The beginning of 2011 has proven a generous period for Web techies. February and March have been riddled with releases from all the major players in the market: Opera 11, Firefox 4 (after a long and painful beta), Internet Explorer 9 (after a long and painful effort in promotion), Chrome 11 (as well as Chrome 12 in the dev channel) as well as Safari 5.0.4 (minor version accompanied by a preview for 5.1).

What we can note is that almost all browser lines are improving their compatibility with HTML5, CSS 3 along with the introduction of “hardware acceleration”. Whatever that is and how it actually helps remains a mystery. The harsh exchanges between Internet Explorer 9 leads and Mozilla Firefox 4 ones seems to hint that now these browsers request hardware processing power via DirectX (Firefox) while Internet Explorer does the same by abusing its system integration to call the installed drivers. What good that does is not certain since in this regard user complaints have been directed mostly at the outrageously non-responsive Flash Player plugin. Anyway, in the Internet Explorer’s case, the result is that it will not be deployed on Windows versions before Vista. With Vista userbase decaying fastly towards both Windows XP and Windows 7, seems that it may be a while before Internet Explorer will be able to help Microsoft regain the lost territory in the heavily disputed browser market.

Let’s cut to the chase and take a look at test results:

SunSpider Benchmark 0.9.1:

* the SunSpider browser benchmark is developed by the WebKit team as a test design to gauge performance relative to the core functions of the ECMAScript (JavaScript) language. Alongside the ACID tests, this is probably the most relevant in the context of rich web applications.

  • Google Chrome 11: 242.9 ms
  • IE8: 4160 ms
  • Safari 5: 302.6 ms
  • Firefox 3.6.16: 768.02 ms
  • Opera 11: 241.5 ms
  • Internet Explorer 9: 226 ms
  • Mozilla Firefox 4: 247 ms

V8 benchmark:

* V8 (currently at version 6) is developed by Google and tries to perform more advanced tests involving Javascript, in all but rendering. Results need to be taken with a grain of salt since this test was used in the development and optimization of Chrome, thus Chrome is bent on performing better than the competition. Opera comes second as the other browser that strives to be king of standards, but still at a respectable distance.

  • Google Chrome 11: 9099
  • IE8: (failed)
  • Safari 5: 2815
  • Firefox 3.6.16: 577
  • Opera 11: 3873
  • Internet Explorer 9: 2457
  • Mozilla Firefox 4: 3892

Acid3 test:

* Acid3 is a rendering and manipulation test and, like SunSpider, tends to be very relevant in the world of rich web applications

  • Opera 11: 69% (an impressive drop)
  • Internet Explorer 9: 95% (a damn impressive result from Microsoft, who has a history of snubbing web standards)
  • Mozilla Firefox 4: 97 % (strange cap)
  • Google Chrome 11: 100% (perfect, as always)

We can’t help but underline the fact that Microsoft has come a huge way. After the Internet Explorer 7 fiasco, version 8 has been a step forward while Internet Explorer 9 comes as a real dash. It has taken great leaps in all directions, from performance to security and it would be challenger if it weren’t still so deeply embedded in the core of Windows (a situation that still poses the greatest risk).

However, from just about any point of view (memory management, stability, standards compliance, rendering and memory performance, etc), Google Chrome reigns. In parallel, Opera tries to be on the par and it would be a challenger, were it not for the exceptional step down in terms of rendering (as the Acid3 test shows). I for one can do nothing but stare in disbelief as Opera championed the Acid test suite since version 9. Beside this, however, Opera is plagued by smaller yet annoying issues: poor memory management (compared to Chrome) and inability to cope with rich applications such as the Google web apps. Apple’s Safari manages to remain average and although it keeps its charm and great usability, it is still a memory hog and its performance is just above average.

In the end, I give a nod to the two social media browsing solutions: RockMelt and Flock. Chrome’s two little cousins are increasing in popularity, though RockMelt still remains in its infancy as it hasn’t yet hit version 1 (it sits at 0.9) while the award-winning better Flock has long proven its worth.