Omar Abdel-Wahab

The browser death-match is gaining more heat with Google, Apple, Mozilla releasing their browsers in Q2 and Q3 2009. While this is a very good thing for Internet savvy users, it's becoming harder to pick the right companion for your daily Internet picnic. ACID test could help you benchmark how your browser will react to sites offering cutting-edge styling ideas and tricks, and head-to-head comparisons can be very useful to see what new features every browser is offering. An interesting tool called Peacekeeper which measures your browser's scripting capabilities could tell better how your browser will perform in a Web 2.0 world. I decided to take this test myself so I benchmarked Firefox 3.5 RC2 under Mac OS X Leopard (10.4) and it scored a decent 1716 points while Safari 4.0.1 on the same machine scored a whopping 3479! Quite close to the recorded scores at FutureMark's website. A quick look at the rest of the browser's score revealed the most expected result: Internet Explorer (both 7.0 and 8.0) come at the bottom of the best performers list. Congratulations Microsoft for the immense effort you've put into making the slowest browser ever! With that said, can anyone beat Safari 4.0 under Mac OS X? Give me your feedback please.