JaegerMonkey is the new JavaScript engine coming in Firefox 4, and it looks to be as big a jump in performance as TraceMonkey once was (relative to the pre-Chrome days). You can try out JaegerMonkey in special preview Firefox builds. More »
Chrome only: Google recently added on-demand script blocking to its browser’s capabilities, and NotScript is the extension that puts that blocking in your hands. In other words, it’s an early Chrome equivalent of NoScript for Firefox. More »
Mozilla’s home-brewed JavaScript engine for its Firefox browsers, TraceMonkey, has impressed us before, but in the raw benchmark game, it’s starting to fall behind its competitors. To up its game, Firefox’s developers are building a new engine, dubbed JägerMonkey. More »
“Readable” bookmarklets are all the rage right now (amongst browser nerds, at least), and TidyRead is an intriguing multi-platform variation. It streamlines and simplifies text from any browser with a bookmarklet or Firefox extension. More »
Reader Jerry Lue read our feature on creating smarter keyword bookmarks, and took the initiative to create a set of smart bookmarks that interact with Google Translate. These keyword bookmarks either translate the current page, or even translate a phrase directly from the Firefox location bar. More »
Safari 4 Beta sprinted from the gate with a claim to being “3x faster than Firefox” at JavaScript rendering. We’re calling Apple’s ante and updating our browser speed tests with the latest builds.
Microsoft’s latest release from its Live Labs, Thumbtack, aims at some of the same bookmarking territory covered by Delicious, Google Bookmarks, and other store-and-check-later services. It’s not quite as fleshed out as those services in terms of functionality (or bug testing), but its JavaScript-heavy interface makes for easier, mouse-driven organisation and relatively useful page storage. Select text and hit Thumbtack’s bookmarklet, and everything seems to work fine. Hit the bookmarklet on a fresh web page, however, and any JavaScript or coding on the page seems to confuse the pop-up box, though the page stores in stripped-down text form. The box/”gadget” view of your bookmarks is a nice change from the standard vertical list of links, but dragging and dropping between collections can be a bit problematic. Thumbtacks looks like it will be worth checking out later when it’s had a bit more time in the oven. The service is free to use, requires just a username to get started (so, fair warning, your bookmarks may be public).
Thumbtack [Microsoft Live Labs via ReadWriteWeb]CNET put the just-released Firefox 3.1 beta 2 and its speedy TraceMonkey JavaScript engine up against the most recent developer build of Google Chrome. The results from a SunSpider test were Firefox edging out Chrome by the teeny-tiniest of margins, making it basically a tie if you give any room for error. [Chart and data via WebWare]
