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?

1. Set pipelining on. Although there is risk that the web servers can’t support pipelining it provides a nice speedup on a high-speed connection.

2. Allow tweaking of the Connections per server setting. This is technically against the recommendations of the w3c protocol but when you have lots of bandwidth you can really get a nice performance boost pulling down the attached images.

I wonder when Safari will support these settings? I wonder when the max connections per server will be increased by default?

Updated Post (2/25/09):

Safari 4 is now out and I can confirm that it absolutely rocks Firefox 3.2 by at least 3 -4 times in the performance department.  If you can live without all your fancy extensions then dump firefox right now and switch to Safari 4.  Especially if you are on the Mac.  However, I can confirm that Safari now looks equally nice on Windows.  Thanks Apple!

So the biggest question in my mind now is:

When will we see SquirrelFish Extreme for the Mobile Safari browser on the iPhone?

Apple is already winning the mobile browser wars, and the latest WebKit advancements will only solidify that lead.

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.

John Resig – TraceMonkey

If you haven’t yet downloaded a nightly version of Firefox 3.1 go and do it.  Enable the Tracemonkey support by going to about:config and searching for “jit”.  Set both of the jit options to “true” and away you go.  The speed difference is incredible.  It made the Safari 4 developer’s preview look like it was standing still.