Browser Poll

[Asher]

Also, the reason so many people use IE still is because business sysadmins are ****ing ****ty (or more often, their bosses are ****ing ****ty) and they refuse to upgrade.

The real reason is way too many internal company apps depend on IE6 "features" and would break in newer browsers. The sysadmins usually would like nothing more to ditch IE.

[Jonny]

Chrome at home
IE8 at work

[Asher]

IE8 is SUCH A GODDAMN PAIN IN THE ASS. I have spent more time trying to get my MOTHER****ING javascript crap for my school's intranet working than....argh! It's hard and annoying and I hate it!

I made really JS-heavy web app to create and edit polygons (in various layers) over a map of Canada.

Even though IE supports the JS I use, the speed is so slow it's not usable. It takes like 2-3 seconds to add a new point to the polygon. It's virtually instantaneous in Firefox and completely instantaneous in Chrome.

[Hauldren Collider]

The real reason is way too many internal company apps depend on IE6 "features" and would break in newer browsers. The sysadmins usually would like nothing more to ditch IE.

Oh god yeah, forgot about those. yuckyuckyuck.

[Hauldren Collider]

I made really JS-heavy web app to create and edit polygons (in various layers) over a map of Canada.

Even though IE supports the JS I use, the speed is so slow it's not usable. It takes like 2-3 seconds to add a new point to the polygon. It's virtually instantaneous in Firefox and completely instantaneous in Chrome.

It isn't the speed that sucks, its the fact that IE8 simply refuses to render things properly. Things are in the wrong places, jumbled over each other, screwed up, it's unbelievable and gives me migraines just thinking about it.

[Asher]

[Hauldren Collider]

Huh. I thought firefox was better. What gives?

[Al B. Sure!]

Why is it it that once you vote, you can no longer see who voted for what?

[Asher]

Different techniques for the Javascript VM.

Firefox 4 will even the playing field once they implement the new Jaegermonkey javascript engine. But it's not ready yet.

Why is it it that once you vote, you can no longer see who voted for what?

Click the numbers.

[Asher]

To expand on the JS differences:

IE6-8 don't do **** for JS optimization. It stupidly interprets every single line, period.

Firefox had a pretty quick (compared to IE) JS engine called SpiderMonkey. They then (in FF 3 I think?) added some optimizations called tracing, and called it TraceMonkey. This works by detecting loops and converts them to assembly. Where no tracing opportunities are detected, it falls back to interpretation with SpiderMonkey.

Chrome came with a brand new implementation using JIT (just-in-time compiling). It converts all javascript to assembly (x86, ARM depending on the platform) and runs it like native code. It blew the doors off everything else. They keep improving it by optimizing the assembly output, just like compilers do (it essentially is a compiler).

JaegerMonkey is going to be a brand new javascript interpreter, replacing SpiderMonkey with a new JIT-based one, like Chrome. On top of that, it'll retain Tracing from Tracemonkey. It's just swapping out the slow interpreter with a JIT compiler, basically.

The mozilla developer wiki on JaegerMonkey is here for more details on implementation and goals: https://wiki.mozilla.org/JaegerMonkey

[Asher]

IE9 will be a respectable browser, I think. They're trying really, really hard to catch up speed-wise and seem to have done so from the preview builds. They're also slowly catching up to the support for web standards all of the other browsers have.

We just need to kill IE 6-8 quickly.

[duke o' york]

I've just uninstalled Chrome because it annoyed me. It did everything that FF does, but it refused to remember my passwords I'd imported, so it wouldn't recognise me when I opened 'poly (etc), and that really annoyed me.

[Hauldren Collider]

Chrome came with a brand new implementation using JIT (just-in-time compiling).

So then it'll use more memory and be just as slow the first time you run a website, won't it? Does it only use JIT for methods? How does it handle lambdas?

We just need to kill IE 6-8 quickly.

cold day in hell. The fact that we STILL HAVE IE6 shows that they aren't gonna go away.

[Al B. Sure!]

Why did Ben vote for IE6-8? He really uses all three of them? I'm surprised they don't upgrade when you install IE8.

[Asher]

So then it'll use more memory and be just as slow the first time you run a website, won't it? Does it only use JIT for methods? How does it handle lambdas?

Magic

I haven't looked into the specific implementation of it, just the high-level design. It's not just as slow the first time you run it because the conversion itself is highly optimized, and it doesn't just run it literally as it's written. It aggressively optimizes the JS, just as when you compile C++ or something with optimizations turned on. Because it's done intelligently from start to finish, it's wickedly fast.

cold day in hell. The fact that we STILL HAVE IE6 shows that they aren't gonna go away.

IE6 is still supported, and therefore in use, because it was bundled with Windows XP so MS has to legally keep supporting it until XP is unsupported.