JavaScript

Goodbye Futhark, hello Carakan.

With Tuesday's release of Opera 10.5 for Windows, it's time for a new JavaScript engine. Opera's new Carakan engine is much faster than Futhark, an important consideration given the increasing demands Web applications put on the Web-based programming language.

My earlier tests on a dual-core Windows XP machine showed Google's V8 JavaScript engine still ahead of the Opera 10.5 beta, but Opera won out in several others' testing. Other rivals in JavaScript are Safari's Nitro, nee Squirrel Extreme, and Firefox's new JaegerMonkey, which combines Nitro with its earlier … Read more

A few days after the Opera 10.50 beta for Windows got its second revision, the first Mac beta for version 10.50 finally has been released to the public. There has been a pre-alpha release available since late December, but it hasn't received the multiple public upgrades that the Windows one had, until now.

Opera 10.50 beta 1 contains a lot of Mac-specific changes, most notably the Carakan JavaScript engine which has been noted in the Windows version for making Opera comparable, speed-wise, to Google Chrome.

In casual testing comparing Opera 10.50 beta 1 to Google … Read more

The Opera Browser made some serious headway in keeping itself relevant when it introduced a new JavaScript engine for its upcoming revision. The latest edition of Opera 10.50 beta 2 for Windows contains no new major features, some minor feature improvements, and is mostly a bug-fixing release that incorporates around 100 changes since the first beta.

Also, in an effort to prevent attention from drifting away from the Mac version of Opera 10.50, the publisher has also announced a new release candidate for the beta. While that milestone is unusual, it's not unheard of for browser publishers … Read more

Opera 10.5 beta debuts a new JavaScript engine, an interface optimized for Windows 7, and support for HTML5 video. Opera claims it's the fastest browser available, and it's definitely in the top three for speed. Whatever you think of it, though, this latest entry from Opera marks it as a resurgent competitor in the browser wars.

Opera, which was bumped down to fifth place in browser usage after Google Chrome burst on the scene, has embraced a super-fast JavaScript engine as part of its bid to stay relevant.

Unfortunately for Opera, my tests show more work is needed.

The beta version of Opera 10.5 arrived Thursday morning, and I thought it a good time to compare how some of the cutting-edge versions of the browsers were shaping up in performance--especially because Mozilla has released a preview version of the next version of Firefox.

Before we dig into the statistics, let's start with some important … Read more

Greasemonkey scripts are an easy way to create single-serving enhancements for Firefox, and now they work natively on Google Chrome, too.

In a blog post Monday, Aaron Boodman, the developer of the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox, announced that Chrome version 4 and later will support most of the JavaScript-coded Greasemonkey scripts without any additional tweaking necessary. This includes all available builds for Windows (stable | beta | dev), Mac (beta | dev), and Linux (beta | dev). Chrome converts the JavaScript directly into a Chrome extension as it's being installed, and the new add-on lives as an extension in Chrome's Extension management … Read more

Opera 10.50 earned another public pre-alpha version, but this one is for Windows users only so far.

Originally announced in December, the significantly faster preview build of what's to come for the browser doesn't introduce any major new features, but it does include several important bug fixes from the last pre-alpha build.

Included in Opera 10.50 pre-alpha 3199 are upgrades to the new core rendering engine, which looks in preliminary testing to bring Opera's rendering speeds at least to parity with Google Chrome. Windows 7 integration and video support have been improved, while support for … Read more

Mozilla has released its first release candidate, RC1, for Firefox 3.6 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The new version includes Personas, which lets people customize the browser's appearance; blocks third-party software from encroaching on its file system turf to increase stability; and perhaps most significantly given the competitive threat from Google Chrome, shortens start-up time and improves responsiveness and JavaScript performance.

Firefox 3.6 RC1 is also available from Mozilla's download site.

People can notice skins and better performance, but there also are changes deeper under the hood that developers should know about. One is support for the File interface, … Read more

Google, the company that made "don't be evil" its corporate motto, is shunning use of an open-source license variation that precludes use of software for evil purposes.

The matter illustrates the tensions between the sometimes free-wheeling ways of open-source programming world and the buttoned-down corporate realms where open-source software is no longer unusual. This particular issue bubbled up at Google Code, a site that hosts open-source projects from Google and others.

Google only permits software governed by a limited list of widely used open-source licenses to be hosted at Google Code; one that's permitted is the … Read more