha1:                149.0ms +/- 0.6%

  date:                 2551.8ms +/- 0.3%
    format-tofte:       1449.6ms +/- 0.3%
    format-xparb:       1102.2ms +/- 0.8%

  math:                 1312.6ms +/- 12.8%
    cordic:              497.4ms +/- 12.0%
    partial-sums:        501.6ms +/- 1.6%
    spectral-norm:       313.6ms +/- 36.1%

  regexp:                501.0ms +/- 0.2%
    dna:                 501.0ms +/- 0.2%

  string:               3085.4ms +/- 10.3%
    base64:              914.6ms +/- 3.4%
    fasta:               676.0ms +/- 35.4%
    tagcloud:            441.4ms +/- 0.6%
    unpack-code:         846.8ms +/- 25.4%
    validate-input:      206.6ms +/- 1.1%

SAFARI 3.1
========================
RESULTS
(means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------
Total:                 3368.8ms +/- 1.0%
-----------------------------------------

  3d:                   414.8ms +/- 1.9%
    cube:               132.2ms +/- 2.4%
    morph:              144.6ms +/- 4.1%
    raytrace:           138.0ms +/- 0.6%

  access:               520.4ms +/- 4.1%
    binary-trees:        78.6ms +/- 11.3%
    fannkuch:           231.4ms +/- 2.0%
    nbody:              149.2ms +/- 8.1%
    nsieve:              61.2ms +/- 3.9%

  bitops:               449.6ms +/- 2.4%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   69.8ms +/- 9.6%
    bits-in-byte:        99.2ms +/- 4.6%
    bitwise-and:        167.2ms +/- 2.3%
    nsieve-bits:        113.4ms +/- 6.7%

  controlflow:           91.2ms +/- 4.7%
    recursive:           91.2ms +/- 4.7%

  crypto:               247.2ms +/- 2.3%
    aes:                 81.2ms +/- 2.5%
    md5:                 83.8ms +/- 4.6%
    sha1:                82.2ms +/- 2.0%

  date:                 306.4ms +/- 0.5%
    format-tofte:       146.6ms +/- 1.4%
    format-xparb:       159.8ms +/- 1.0%

  math:                 454.8ms +/- 1.3%
    cordic:             174.4ms +/- 1.6%
    partial-sums:       193.8ms +/- 1.2%
    spectral-norm:       86.6ms +/- 4.4%

  regexp:               209.6ms +/- 0.7%
    dna:                209.6ms +/- 0.7%

  string:               674.8ms +/- 2.2%
    base64:             103.8ms +/- 9.0%
    fasta:              177.0ms +/- 1.0%
    tagcloud:           136.0ms +/- 4.6%
    unpack-code:        136.0ms +/- 1.7%
    validate-input:     122.0ms +/- 2.6%

Comparing with Firefox, the overall result of this test was that it’s 4.56 times faster.

However, if we look test by test, there are areas where I feel embarrassed for Firefox.

Bitwise Operations
For example, Bit-Operation tests in Safari 3.1 are 7.7 times faster in Safari, being the case of the bitwise-AND (&) operator the worst of them, Safari performed bitwise-and’s 16 times faster than Firefox

OUCH!!

String Operations
So you’d be curious now about String operations, which is probably a lot of what goes on with Javascript, and Ajax, parsing those XML results and what not, maybe the bitwise & won’t hurt us that much given that not many programmers today are smart enough to use them for web programming.

When it comes to String operations, Safari 3.1 was 4.5 times faster than Firefox 2.

Kudos to the Safari Team, I thought there was no point in having Safari until I did this benchmark. I guess they don’t want to let go of Web Browser users, maybe they make millions every month with ad-clicks on Google generated with the search field they have at the top of the browser which is set by default to do Google search.

Once again the saying proves it self

“Competition is good”

Let’s hope this will make the Firefox team think more on Javascript improvements with the upcoming Firefox 3. Once it’s release ready, it’ll be worth it running this benchmark again and see where it stands.

Update (March 20th, 2008)

I’ve made tests on Firefox 3 beta 4, You can see the results here. Tests have been made again on the same Macbook Pro. The improvements of Firefox 3 are notable, however, on the mac, Safari still wins.

Guy Kawasaki recently came up with a new social bookmarking site called AllTop.com. It seems he didn’t like the way Arrington reviewed it on Techcrunch.

Specially the part where they said that it didn’t really add any innovation that it didn’t do anything you couldn’t with Digg.com. Then he said it surprised him coming from Arrington, a person who copied VentureBeat.

The video comes from Qik.com a new service which allows you to stream videos right from your cellphone.

