The July 2009 browser performance benchmarks post by Chip at Geeks are Sexy is worth checking out.
Safari: 237
Chrome: 197
Firefox: 184
IE: 20
Higher times are better. These numbers reflect our practical experience with Solve360 too.
Related quote from ReadWriteWeb:
Microsoft famously argued that its browser (IE8) has been optimized to render the most popular pages on the Internet faster than any other browser, and that JavaScript performance, which is what all the other browser developers are focused on right now, is only a small part of the puzzle. To us, however, IE8 still didn’t feel very fast, especially when compared to Google’s Chrome.
Microsoft’s response:
Internet Explorer 8 is designed for what you really do on the Web — things like searching, shopping, emailing, or just catching up on the world.
Microsoft essentially says that IE is not designed for running web applications. If you use application like Solve360 there are three free options: Safari, Chrome, Firefox. Finding it hard to say goodbye? Not to worry, just install one of them along side IE and use it for just for your web-apps (call it an essential “runtime module”).
Postscript: Many businesses are heavily invested in Microsoft and it will continue to be an important platform to support, and we will. It sure must be hard to say no to a free, hassle-free 10x performance boost though :)
