All posts tagged ‘Google Chrome’

File Under: Browsers
Sep
13
2010

A Guide to Hardware Acceleration in Modern Browsers

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Is your browser faster than the Shinkansen?

The browser race is hotter than it’s been in years, with all of major vendors ramping up support for HTML5 and its associated technologies. The latest area of focus is hardware acceleration — when the browser hands off processor-intensive tasks to the computer’s graphics processor to make animations and page rendering faster and smoother.

Microsoft created some controversy on its IEBlog this past weekend with a post claiming that the IE9 beta release was “the first and only browser to deliver full hardware acceleration of all HTML5 content.”

However, despite Microsoft’s claims, Firefox 4 also takes advantage of the same Windows 7 APIs that Microsoft uses to accelerate both the compositing and the rendering of webpages, and it has done so for some time. Yes, Mozilla’s hardware acceleration support is still very much limited to beta releases and nightly builds, but so are IE9′s hardware acceleration features.

Mozilla was understandably a bit angry about Microsoft’s misleading claims. But, to be fair, the IEBlog doesn’t actually call out Firefox by name, so it’s possible Microsoft sees Google Chrome as its real competitor. Chrome’s hardware acceleration lags behind Mozilla and Microsoft’s efforts, but even Chrome has included hardware acceleration for compositing in both Chrome 6 and Chrome 7 builds.

Confused yet? To help you keep things straight, here’s a handy chart showing all three layers of hardware acceleration and which browsers support each:

Hardware Accelerated Composition support by Windows browser:
Fx 4.0 beta 5 IE9 beta Safari 5 Chrome 6+ Opera 10.5
✓ ✓ · ✓ ·
Hardware Accelerated Rendering support by Windows browser:
Fx 4.0 beta 5 IE9 beta Safari 5 Chrome 6+ Opera 10.5
✓ ✓ · · ·
Hardware Accelerated Desktop Compositing support by Windows browser:
Fx 4.0 beta 5 IE9 beta Safari 5 Chrome 6+ Opera 10.5
✓ ✓ · · ·

Another strange claim in the post on the IEBlog is that IE9′s hardware acceleration is somehow faster because it doesn’t support other platforms — not even Windows XP. The reasoning is that by targeting on one platform, Microsoft can focus its efforts more clearly, and build tight support for behaviors specific to Windows 7.

In Firefox 4′s case, the hardware acceleration is somewhat abstracted, so it can eventually support Linux and Mac OS X as well as Windows. Even now, Firefox supports partial Windows XP hardware acceleration.

Despite Microsoft’s claim, in our tests (and most others publicly available) IE9 and Firefox are neck and neck. And, as Mozilla’s Robert O’Callahan points out, “an extra abstraction layer need not hurt performance — if you do it right.”

In the end, who came first and how it’s done behind the scenes will be a moot point. Users will win in the end — a few months from now, there will very likely be three hardware accelerated web browsers available for Windows, with more operating systems getting the capabilities through non-IE browsers.

Shinkansen photo by 663highland/Wikimedia Commons/CC

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File Under: Browsers, JavaScript
Sep
9
2010

Mozilla Asks, ‘Are We Fast Yet?’

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The above charts show the performance of JavaScript engines across different architectures. The tests shown are the common SunSpider and V8 JavaScript benchmarks, with output measured in milliseconds. The tests are run once a day, and the graphs show the last five weeks or so of results.

Go to the real site and click on all the clicky bits.

The green line is Google V8, the red line is Apple Nitro, and the orange and black lines are Mozilla’s two engines, JaegerMonkey and TraceMonkey, respectively. The purple lines reflect Mozilla’s new approach of running the engines concurrently. As you can see, it speeds things up.

But the answer to the question being asked by the URL is “No” — Google is currently either on par with Apple Safari or slightly better, depending on the test and the architecture. Mozilla is improving, but still has a lot of catching up to do.

This testing tool is maintained by Mozilla’s JavaScript team. I found out about it earlier today when John Resig, the guy behind jQuery and a Mozilla employee, tweeted the link. It’s an effective motivational tool, especially since it shows how slow Mozilla’s engines were only a month ago, and how quickly the team is gaining on the leaders.

A couple of caveats: The tests aren’t run in the browser, they are run from the command line. Also, a Mac Mini in doing the testing, so Internet Explorer isn’t represented. From what we’ve seen of IE9′s pre-release code, the browser is incredibly fast. We’re curious to see how its JavaScript engine stacks up.

Also, no Opera. Opera’s Carakan engine is also blazing fast, but it’s not represented here.

Check out the page’s FAQ for more details. Also, the code for the test is open source, so if you have philosophical issues with these methods, build your own testing environment.

Update: Here’s a much more detailed post about Mozilla’s performance on JavaScript benchmarks by Rob Sayre.

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File Under: Browsers
Sep
2
2010

Chrome 6 Arrives, Just in Time for Cake

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Chrome6

Google is celebrating the second birthday of its Chrome web browser with the release of a new, improved version.

Chrome 6 arrives with an updated user interface, better syncing tools that include support for web form data and extensions, and — as should be expected with every new browser release these days — increased speed and numerous bug fixes.

If you don’t want to wait for Chrome to automatically update, head over to the download page and grab Chrome 6 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Google’s browser is in an enviable position right now. It recently passed Safari in user share — new data from August shows the lead it snagged in June is stretching — and it’s gaining on Firefox and IE. Also, in a market where raw speed is the most important metric, Chrome is enjoying a solid reputation as the one of the fastest — if not the fastest — browser on the scene.

