Chicago (IL) – A new browser war unfolds as browser makers are rapidly improving JavaScript engines to capture the ultimate prize - your desktop. Apple's new SquirrelFish Extreme engine promises a two-fold speed increase and may put Safari 4 ahead of the pack. However, given the breathtaking development pace of other browser makers, it is far from certain that Safari 4 will be the fastest browser on the planet when it debuts. Mozilla, Google and Microsoft as well as smaller makers such as Opera are all working on more nimble and faster engines.

Apple raised the stakes of the browser game with Safari for Windows, but the SquirrelFish JavaScript (JS) engine may escalate the current browser battle between Firefox and Internet Explorer with a third serious player. Introduced this summer as a replacement for Safari 3.1's JS engine, the technology is now being replaced by a newer SquirrelFish Extreme engine unveiled last week. Aimed to accelerate Safari 4, it sports "bytecode optimizations, polymorphic inline caching, a lightweight context threaded just-in-time compiler, and a new regular expression engine that uses our JIT infrastructure."

The enhancements deliver "nearly twice" the performance over the original SquirrelFish in the commonly used SunSpider benchmark and "over 10 times the speed you saw in Safari 3.0, less than a year ago," Apple said. The Safari 4/SquirrelFish Extreme combo is likely to outpace other current browsers, which mainly includes Firefox 3.1/TraceMonkey, Chrome/V8 and IE8.


Byte-code optimization

SquirrelFish sparked the byte-code optimization race this summer. The technique turns natural-language based JavaScript code into an optimized representation tailored to faster run-time execution. SquirrelFish engine was 1.6x faster in the SunSpider benchmark than the JavaScriptCore engine currently used in Safari 3.1. Weeks later, Mozilla released Firefox 3 but its JS engine called SpiderMonkey did not outpace Safari 4/SquirrelFish.

Chrome brought its own byte-code engine dubbed V8, developed by a team of Googlees in Denmark. It beats all current browsers on the market in terms of JS performance. Mozilla will answer with a byte-code optimized TraceMonkey engine that will power Firefox 3.1. It beats V8 and SquirrelFish in the SunSpider benchmark, but it can't touch the new SquirrelFish Extreme. But Apple is not the only beneficiary of these gains.


Who will benefit from WebKit improvements?

Safari is based on WebKit, an open source application framework that Apple derived from the Konqueror browser. WebKit is maintained and shared by Apple, Google, Nokia and others and powers desktop browsers like Safari, Chrome, iCab, Omniweb and Adobe AIR. Its lightweight and flexible code base make it a natural fit for mobile devices. Safari for iPhone, Android and Nokia's Series S60 browser are all WebKit-based. WebKit consists of a layout rendering engine WebCore responsible for rendering HTML, CSS code as well as a JS engine called JavaScriptCore.

The latter will be replaced by SquirrelFish Extreme and most WebKit browsers will benefit from speed gains. SquirrelFish Extreme benefits will trickle down not just into Safari for desktops, but also to Nokia's Series S60 browser, Safari for iPhone, etc. Non-WebKit-based browser like IE8 and Firefox 3.1 will not benefit, nor will Chrome which only relies on WebKit's WebCore layout engine but uses its own V8 JS engine. The upcoming mobile version of Firefox code-named Fennec, apparently slated for a 2009 release, will be based on a Gecko/TraceMonkey combination.


Your desktop is up for grabs

As browser vendors beat each other in the JS performance arena, your desktop – and not the title of the fastest browser - is the main prize. With Firefox and Safari slowly but steadily taking market share away from IE, it is a matter of time before IE falls below 70%. If IE8 underwhelms in terms of speed, competing browsers are more than likely to accelerate their growth at the expense of IE. Industry watchers predict that Microsoft's desktop dominance will be in danger if IE’s share is reduced to 60%.

Browser software already has become the de facto operating system for web applications. With a shift to cloud computing, the industry is nearing an inflexion point when Windows will no longer be necessary. Even at this point we can clearly see how a host operating system slowly becomes reduced to the back-bone that runs a web browser. In the not so distant future, the desktop operating system may cease to exist as we know it. The painting is on the wall.

the cloud

Sep 25, 2008 11:36     

With these new browsers, creating rich web apps should be easier and it looks like everyone is moving towards cloud computing these days. Soon enough browsers will be good enough for web apps to compete with desktop apps. Lookout MS Office.
matt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

web apps a scam.

