Yesterday Microsoft officially released the
Release Preview of IE 10 for Windows 7.
I think it's time to find out how IE 10 compares to the other major browsers. First of let me introduce the benchmarks real quick:
The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark tests the raw JavaScript performance. It does not test any browser APIs or DOM manipulation but focuses on real
world examples and balance. This is the only benchmark IE 10 manages to beat all other browsers.
The Octana JavaScript benchmark tests performance focused on high level functions and real-world web application code. It includes tests for many of the
newer JavaScript features. In this test (which is created by Google), Chrome beats all other browsers by far.
The HTML benchmark score is an indication of how well a browser supports HTML 5 features. The maximum score is 500 points, but no browser reaches this yet.
Again Chrome beats all other browsers on this test.
The results
As indicated above Chrome is still the fastest and most up-to-date browser out there. Regarding JavaScript performance IE 10 is up to the standard but
the lack of implemented HTML 5 features is disappointing.
| Browser |
SunSpider |
Octane |
HTML 5 |
 23 |
152.7ms |
14791 |
448 |
 16 |
173.7ms |
8381 |
372 |
 10 |
112.4ms |
6134 |
320 |
 12 |
196.9ms |
5837 |
374 |
 5.1 |
195.5ms |
4030 |
319 |
| 9 |
163.5ms |
5199 |
138 |
Conclusion
It has taken Microsoft
19 months to create the new Internet Explorer version. Unfortunately there are not that many improvements to show
for this huge amount of development time. Still comparing to IE 9 Microsoft was able to close the gap between IE and the other modern browsers. If Microsoft
can manage to switch to an rapid release cycle IE could get quite a good browser again.
Sadly all Windows XP and Vista users are out of luck, Microsoft will not
release the IE 10 for these not-quite-that-old operating systems. You are a XP or Vista user?
Go get Chrome now :-)