Worldwide Browser Share

Chrome has also had considerable impact on how other browsers in the market look and behave since it arrived in September, 2008. It kickstarted a shift toward minimal interfaces that Firefox and Internet Explorer are mimicking. Chrome also started the trend of tightly sandboxing web browsers to improve stability and security.

If you’ve been using early builds of Chrome 6, there isn’t much here that’s new, but if you’re upgrading from the older, stable release of Chrome 5 there are quite a few changes.

Continue Reading “Chrome 6 Arrives, Just in Time for Cake” »

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File Under: Browsers
Aug
30
2010

Chrome 7 Shows Off Hardware Acceleration, ‘Tabpose’

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Google’s Chrome web browser will soon gain hardware-accelerated graphics — the latest trend for web browsers that has already shown up in early builds of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.

Hardware acceleration allows the browser to offload intensive tasks like image scaling, rendering complex text or displaying scripted animations to your PC’s graphics card. It has the benefit of freeing up the PC’s main processor and speeding up page load times.

Today’s faster graphics cards have created a new playing field for hardware acceleration. Microsoft has been trumpeting IE9′s accelerated capabilities since the first developer preview was released, and Firefox 4 will also take advantage of the new technology. Both of those browsers should be released before the end of this year.

Chrome 7, which is currently available in developer build form, is the latest browser to take advantage of hardware acceleration. Chrome’s tightly sandboxed rendering model — which prevents web pages from interacting directly with the OS — means that hardware acceleration is a little more difficult for Google than it is for IE or Firefox.

Of course it may be some time before any of these features make it to the stable release of Chrome. Chrome 5 is currently the shipping version and Chrome 6 — which features a considerably revamped interface — is currently in the beta channel. Thus far Google has not confirmed any release dates for Chrome 6, nor when Chrome 7 will move to beta status.

But If you’d like to test the early builds of Chrome with hardware acceleration, you can do so now. Grab the latest developer build of Chrome 7 and launch it from the command line with the new --enable-accelerated-compositing flag.

As with Firefox, the hardware acceleration features in Chrome are only available in the Windows version.

Hardware acceleration isn’t the only new trick up Chrome’s sleeve. The Mac version of the browser is also experimenting with something Google calls “Tab Overview” or Tabpose. Tabpose is similar to Mac OS X’s Expose; it allows you to visually pull back and see all your tabs as thumbnails and quickly switch between them.

Some early reports have compared Tabpose to Firefox 4′s new Panorama tab organizer, but Firefox’s version is considerably more sophisticated, with extra features like drag-and-drop organization and the ability to group tabs and switch between groups. If you’ve used both Panorama and Tabpose, the differences are obvious.

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File Under: Browsers
Jul
26
2010

Early Birds Will Dig Chrome Canary

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People who like to run pre-release versions of browsers in order to access the latest features have a new choice: Google Chrome Canary.

Canary has all the bleeding-edge features found in the developer and beta releases of Google Chrome. But unlike the other channel releases, Chrome Canary allows you to run the pre-release browser without overwriting other installations of Chrome on the same system. So, you can now run a regular version of Chrome and a pre-release, auto-updating version of Chrome on the same computer at the same time.

You can download Chrome Canary today, but it is a Windows-only release for now. We expect Google to follow with canaries for other operating systems soon.

Early adopters — mostly curious geeks and developers working with the latest web standards — prefer to run beta versions of browsers. Beta testing allows them to gain intimate first-hand knowledge of the new capabilities that will be found in the next versions of each browser. But beta versions and regular versions of the same browsers both access the same file resources on your computer, a restriction that prevents you from running two different versions side-by-side. Try launching a Firefox 4 beta while Firefox 3.x is open. You’ll see an error: “Only one copy of Firefox can be open at a time.”

On the fence about running an unstable pre-release browser? Canary can help you take the plunge safely.

Chrome Canary side-steps this issue. As Google engineer Huan Ren explains on the Chromium-dev list, “the installer will install Google Chrome canary build to a separate directory with different default user profile, short cuts, and icons, i.e. everything should be separate from existing Google Chrome installation.”

With this release, there are now four versions of Chrome available. The others are “dev,” the least stable build intended for developers, “beta,” which is more stable than dev but not fully baked, and the regular Chrome release, the rigorously-tested version that’s the default option for the public.

On the same developer’s e-mail list, Google’s Mark Larson says Canary will be the most bleeding-edge of all Chrome builds. It will auto-update more frequently than any of the other versions available to developers.

“The canary usually updates more frequently than the Dev channel (higher risk of bustage), and we’re working on making it update as often as we have successful nightly builds. When something doesn’t work on the canary, I can just fall back to my Beta Google Chrome,” he writes.

Hence the name “Canary” — a reference to the canary in the coal mine. Google recently announced it would be speeding up the Chrome development cycle to push major milestone releases more often. This increased velocity means it will need to begin testing new features in the wild sooner and collecting feedback more quickly.

“The data we get back from canary users — especially crash statistics — helps us find and fix regressions faster,” Larson says.

Chrome Canary running on 64-bit Windows 7

Giving users the option to run a more advanced version of Chrome without having to fully commit to the dangerous lifestyle of an alpha tester should help increase the number of people willing to test the new browser.

Chrome Canary also has a different, all-yellow icon — instead of the multi-colored Chrome icon or the all-blue Chromium icon — so it’s easy to spot on your desktop. The beta, dev and stable channel builds of Chrome all use the same familiar rainbow icon. Also, the skin of the browser is blue, helping you tell it apart from other versions of Chrome, which use the same gray skin.

Canary photo: Haplochromis/Wikimedia/CC

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