c69's Browser Pit

CU-RTC-Web is said to avoid pitfalls* of current WebRTC spec (reliance on SDP, browser tie-in, codecs tie-in, and so on) and promices* to allow connecting browsers to any other media - be it skype, voip phones, security video-cameras or whatever you can imagine:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2012/08/06/customizable-ubiquitous-real-time-communication-over-the-web-cu-rtc-web.aspx

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in a preview form. But it will replace your IE9, so before installing it just ensure you know what you are doing. Everything went smooth during installation, but it took like 5-6 minutes to get from black screen to my desktop. Was a bit scary.

Overall, it looks just like IE9, only with ugly scrollbars. But not let the view fool you. Under the hood its a friking monster.
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Chalkboard/ - 9 seconds in IE10 (HWA on by default) vs 40 second in Opera (HWA on) vs 500~750 seconds in Chrome and Firefox (HWA off).

Very good rendering of css3, unique font rendering capabilities ( http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/OpenType/ ), and responsive interface under js load ( http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/RoboHornetPro/ ).

JS engine (Chakra) was improved, with full ES5.1 support added, but it still cannot beat V8 (in V8 bench), though it was not a top priority, as we can see. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/06/13/advances-in-javascript-performance-in-ie10-and-windows-8.aspx

of course, there is benchmarketing, as always: IE9 has had good audio quality (if you remember Cut the Rope HTML5), IE10 supposedly improves it, which can supposedly seen via (warning: very loud music!)http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Browser/AudioExplosion/ , but when you go there in Firefox/Opera - you will hear nothing, because... *.ogg file is missing from server ?!

also, there is no spellchecking for some reason (even at IE Test drive: https://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Browser/SpellChecking/Default.html), but maybe its a bug of win7 preview, or this feature requires win8.

http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/proposed-changes/apis-under-development/webrtc-tab-content-capture

tl;dr you can share video of your tab, instead of webcam.

When a browser suddenly shows 3 times better results that its closest competitor, people will either dish it as blatant self-promotion (see user comments on most of tech news sites) OR dig deeper.
Alon Zakai from Mozilla provides some insights:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/08/no-single-benchmark-for-the-web/
also
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=785079#c2

TL;DR: its same old synthetic v8 + at least 3 of 5 new real-web tests finetuned for Chrome. (GB emulator uses ROM with 3d effects instead of game, C++toJS is done with Mandreel instead of Emscripten, Box2D port is not the best or most popular port)

not only does Chrome have trouble running the Emscripten version quickly, but that benchmark also exposes a bug in Chrome where the tab consistently crashes when the benchmark is reloaded

i loled hard.

The initial load though is not what I think should be measured. Octane in my opinion does not run the GB-EMU test long enough for runtime performance to be measured over initial compilation time. This is what I'm afraid of: browsers trying to aim for initial compilation speed instead performance of the script running for hours on end.

+1

Before you read links:

1. localStorage is FINE.
2. it has its limitations
3. never RELY on it, try to keep it small. (like very small)

If you follow those advices - your life will be easy and bright, if you ignore this wise scripture - thou shalt suffer.

many reasonable warnings from Andrea Giammarchi /Nokia
http://webreflection.blogspot.com/2012/03/whats-localstorage-about.html

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