performance

Browser war centers on once-obscure JavaScript

After inconspicuously lurking within Web sites' code for more than a decade, JavaScript has emerged to become a key battleground in a second era of Web browser wars.

JavaScript, which lets developers create everything from basic Web site menus to online spreadsheet applications, was born in the mid-1990s when Microsoft's Internet Explorer challenged the incumbent browser, Netscape's Navigator. IE won that war, but now it faces its own challenge from the heir to the Navigator throne, Mozilla's Firefox, along with upstarts including Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera.

All the challengers tout JavaScript performance as a major part of their competitive attack--even to the point of naming their JavaScript engines built into their browsers: Chrome's V8, Firefox's TraceMonkey, Opera's Futhark and upcoming Carakan, and Safari's newly branded Nitro, which is Apple's version of WebKit's Squirrelfish.

Though IE lags all these rivals in JavaScript performance, Microsoft does care about performance overall and JavaScript performance specifically. Even as Microsoft launched a brand-new browser version, Internet Explorer 8, on Thursday, however, it's also clear the company has a big difference of opinion about the matter.

"We're going to keep making the script engines faster (but) right now it's not clear how many people are gated by script performance," said IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch in an interview. "JavaScript comprises a small portion of how fast a Web page will render. It is a piece, but by no means the holy grail." … Read more

Google project promotes Chrome, JavaScript

Ever since Google launched Chrome in September 2008, Google has been touting how fast its browser can run Web-based programs written in JavaScript. Now the company has launched a site called Chrome Experiments designed to show off what fast JavaScript can enable and to encourage adoption of the browser.

Browser benchmark performance scores make for nice bar charts, but they can be detached from real-world computing needs. Chrome Experiments--which don't require Chrome but sometimes break without it--are a collection of taxing applications written in JavaScript that are designed to be more engaging.

Among the 19 examples so far available: … Read more

Music rights group calls new talks with YouTube 'positive'

A day after YouTube announced the Google-owned video site would no longer stream music videos within the United Kingdom, the Performance Right Society said talks on Tuesday between the group and YouTube were "positive."

PRS collects royalties on behalf of the music industry in the U.K. On Monday, YouTube announced that the Web's largest video site and the collections agency couldn't reach a deal on licensing fees. Talks continue and the parties are scheduled to meet over the next few days, according to a PRS statement.

"We are committed to ensuring our 60,000 … Read more

Will MySpace follow YouTube, Pandora out of U.K.?

MySpace may follow YouTube by muffling music in the United Kingdom, according to a published report.

MySpace UK, as well as other music services, are struggling to renegotiate licensing deals with the Performance Rights Society, a royalty-collection group in Great Britain.

U.K. publication The Guardian cited an anonymous source Tuesday who said "the launch of MySpace UK's comprehensive music service later this year could be thrown into jeopardy."

MySpace and YouTube representatives were not immediately available to comment.

Online radio service Pandora pulled out of Great Britain more than a year ago. The Oakland, Calif.-based … Read more

Easy Vista optimizing

Vista users usually find lots of room to enhance their system's performance. DTweak helps optimize your OS by offering lots of info and options.

DTweak offers a sleek, stylish interface that houses a nice complement of tools that any user will appreciate. Besides the obligatory Registry cleaner and disk defragmenter, this utility offers a variety of system tools and settings to optimize memory and CPU cache, firewall handling, Internet Explorer tweaks, and Windows Update management. This utility responded well during our tests, and seemed to be designed with the user in mind. We liked the way it categorized its … Read more

Safari challenges Chrome on Web app speed

Google's latest version of Chrome has claimed the lead in my JavaScript speed tests, but Apple's new Safari 4 beta is the first browser to challenge it on Google's own performance benchmark.

JavaScript is a programming language that powers not just innumerable ordinary Web sites, but also many Web-based applications such as Google Docs. With the computing industry's major push to cloud computing, Web application performance is increasingly important, and there's a race on to see who's got the best JavaScript engine. JavaScript engines even have become a named feature, with Chrome's V8, Firefox's TraceMonkey, Opera's Futhark and upcoming Carakan, and now the Safari's newly branded Nitro, which is Apple's version of WebKit's Squirrelfish. … Read more

Turbo-charge your memory

This effective memory optimization tool will boost your system's performance, but the demo disables some useful options. MemTurbo's well-designed interface logically places the important tools at the forefront, while making other functions easy to access. The program minimizes to your system tray for quick access if needed. Many users may find they use the wizard and let the utility operate unmanaged. Oddly, however, the wizard suggests Auto Recover and Target Free RAM levels, but doesn't automatically set those values.

The concepts and information presented through the wizard and help screens is clear and helpful. The default memory … Read more

Bill backs payment to musicians for radio play

Songwriters get paid every time one of their songs is played on the radio; the Performance Rights Act (H.R. 4789) would do the same for the musicians who played on the recording. With income from CDs and download sales on the wane, they could use the money.

Under current law, musicians get a big fat zero when their music is played on AM and FM radio (they do get royalties from satellite radio, cable radio services, and other nonterrestrial broadcasters).

According to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the United States is one of the few industrialized countries (with the exception … Read more

Chrome takes new tack for faster JavaScript

Chrome programmers have switched out a third-party software package in favor of their own as part of Google's attempt to speed its open-source browser up more.

The change came with a key component for processing JavaScript text called regular expressions. "As we've improved other parts of the language, regexps started to stand out as being slower than the rest. We felt it should be possible to improve performance by integrating with our existing infrastructure rather than using an external library," according to a Chromium blog post by programmers Erik Corry, Christian Plesner Hansen, and Lasse Reichstein … Read more

Pro-level system care

This easy-to-use and informative application cleans, configures, and optimizes your PC. Advanced WindowsCare Pro's interface dispenses with the bells and whistles to display commands and data without embellishment.

The install Wizard zips through the set up, querying the user on the PC's primary use and Internet connection type. Answer those two simple questions, choose from a short list of options, and you're ready to virus check and scan for spyware, registry errors, and start-up problems, or clean your PC of history and surfing traces. The app's strength is the detailed information the scan provides, which lists … Read more