It seems to me that Sillicon Valley has caught on the Rappers trend to start grudges in public to raise record sales.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

FrostWire 4.13.5 is now available for MS Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Major updates improve network bootstraping and peer discovery. 4.13.5 includes improvements on the Chatroom tab, Audio Previews and more.

Other improvements have taken place for the FrostWire build process (for developers this means true One-Step builds for all versions). Updates on translations have been made thanks to the feedback from users in Poland and throughout Latin America. .

In more detail users can expect the following:

• Faster peer discovery on connection bootstraping. No more “Starting Connection…” problems, first time users will connect faster without using the official FixConnecting.zip patch.

• Smiley Support to the chatroom

Users can see the available smileys by entering the command
/smileys

Now its possible to see and use Smileys from the Community Chat tab, Smiley display can be enabled or disabled from the view menu:

Users can also toggle Smiley display directly from the chat window by typing the command
/tsmileys

• Fixed wording on Spanish and Polish translations.

Bug Fixes and other improvements for this release also include:

• FrostWire Message Update System improved. Per community request, some announcements will not be shown more than once so the user is not annoyed upon every application launch
• Fixed bugs on the media player and playlists on Preview.
• Fixed bug on search box auto-focusing while a search was running.
• Fixed i18n system error for systems which default language is not english
• Potential bugs related to deprecated code gone

Users can find now by details without the auto-focusing problem.

FrostWire 4.13.5 is expected to be the last of the 4.13.x series.

About FrostWire

FrostWire, a Gnutella Peer-to-Peer client, is a collaborative effort from many Open Source and freelance developers located from all around the world. In late 2005, concerned developers of LimeWire’s open source community announced the start of a new project fork “FrostWire” that would protect the developmental source code of the LimeWire client and any improvements to the Gnutella protocol design. The developers of FrostWire give high regard and respect to the GNU General Public License and consider it to be the ideal foundation of a creative and free enterprise market.

• Media Kit / Link Us
• Contact the Team

As seen on Techcrunch, it seems Google may be putting its eye on this company.

Philadelphia Dating

Hulu is the new video on demand service that seems to want to compete against Hulu

Finally NBC and other media power houses realized they had to make it easy for people on the internet to get their content on demand for free, people were getting it anyway and they weren’t making any money, but this is not what this article is about, this article is about getting you to watch The Office and other cool shows, legally, right now.

How to activate your account without waiting

It seems Hulu has seen the first of many hacks, their developers seem to be not very detailed oriented, since its pretty stupid the way I got my account activated. This is how…

• Sign up for a beta account
• You’ll receive an email telling you that as soon as they’re ready they’ll activate your account
• Go to the site again and click on Forgot your password
• Enter the email you used to register
• Check your email, you will have an email with your “Forgotten password” ;)
• Login and activate your Hulu account

Wonder if this is just a stupid bug, or a way for them to advertise for free. I’m already advertising for them :)

On the Periodic Table of the internet that is. Great honor for FrostWire.com

La semana pasada encontre la solucion a no quedarme limpio este verano despues de ir al cine…

Double Feature Finder

Esta pagina fue creada por un genio macabro de la trampa y la flojera, trabaja en Meetup.com, y creo que recibio standing ovation en el NewTech New York Meetup cuando la presento delante de los geeks de New York.

La idea de la pagina es brillante, buscas una pelicula, o cine, y te muestra todas las funciones en los diferentes cines… con la funcionalidad mas brillante para todos aquellos que vemos una pelicula y nos metemos luego en otra sala, y otra sala, hasta que cierrran el cine…

Ahora podras planificar tu triple tanda de peliculas cuando vayas al cine, ve a doublefeaturefinder.com, busca tu pelicula, haz click en “Click for Double Features!” y te saldran las peliculas a las cuales te puedes meter en ese mismo multiplex, la interfaz parece hecha en honor a un diagrama gantt.

Ahora podre ver Transformers, Harry Potter, Live Free or Die Hard, Sicko, 1408 y Evan Almighty quizas en solo 2 visitas a los cines correctos en las horas correctas, todo gracias a DoubleFeatureFinder.com

Nota: solo funciona para cines en USA.

Mil gracias a la gente de Makina quien sale todos los sabados en la tarde en la mega estacion en Barquisimeto 103.3FM (Segun tengo entendido) ya que hablaron en gran detalle sobre nuestro nuevo proyecto MyBloop.com (Un lugar donde te damos espacio ilimitado para que subas todos tus archivos y si quieres los puedes compartir con el mundo entero)

Escucha lo que dijeron aqui

De aquel entonces a ahora, ya subimos el limite de tamano por archivo a 1Gb, y tengan por seguro que siempre brindaremos el servicio de forma gratuita, solo necesitamos su apoyo y que lo usen para poder crecer.

Muchas gracias al equipo de Makina, estamos a la orden.