Now this is a completely un-scientific, but very revealing experience. I have run the same page (Sebastien Gruhier’s PGF test page) in four different browsers with interesting results. This is indeed a continuation of my earlier “research” into “Not all browsers are made equal in speed”.

So the browsers are:

• Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300 :-)
• Firefox 2.0.0.4
• Safari for Windows 3.0.2 (522.13.1)
• Opera 9.21 (Build 8776)

I run the page several times in SVG, VML, and Canvas mode on each browser (of course, when it was possible) with the following results:

• Internet Explorer: only VML is available
  • VML: originally around 4300ms, and with each re-rendering the time increasing by cca. 1800 ms (!) so it went like 4300, 6xxx, 8xxx, 9xxx, and finally jumped to 13109 ms
• Firefox:
  • SVG: generally around 1900 ms, sometimes dropping to 1500ish or peaking at 2300ish ms
  • Canvas: odd runs: ~1100 ms, even runs: ~750 m, alternating :-)
• Safari for Windows:
  • SVG: dead steady on 1070-1030 ms
  • Canvas: pretty steady around 600-468 ms, mostly in the 490-468 ms range
• Opera:
  • SVG: pretty stable at 2360-2078 ms
  • Canvas: pretty stable at 1030-860 ms

Again, the runs were performed on the same machine (2GHz P4, 2GB RAM, WinXP Pro, Commit charge ~1369MB), all browsers running at the same time, but the test performed sequentially.

My informal results:

• SVG: Safari is the king, at least 50% better, but typically 90-100% better performance than the competitors
• Canvas: again Safari is #1, at least 25% speed advantage, but as good as 100% better — with quite stable performance in both cases.
• VML: well, let’s read between the lines ;-) (please note: I did not run IE 7, but IE 6, for technical reasons) – if we consider its best result in VML and compare to Safari’s average SVG result (VML and SVG are closer relatives than VML and Canvas), then Safari is 400% faster.
• Canvas is the overall spead king, SVG is #2, and VML is distant #3.
• Safari is king in graphics — and this is still the first beta release from Apple…

BTW I got into all this because I’m looking into how to best implement some of my stuff on the iPhone with Morfik, and also for some graphical stuff I plan to do (charts, Gantt, diagrams, hint-hint:-).

Again, this is not science here: I only tested one rendering task, the environment was quite loaded, did not test IE 7 (although the rest of the browsers were their latest), did not check rendering quality in depth (things looked pretty OK in all cases), etc. Still I consider the results quite relevant — I’d like to see what other pepole can say about their experience…