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…

When iPhone was first announced I was day-dreaming developing applications for it with Morfik. When Safari for Windows appeared my hopes were strengthened since my Morfik apps did work in it (well, kind of — at least as well as other web content :-). And when it turned out that Steve Jobs’ version of “opening iPhone for 3rd party apps” boils down to not prohibiting running JavaScript in the browser (mind you, I see his points, and he is right: providing a reliable platform is more important than having a ton of silly gadgets or widgets or what), so at that point, my hopes were high.

And there we are: Morfik just announced that they would release a version of the AppsBuilder that is tailored to iPhone development — read some more in Richard MacManus’ Read/WriteWeb post. Wohoo! Now I will be on summer holiday next week, but now I’ll take my lappy to the beach with me and see to it that some of my warez work by the time I’m back online :-)

My only request: please, someone send me an iPhone :-)