Firefox, Google's Chrome speed past IE, Opera

Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome, plus the WebKit developer project included in Chrome and Safari, are dramatically faster than proprietary browsers, according to recent tests.

by Matt Asay

January 28, 2009 1:01 PM PST

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ZDNet Australia on Tuesday released updated browser speeds, as measured by the industry-standard SunSpider JavaScript test, and the results should give pause to proprietary-browser makers Microsoft and Opera Software:

Every open-source browser completely obliterated the proprietary browsers in terms of performance, and by a huge margin.

The test compared Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, Opera 10.00 Alpha, Firefox 3.1b1, Chrome 2.0.158.0, and the WebKit r40220 developer project included in Chrome and Apple's Safari.

Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (along with WebKit) left the proprietary competition in the dust:

Open source browsers leave IE and Opera in the dust

(Credit: Alex Serpo/ZDNet Austraia)

Maybe there's something in the open-source water, after all, that makes those open-source browsers grow up big and strong. IE 8? Well, let's just say that it has a lot of work to do to catch up.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

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