IE8 STILL SLOW AFTER SUNSPIDER TESTS

Microsoft Corp. may be talking up the performance boost it gave to the just-launched Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), but the new browser remains the slowest of the top five on the market, benchmark tests show.
According to JavaScript rendering tests run by Computerworld, the final version of IE8 is only slightly faster than the browser's Release Candidate 1 (RC1), which Microsoft delivered in January.
Computerworld ran the SunSpider benchmark tests in Windows XP three times for each browser, then averaged the scores.
Google Inc.'s Chrome led all browsers with a score of just 1382 -- in SunSpider, lower scores are better -- making it more than four times faster than IE8. Coming in second was Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox 3.0.7, followed by Apple Inc.'s Safari 3.2.2 for Windows and Opera Software's Opera 9.63.
Firefox proved to be 59% faster than IE8, while Safari was 47 faster faster. Opera, the slowest non-Microsoft production browser, was still 38 percent faster than IE8.
Microsoft, however, has continued to downplay benchmarks such as SunSpider, and instead has promoted page-load time trials that pit browsers against each other in rendering the Web's top 25 destinations. Last week, Microsoft claimed that IE8 loaded more sites faster than either Chrome or Firefox.
At the time, however, James Pratt, a senior program manager for IE, acknowledged that the differences were slight. That's another angle the company has taken when it's talked about IE8's performance. In an interview yesterday, for example, Pratt called IE8 "highly competitive" with other browsers, and dubbed it "the fastest version of IE that we have ever released."
But he also acknowledged that speed is important to users. "We know that speed is critical to people who are using browsers today," Pratt said, "and we recognize that users have a choice when it comes to browser."

GOOGLE CHROME BOOSTS SPEED IN NEW BETA

Google has upped the ante in the browser speed wars and added a handful of features with a new 2.0 beta version of its Chrome Web browser (you can download the browser here)
. Though Chrome version 1.0 emerged from beta in December, Google decided to move it back into beta testing and tinker. For those who aren't interested in playing with a beta edition, Google still offers the stable version for everyday Chrome users, as well as a developer version.
According to the official Google Chrome blog, the new beta version processes Javascript 25 percent faster on its V8 (the engine on which Chrome is built) benchmark, 35 percent faster on the Sunspider benchmark, and twice as fast as its original beta. Chrome beta also includes features such as form autofill; a full-page zoom that captures not only text but images; autoscroll when you click your mouse's scroll button; and dragging tabs -- a neat feature that puts your tabs in side-by-side symmetrically-sized windows when you drag a tab outside of the original browser window.
Browsing with the Chrome beta and you will find that its speed boost and add-ons made the browser function like a quicker, cleaner version of Firefox. Downloaders should beware, though: Some reports caution that Chrome 2.0 beta is buggy and users have experienced problems with password management.
Last month Apple introduced a souped-up version of its Safari browser, claiming it was faster than its competitors Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. If Google's claim that this latest beta version of its browser is twice as fast as the original, It would be interesting to see where this leaves Apple and Google in the faster-is-better browser wars.