Monday, May 26, 2008
New RIA Benchmark Compares Web Technologies
byRecently I have been fascinated by a new breed of benchmarking tools for Rich Internet Applications (also known as RIAs). As developers push more application functionality and interactivity to the browser, the speed and consistency of page rendering has become critical to a successful Web 2.0 app. Benchmarks such as Acid3, Bubblemark, and Census provide tests to challenge not just the browser makers but also Web technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, SVG, and Java.
The new benchmark on the block is GUIMark, a self-described “RIA benchmark.” From the blog:
GUIMark takes a different approach by trying to benchmark the types of UI elements common in our Web 2.0 world. This includes things like vector redraws, alpha transparencies, text reflow, bitmap motion, and 9 scale slicing rules.
Did you catch all that? What’s unique about tests like these is how they compare not just browsers but different browser technologies such as Flex or Silverlight. This gives developers hard numbers for assessing which Web technologies they should be considering.
You can check out the reference test for a taste of the full suite, which currently includes tests of HTML, Flex, Java Swing, and Silverlight. And the results? Believe it or not, IE 7 soundly beats Safari, and plug-ins run much faster on XP than OS X. These results are intriguing, considering the trouncing Internet Explorer received on other benchmarks.
While I’m not quite ready to throw away my MacBook Pro just yet, I’m glad to see another tool to help push for better RIA performance.
