Okay, to start off – I really wanted Firefox to come on the top… I’ve been a dedicated firefox user ever since and simply love the product. The fact that it has addons for any conceivable functionality – makes it r0ck even more!
However, to my surprise Google’s Chrome beats it hands down when it comes to speed of the javascript engine each of the browser deploys. Google has V8 tucked under Chrome’s (v4.0.213.1) belt, while my shiny new (nightly updated) Mozilla Firefox Minefield 3.7a1pre has TraceMonkey.
So why am I this sad today? Well… check this out…
Peacekeeper JS test – Chrome was nearly 59% faster here!
SunSpider test – Chrome was almost 76% faster
Chrome vs Firefox – SunSpider test, merged view.
I purposely ran the tests in side-by-side browser windows, launching Firefox tests just about a second before the Chrome’s tests – and to my surprise, I could actually (visually) see Chrome finishing faster – it was that fast!
Afterall… 59% or 76% actually does seems a pretty huge boost, whatever functionality it might be in.
Here are by browser versions… (both are stock builds as provided by repositories/online).
and 
Well… to me, this is healthy competition. Talk about the times when Chrome wasn’t there, Firefox used to make IE look timid. Come Chrome and now Firefox is doing the catch-up. Whoever wins, we – the end users – get the best of all the worlds.
That is like – have your cake & eat it too 
However, I seriously hope that by the time Firefox 4.0 launches, its javascript engine is at par with Google Chrome’s.
And by the time Google Chrome matures, I wish it should start sporting the same plethora of addons as does Firefox.
From UI’s perspective, Chrome also packs an extra bit of punch, which I really like and would like to blog about. But thats for a later post.