Squirrel + Fish = Fast JavaScript in WebKit
Jun 3, 01:24 pm
As I indicated in an Earlier post, if you are interested in cutting-edge browser features, its a good idea to track the progress of the WebKit project by trying and testing nightly builds. According to a recent post on the WebKit blog, current nightly builds include a brand new JavaScript rendering engine, called SquirrelFish.
This new engine is better, according to the WebKit gang, because at its core it uses a bytecode stream instead of a tree-walking interpreter. What this means for you and I is that its much faster than the previous JS engine — 1.6 times better, according to their benchmarks:
Running the build myself showed an approximate 35% improvement, based on overall JS speed in the SunSpider benchmark, so mileage may vary. In any case, if you visit JavaScript-laden sites very often (and there are many these days), it may be worth the effort to run a WebKit nightly.
Posted by Chris Fonnesbeck