DOM And CSS Performance
DOM
Since Dromaeo is still not playing nicely with the WebKit-based browsers under Windows, we have to bring out Acid3. All five Web browsers pass this conformance test scoring 100%, so we're using the completion time as a stand-in performance test. If Dromeao begins to work with WebKit-based browsers on Windows again, we'll bring it back into the fold.
Safari takes the lead at a steady 0.31 seconds. IE9 earns a second-place finish, followed closely by Chrome. Firefox places fourth and Opera, which consistently dominates Mozilla's Dromaeo DOM test suite, finishes last.
CSS
Composite Scoring
The CSS composite is the average of Microsoft's Maze Solver CSS3 benchmark and Andy Edinborough's CSS Stress Testing and Performance Profiling bookmarklet applied to a copy of the Tom's Hardware homepage hosted from our local Web server.
Safari steals the show, coming in first place at just 3.68 seconds. Chrome 20 is the second-place finisher, followed by IE9 in third place. Opera 12 places fourth, with Firefox 13 coming in last place with a time of more than 35 seconds.
Drill Down
The charts below contain the results of Maze Solver and CSS Stress Testing & Performance Profiling.
As usual, Firefox does extremely poorly in Microsoft's Maze Solver CSS3 benchmark. But Firefox also snags the win with the CSS Stress Testing & Performance Profiling benchmark on every site we apply it to. Opera, which always earns high scores in Maze Solver, has the worst times in the CSS2 test. Only Safari exhibits superior performance in both metrics.
