I like Chrome, Google’s beta Web browser, a lot. It boasted the fastest Web-rendering engine I’d ever seen, until now. Starting last night, there’s a new Web speed-demon, Firefox 3.1 beta 1.
I know, I know. Some people aren’t seeing this speed boost. My colleague, John Brandon, found that “Compared to Chrome, in testing my most frequently visited sites, Firefox 3.1 now lags well behind Chrome.” Brandon’s right. For daily Web browser visits, Chrome is still faster.
The blame for that goes, from what I can see, to the fact that Firefox 3.1 beta has a lot more beta error-checking code in it than does Chrome. Before either one goes gold that code will be stripped out.
While I was looking under the new Firefox beta hood though at Firefox’s new JavaScript rendering engine, TraceMonkey, I saw killer performance that leaves Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine eating its dust.