TraceMonkey

Comments (1) · August 26, 2008 at 6:08 am · Firefox News

Thanks to a new JavaScript engine (named TraceMonkey) it looks as if Firefox 3.1 is going to be getting a major boost in performance. 

Here are the benchmarks thus far:

Be sure to check out Brendan’s Roadmap Updates for more.  Also here are a few handy links from John Resig on the testing:

• SunSpider, 1.83x faster (released by the WebKit team)
• SunSpider ubench, 22.5x faster (released by the WebKit team for testing Squirrelfish)
• Image Manipulation Demo, 6.46x faster (Change the contrast and brightness of images dynamically)
• Matrix Manipulation, 6.26x faster (with the Sylvester JavaScript library)

So the big question is, will Firefox be able to make Firefox 3.1 even faster in the area of JavaScript?  If you have the nightly build of Firefox 3.1 installed, you can turn TraceMonkey on by going to about:config and then toggle the javascript.options.jit.content setting from false to true.  For the rest of us out there though, this is just one more surprise to look forward to once Firefox 3.1 gets rolled out to the public.

For more info, be sure to check out Firefox 3.1 to Get More JavaScript Speed Optimizations - as the CyberNet team had done a good in-depth look into this and has done the best job at making it make sense to everybody.

Firefox 3 Faster than Safari Where?

Comments (2) · April 10, 2008 at 6:58 am · Firefox News

In a funny, yet surprising twist of fate it looks like the ZDNet guys found that using SunSpider JavaScript benchmark tests that Firefox 3 Beta 5 is faster than Safari 3.1… on a Mac! 

That has to be a little ‘bit of an embarrassment for the Apple team but good news for all the Apple users out there that are looking forward to trying out and switching to Firefox 3 - once the final version hits the streets.  Sure, the Safari wildebeests will say Firefox is only faster by a 7% margin but it is still a feather to be had in Mozilla’s proverbial cap.

Make Firefox Load Faster

Comments (1) · June 18, 2006 at 5:19 pm · Firefox Hacks

Feeling like you are missing a few seconds when it comes to Firefox’s startup time? If so, you might want to take a look at the Firefox Preloader. It does exactly as you would think. Firefox Preloader is a utility that is designed to load parts of Mozilla Firefox into memory before it is used to improve the its startup time. Thanks to Daniel for submitting this one in to me.

[Learn More About the Firefox Preloader!]