14 DAY TRIAL // Browser performance is multifaceted, in the sense that it depends on a variety of details, sufficiently so that not any one benchmark currently available is truly capable of revealing which browser is fastest.
Sure, there are various benchmarks such as SunSpider or V8, designed to look at specific areas of browser performance such as JavaScript, in the cases of the two test suites mentioned above.
With the Platform Preview releases of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft too entered the browser performance race, especially in relation to the SunSpider JS benchmark, even though the company has an entirely different vision of what it means to have the world’s fastest browser.
Most recently, Jason Weber, Lead Program Manager, Internet Explorer Performance, underlined an aspect emphasized time and again by the software giant, that real world browser performance involves a variety of subsystems.
In this case, optimizing browser performance is in effect related to understanding how websites use the subsystems available, and to create patterns.
Since no two websites are exactly alike, browser subsystems are being used differently, and in this context there isn’t really a single one-size-fits all solution to boosting speed.
“All modern web browsers are conceptually similar. Browser vendors have different priorities (for example, supporting many different operating systems or optimizing for one),” Weber stated.
“Browser vendors also have different engineering approaches which influence their programming languages, tools, and processes. When you step back from the specific engineering details though, all modern browsers connect to a server and execute the same markup and script.
“They all essentially do the same thing to enable customers to interact with web sites,” he added.
Weber enumerated the 11 subsystems of Internet Explorer, including: Networking, HTML, CSS, Collections, JavaScript, Marshaling, Native OM, Formatting, Block Building, Layout, and Rendering.
Microsoft analyzed the top 5 news websites worldwide, as well as the top 25 AJAX sites in relation to Internet Explorer 8, and the analysis reveals some interesting aspects of browser performance.
“Every subsystem plays an important role in the performance of these News Sites with JavaScript (29%), Marshalling (18%) and Rendering (17%) making the largest impact,” Weber said.
However, in terms of the top 25 AJAX websites, things are a tad different, and if you’d expect IE8 to spend most of the time in JS, you’d be wrong.
“To build a fast real world browser you have to understand how different browser subsystems impact performance in real world scenarios, and you have to focus on the subsystems that matter,” Weber said.
“For AJAX sites, that means focusing on Rendering (31%), JavaScript (21%), Formatting (14%) and Layout (12%). For news sites, that means focusing on JavaScript (29%), Marshalling (18%) and Rendering (17%).”
This is certainly illustrative of the work Microsoft has poured into boosting performance for IE9. Despite the focus on increasing IE9 JavaScript performance as much as possible with the new Chakra JS engine, the company continued to consider optimizing the browser for real world scenarios the top priority.
“With Internet Explorer 9, we worked on building the right foundation across the browser to ensure developers have a reliably fast platform. Over the last few months we’ve talked about some of the fundamental changes we made including hardware accelerated graphics, compiled JavaScript, and natively integrating JavaScript directly inside the browser,” Weber explained.
“As we get closer to the IE9 beta we’ll talk more about how these subsystems come together in IE9 to change the performance characteristics compared to today’s generation of non-hardware accelerated browsers including IE8.”
Microsoft will release the first Beta of Internet Explorer 9 on September 15th, 2010 at the Beauty of the Web event in San Francisco.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 4 Build 1.9.7.9.16.6000 is available for download here.
