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Opera Javascript Speed affected by chosen Opera Appearance Skin

Friday, 24. April 2009, 23:03:08

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The oddest thing just occurred. I tested the javascript speed in Opera 10 (build 1426), using my favourite javascript application (the YASS described in an earlier blog post), and a very crude way of benchmarking (counting seconds while waiting for the application to finish solving the given Sudoku puzzle).

With my Opera 9.63 configuration, my javascript application takes roughly 8 seconds to solve the puzzle. In comparison: MS Internet Explorer 8 requires roughly 15 seconds. To my amazement, the new Opera 10 required even more than that: nearly 24 seconds.

Now, for reasons only known to me, I performed that test before I switched Opera's Appearance Skin from Opera Standard to Windows Native (yes, I run a MS Windows XP Home edition on a rather fast desktop computer). After switching, something compelled me to run the test again... just to make sure I hadn't miscounted.

Lo and behold: it took the application 8 seconds again.

Huh?

So wait... the choice of the Opera Appearance Skin influences the speed of its javascript engine?

Apparently.

This might only be the case, due to my application echoing intermediate results back to the screen. However, that doesn't strike me as particularly far-fetched. Yes, it can probably run faster if the echo is done on interval, but oh my, showing the Opera Standard Skin slows down my javascript application by a factor of nearly 3...

I know some competitors who are going to love sneering at this...

Detecting the reader's language preferenceFailure Notes: new Hall of Shame for web sites and software applications

Comments

Rijk 25. April 2009, 17:41

Andre, could you file a bug and tell me the bug number? Some difference is to be expected (if the script causes the UI to update, this will be a slightly slower when transparent PNGs etc are involved), but this is rather extreme.

Omega Junior 26. April 2009, 14:50

Filed a bug report: DSK-251895.

I agree: this is rather extreme.

Hallvord R. M. Steen 5. June 2009, 14:55

Minor comment: one of Opera's real strengths is that it usually manages to keep the UI responsive, even while scripts are running. This means script execution is regularly "paused" to check if any UI action is "pending", to put it simply. This feature likely has something to do with what you observed, though if a skin kills JS performance like that I'd say that skin has some serious issues.. :-p

Omega Junior 7. June 2009, 14:42

That's a neat feature, and I hope it works on systems the Opera testing team tests... because it's never worked on any of my systems (and I went through several, with different kinds of CPUs and amounts of RAM and amount of hard drives and all that). Load one tab, and the entire UI stops, to resume responding only after the tab stopped loading. Currently I assume this only affects me, because everyone else seems to boast great UI responses.

Omega Junior 7. June 2009, 14:58

Update: I just checked with Opera 10 beta 1: the javascript speed problem persists.

Omega Junior 10. June 2009, 19:24

With Opera 10 beta 1, the problem with one loading tab blocking all responsiveness in the rest of the browser, seems solved. Yay!

Charles Schloss 25. August 2009, 17:30

i have also noticed this, tho it is a very small difference (at least on Opera 9.64 have not tried 10

Omega Junior 28. August 2009, 00:01

A small difference this may be, quite possibly, since I seem to be the first to notice. My Sudoku Solver seems to write back to screen so often, that those small bits start adding up.

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