Sep 25, 2008 14:07     

web app is totally not reliable. Just like last 2 weeks we have power outage and internet outage in houston... with regular apps, I can still work with my laptop with backup battery or generator. will cloud apps...I will be stuck with no productivity at all. If your whole company is depends on cloud apps...even if you have backup gnerator...if your local WAN network is down or major fiber is cut... or a bad routing problem in your ISP... all your workers can do is look at the dumb terminal and weep... they can't do any simple work until WAN network is back to link them back to google or such. In current situation ...they can still work in LAN and only a very small portion of work need WAN network... Do you want your company to be 100% depend on the WAN network which is out of your control? or you want to apps to be on each machine and your local netowork can have backups and fail safe? A company could lose millions when they are out for a few days.... I don't think the little speed you gain from cloud is that much important compare to up time. I will see that regular apps still will be there for a long time to come and cloud computing is just going to be a hit of the day... We had dumb terminals before and everyone dump them.

andy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

I like safari, but many Bank sites does not work with it..

Sep 25, 2008 14:42     

I use Safari for reading news or look for information, but I can not use it for banking. I believe that safari is fast because they took away some important components, I don't know. Does any one can make bank transaction in HSBC with Safari? Firefox does work with it.
Viktor report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

*NIX user

Sep 25, 2008 15:16     

One "small" (that's a compliment, btw) browser that will be receiving benefit from WebKit enhancements as they trickle (or flood, I'm not that up on their development cycles) over to WebKitGtk is the Midori Browser. This relatively new browser to the GTK arena, which promises compliance with FreeDesktop.org standards such as the XBEL bookmark format, for one... It is also small, and (with the enhancements to WebKitGtk) fast, and becoming a component of the Xfce Desktop Environment, light, modular, and self-contained, as well; part of the Xfce Philosophy. It sounds like I'm speaking for them, but I am mentioning all this simply to raise awareness for a great up-and-coming browser (Midori) in the *NIX arena, and a complementary application to a great up-and-coming Desktop Environment (Xfce), but I am excited, as competition in the browser arena will allow faster page rendering and enhanced performance in an era of multitabbed goodness!

flacvest report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Somehow, I knew...

Sep 25, 2008 15:42     

I hadn't looked at the author of this article when I began reading, but when I got to the part about how web browsers are going to make operating systems obsolete, I knew.... Cloud or no cloud, it's not going to happen.
Ben report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

It's about damn time. . .

Sep 25, 2008 16:22     

...they stopped making over-bloated CPU-speed-robbing software with zillions of useless features and made smaller more efficient programs.
J. Doe report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

In reply to Andy

Sep 25, 2008 18:02     

Andy, Your comment about availability of web apps is valid - most cloud apps are inaccessible when you are not online and yes - this can cause companies substantial damage in lost productivity. However, solutions are emerging now that enable web apps to be used offline. Several technologies already exist in consumer space, most notably Gears (formerly Google Gears) and Adobe AIR. Applications enabled for offline use cache the code locally so that you can run them in offline mode. These offline-enabled apps can also cache your cloud documents in a fully searchable relational database that resides locally on your computer. Offline enables web apps usually give you an option to turn this synchronization on and off. Once turned on, synchronization occurs in the background. When the connection goes down, you even don't realize something happened because web app switches to local storage. You continue using the web app smoothly - as if nothing happened. Once you go back online, web app synchronizes local changes with the cloud. For example, Google Docs and Reader are enhanced with Gears technology to enable offline work. I've been using Google Docs services since Google introduced them and I often thought how nice it would be if I were able to use the service without internet connection. When they enabled offline use, I don't really have the sense anymore that I'd be crippled if my connection goes down. Thanks a lot for your comment and take care.

Christian Zibreg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

@matt

Sep 25, 2008 18:02     

Microsoft started with .NET in 2000 so they are working on "rich web apps" from quite a while. There is an Office Live project which is one of the few commercial ones. Of course the change to cloud computing doesn't mean everyone will switch to MS' solution so Office sales might suffer. Anyways MS are not dumb and are working to stay on the market like everyone else.
morduhai report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Re: It's about damn time. . .

Sep 25, 2008 21:02     

Completely agree with you J.Doe! Too long now, coders have been able to mask their inefficient code by relying on the raw power of high processor speeds. I think it is fantastic to see once again the emphasis is put on coding efficiencies. Hopefully this browser war will awaken software giants like Microsoft to focus more on efficient programs instead of bloatware driven by processing power.
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