Appleis Safari 3.1.1 Web browser is outperforming the new Firefox 3 browser when it comes to JavaScript rendering, and both clearly beat Microsoftis Internet Explorer. According to tests performed by Zimbra, the version of Safari 4 thatis available to developers performs even faster, and thereis still room for Apple to experiment and improve even more.

"We had high hopes that FF3GA would at least match Safari 3.1.1 in order to contend with Apple?s Safari 4 just around the corner. Infact that graph is simply those tested in our browser war series; the WebKit nightlies (engine for SF4) deliver a knockout blow," the Zimbra report said. "And it?s not just our favorite testing software that shows this; we use OpenQA Selenium which allows us to nicely calculate time rendering a page while navigating the Zimbra AJAX web-client."

Safari 4is impressive speed boost comes in part from Appleis decision to adopt the SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter. The WebKit project claims the SquirrelFish engine is 1.6 times faster than the engine in Safari 3.1.

The Zimbra test results show that Safari can hold its own against other Web browsers, and that the competition has some work to do to keep up with Apple.