Informal Brain

Finally, OSX has lost the grey top and we have blue! It looks so much better…

Thanks Chrome team!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, the change was short lived. Back to drab gray :*(

Latest patches have landed and flash is now enabled by default. I suspect we are getting very close to an initial release. It is looking very nice now.

I figured I would drop this post here from the future.

A few thoughts:

1. Safari 4 doesn’t need to wait for the future it is here on my Mac today and with its ultra fast Nitro (formally known as SquirelFish Extreme) java script engine it blows away the competition.
2. Google Chrome has V8 while Safari (webkit) has Nitro.  Go figure both browsers are using the webkit framework.  Each time Google commits something to the shared code base Safari gets better!
3. Google Chrome is using a complex IPC oriented renderer to manage having a single window with each tab running in a separate process.  Now, while I appreciate my browser not going out sideways when it hits a page which causes a crash I can’t actually remember the last time the browser crashed?  Won’t all this IPC stuff causing slowness in the rendering engine?
4. While Google Chrome will win the UI simple battle hands down Apple has managed to add some helpful features for people like my Mom.  Things like Top Sites is not designed for the Geek.  It is built for the rest of the world who doesn’t manage their book marks very well.  Coverflow helps trigger the old brain when we see a picture of that web site we were at.  Remember as you get older remember that travelocity is the airline booking site gets harder…

PS… when do I get Nitro on my iPhone?

It has thus far been an amazing summer when it comes to browser performance.

We have seen 3 major advances in browser performance when it comes to Javascript specifically.

1. Firefox Tracemonkey

2. Google Chrome V8

3. Webkit SquirrelFish Extreme

Each one has been an exciting advancement in browser performance, leaping ahead quickly. I have been a long time Safari / Webkit nightly user on the Mac. I must admit that the release of tracemonkey moved me over to Firefox 3.1 for a few weeks. I longed for Google Chrome and V8 on my Macbook. But, I am happily back to Safari 4 / Webkit now that SquirrelFish Extreme has landed in the webkit nightly builds. It is blazingly fast, and Safari 4 is an excellent browser.

I am looking forward to further competition and code sharing in the open source space. Notice I didn’t say a thing about Internet Explorer 8. It is still lagging.