Chroming: How google is changing the browser
The browser wars are in full effect once again thanks to a healthy plethora of browsers available such as Safari, Firefox, Opera and Chrome all leading the way in the addition of new and exciting features in the upcoming CSS3 & html 5 specifications.
But the real war this time is in the JavaScript engine which was ignited when Google came into the browsers wars with their Chrome release sporting the
ridiculously fast V8 JavaScript engine, which blew any of the previous engines out of the water with its shear speed. Mozilla, Webkit and Opera are all playing catch up by releasing their own super fast JavaScript engines. This can only mean great things for the users, not only will the browser rival performance of a desktop app, in some cases will outperform it.
Chrome has just released a new beta of their browser sporting an even faster update to their javascript engine boasting a 25% increase in speed of JavaScript execution.
Enough with all the geeky crap what does this mean to your average user? Awesome tools that can be used natively in the browser with no extensions or plugins needed. Google has launched a new site showing the power of the JavaScript engine called Chrome Experiments. These showcases aren’t limited to the Chrome browser they do work in the latest stable releases of Safari, Opera & Firefox but their performance on some of the more intensive examples doesn’t match that of Chrome.
With new releases of browsers due to drop soon such as Safari 4, Opera 10 & Firefox 3.5 (all boasting extremely fast JavaScript engines and support for the latest and greatest in html 5 & CSS3) these sort of experiments can only become more viable in real world situations creating rich interactive websites using nothing more than html & JavaScript.
Google engineers are hard at work to constantly improve on their already fantastic work, with impending releases of Chrome for Mac OS X & Linux; its user base will only begin to rise creating a healthy competition between vendors which can only mean great things for consumers.