Opera 7.20b1 - Blazing fast Javascript

Javascript benchmarks reveal tremendous speed increase

[papabaer]

I've been testing Opera 7.20b1 and have found many improvements. The duplicate trailing margin bug is gone, M2 has even more features and the rendering speed is even faster. I did find (and report) a new rendering bug, but since O7.20b1 IS a beta release meant to track down bugs, I expect the rendering bug to be fixed before the actual release.

BUT! What a speed improvment in the Javascript engine!--it's incredibly fast! JS never was Opera's strong point but v.7 made great strides in that direction and now v7.20b1 is outperforming all the rest.

Running benchmark tests available here:
[24fun.com...]

Test machine: Win98/500Mghz/128mb ram/dial-up connection

Completed test times:

Opera 7.20b1 - 21.86 seconds
IE6 - 39.59 seconds
MozillaFirebird 0.6 - 45.6 seconds

I ran multiple instances of the benchmarks using each browser to allow for variances. I'm still amazed at the javascript speed improvement in Opera 7.20b1 - very impressive! It looks like someone is doing their homework!

Oh, one side mote: Opera 7.20b1 now supports the <marquee>"say it ain't so joe!"</marquee> element. Oh well...

[bachius]

Oh yeah!
Opera 7.2b1: 20 sec
IE6: 30 sec

[tedster]

Thanks for that report, papabaer. I know it's common to say that no browser including Opera, can carve out much of a niche in the face of IE's market dominance. But, hey, that's what they used to say about Netscape's dominance in the early years.

I'm sitting in the bleachers pulling for Opera (and Firebird) to return the browser sector to sanity -- and savvy improvements in speed and usability are what we need to see.

[papabaer]

Agreed Tedster. Even more with all the "IE6-end-of-the-line-as-a-stand-alone" discussion.

What surprised me most about the benchmarks was Firebird's poor showing. I'ver repeated the tests enough times to feel comfortable with the results. Opera 7.20b1 is damn fast... IE lumbers and Firebird is a dog. Strange.... By the way, my test ID/name is "gant" -- the report shows the last 1000 results.

Overall though, I am very pleased to see healthy competiton from all and sundry. We all stand to benefit.

[ricfink]

Glad to hear they're concentrating on javascript improvements.
That was always Opera's deal-killer for me as a developer.
to me, version 7 is the first version of OPera worth bothering with. But it still had some glaring problems.

thanks for the info, gonna download and check it out!

[ricfink]

Hey! They fixed something I complained to them about!

What was bugging me was Opera's inability to load and apply an external javascript file on demand - either by creating the script element using the DOM or changing the src attribute of an existing script tag.

It works, now. Just like Moz and IE.
Excellent.