I do not know about you, but recently I have been hearing a lot about TraceMonkey, the Javascript engine to be released with FireFox 3.1. All news point to the promise of Javascript being propelled to a 10x faster speed. Well, I thought of giving it a try.
I downloaded the latest build of Firefox. Now I have Minefield version 3.1b1pre (It seems Minefield is the latest code name). I decided on trying out some benchmarks. I checked out the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark.
I ran it first on Firefox 3.1b without the Tracemonkey Just In Time compiler.
Time taken: 7,572 ms.
Now I turned on Tracemonkey by opening an about:config tab and settting javascript.options.jit.content to true.
Time taken: 3,050 ms.
Not bad! I said. If not a 10x but certainly a 2.5x improvement. Not bad at all!
Curiosity set in and I tried the same test on Chrome. Time Taken: 4,919 ms. Well, Well!! The Google gang is not far behind.
I had to check out IE now. I already had IE7 on my laptop. I ran the tests. It was so slow that I had to run it again. The second time was only focussing on the tests and shutting the other applications. Hold your breath! The time taken was 57,680 ms!!!
Now this thing got me going. I have to push this to the next limit. I downloaded and installed IE8 beta and ran the tests there. Time taken is 13,224 ms.
This is truly something! I suspect another round of AJAX+ applications will hit the marketplace over next 12-18 months.
In the process of this experiments, I found another demo which was unbelievably cool. This link captures the experience: http://people.mozilla.com/~schrep/tm-image-adjustment.swf
Totally excited about Tracemonkey and carrying a bunch of Beta browsers on my machine!
Best Regards, Somnath
For those of you who are like me and want to try things for themselves:
1. Latest Nightly Build of Firefox
2. Here is the link to the benchmark: http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html
3. If you want to try the image manipulation demo you can try: http://people.mozilla.com/~schrep/image12.html
I could not get it working properly on IE or Chrome.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Google I/O 2008
Overview
This is probably first of its kind for Google, changing from a consumer driven search platform to emerging as a development platform. The conference was held in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The conference was reasonably priced at $400. You pay only $55 if you are a student/teacher. Darn! I knew I should have stayed back in school!
Who was there?
The audience was mainly the young (20 and 30 something) developers. I did not find a single business suit. The crowd was eager, enthusiastic and participant. Code Labs remained wall to wall full.
What was shown?
Google showed these key tracks:
- Social
- App Engine & Apps
- AJAX & APIs
- Android
- Geo
What I saw?
I went there to learn more about OpenSocial and Social Networking widgets. (We are doing a lot of work on social media marketing. Sorry could not resist the self promotion). I found that Google’s OpenSocial is not only in but it is THE THING! Stalwarts like MySpace, Orkut, AOL, Hi5 and even Yahoo (I guess if you cannot beat them, might as well joinem) bragged about OpenSocial widgets. I also discovered a totally cool Open Social Container called Shindig with Java and PHP implementations. What this means to you? Well now you can build your own widgets and run it in NOT ONE but TWENTY TOP networks. If that is not enough for you, check this out. You can test it first on Shindig and then unveil it when it passes Shindig, chances are high that it will run on most. Sounds cool, right?
As I was walking impressed with this I found Google showcasing AppEngine. This is a framework to build apps on the cloud. So not only you can build apps on Google, you can Host it with them. It is amazingly simple! On top of this, I found a whole offering of app development, supported by a rich set of apis to access photos, videos, calendar, contacts and “you name it they have it” kinda spectrum. Google Gears, APIS and Gadgets.
Google has also come up with a partnership program for small business providers Small developers can build, host, train, promote their services and even market their solutions in a solutions marketplace. Now, there will be an army of VARs and ISVs walking the streets.
My Take away:
Google is now turning their attention to the $60B application development marketplace. They are doing it in a BIG way and they are doing it with a LONG look. They are trying to proliferate from the center to the LONG TAIL of the opportunity. Just like they did it for Search and AD Marketing. From conference setting, to target audience (young and next gen) all the way to dev tools (mostly just notepad and command line) they are stirring a revolution in SIMPLICITY.
Can you imagine, large sections of human population (even our moms) building a web app, crawling YouTube videos playing on a chrome-less player, distributing it on TOP 20 social nets to reach out to 500 M people, all hosted and served up from some Google cloud?
This is probably first of its kind for Google, changing from a consumer driven search platform to emerging as a development platform. The conference was held in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The conference was reasonably priced at $400. You pay only $55 if you are a student/teacher. Darn! I knew I should have stayed back in school!
Who was there?
The audience was mainly the young (20 and 30 something) developers. I did not find a single business suit. The crowd was eager, enthusiastic and participant. Code Labs remained wall to wall full.
What was shown?
Google showed these key tracks:
- Social
- App Engine & Apps
- AJAX & APIs
- Android
- Geo
What I saw?
I went there to learn more about OpenSocial and Social Networking widgets. (We are doing a lot of work on social media marketing. Sorry could not resist the self promotion). I found that Google’s OpenSocial is not only in but it is THE THING! Stalwarts like MySpace, Orkut, AOL, Hi5 and even Yahoo (I guess if you cannot beat them, might as well joinem) bragged about OpenSocial widgets. I also discovered a totally cool Open Social Container called Shindig with Java and PHP implementations. What this means to you? Well now you can build your own widgets and run it in NOT ONE but TWENTY TOP networks. If that is not enough for you, check this out. You can test it first on Shindig and then unveil it when it passes Shindig, chances are high that it will run on most. Sounds cool, right?
As I was walking impressed with this I found Google showcasing AppEngine. This is a framework to build apps on the cloud. So not only you can build apps on Google, you can Host it with them. It is amazingly simple! On top of this, I found a whole offering of app development, supported by a rich set of apis to access photos, videos, calendar, contacts and “you name it they have it” kinda spectrum. Google Gears, APIS and Gadgets.
Google has also come up with a partnership program for small business providers Small developers can build, host, train, promote their services and even market their solutions in a solutions marketplace. Now, there will be an army of VARs and ISVs walking the streets.
My Take away:
Google is now turning their attention to the $60B application development marketplace. They are doing it in a BIG way and they are doing it with a LONG look. They are trying to proliferate from the center to the LONG TAIL of the opportunity. Just like they did it for Search and AD Marketing. From conference setting, to target audience (young and next gen) all the way to dev tools (mostly just notepad and command line) they are stirring a revolution in SIMPLICITY.
Can you imagine, large sections of human population (even our moms) building a web app, crawling YouTube videos playing on a chrome-less player, distributing it on TOP 20 social nets to reach out to 500 M people, all hosted and served up from some Google cloud?
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