Question about 1PSW4's new Web Mode

JDW

When Chrome for iOS came out, I read a good number of reviews on it that said it is not quite as fast as Mobile Safari in terms of JavaScript performance. Apparently, there are some technical reasons why which seem to center on the underlying fact that Apple wants to keep all the speed to its own browser and not let any competing browser steal its thunder. My assumption therefore is that the new Web Mode browser in 1PSW4 probably has the same speed limitation as Chrome, Mercury, or any other iOS browser, is that right?



Obviously, I've long detested the fact that Apple has prevented AgileBits from streamlining 1PSW3 with Mobile Safari as nicely as Apple allows you to integrate 1PSW3 with Safari on the Mac. So the new Web Mode is a potential candidate to replace Mobile Safari on my iPad, and no doubt for countless others too. And yet, despite all the great features of Chrome for iOS, one big reason I've not replaced Mobile Safari with Chrome is because of the speed issue -- Mobile Safari is much faster when it comes to JavaScript performance. (Of course, there is the Apple-imposed ridiculous limitation that prevents non-Safari browsers from being set as the Default Browser, but that is a secondary reason for me to stick with Mobile Safari).



All said, I'm merely curious about performance of your Web Mode browser, versus Mobile Safari (and to a lesser extent, versus Chrome and/or Mercury for iOS), prior to upgrading my 1PSW3 app to 1PSW4 on my iPad3.



Thank you for your time!

khad

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]If you're talking about the [/font][/color][url="http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/nitro_ios_43"]Nitro engine not being in UIWebView[/url][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif], you're correct. But that hasn't stopped Chrome for iOS from being extremely popular and useful. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />[/font][/color]

JDW

Please don't get me wrong. I really like one Password, and I've been a registered user for a long time. I currently use version 3 on my iPad and on my iMac. You folks do an outstanding job on your software, and your support is incredible too. I'm sure your Web Mode is quite good. I was just wondering if you've run any performance comparisons between mobile Safari and/or Chrome and/or other browsers?



Thanks.

khad

I don't have any specifics handy but it is pretty easy to run JavaScript benchmarks on each browser. For daily use it should be about the same as Chrome I would imagine.

jhollington

I haven't bothered with scientific comparisons of each browser because they're available elsewhere (already in Chrome vs Safari, for instance), and they don't actually [i]tell[/i] you anything (as the old saying goes, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics").



The theoretical performance issue has to do only with Safari getting access to a faster [i]Javascript[/i] engine. Other aspects of browsing such rendering of normal HTML and images should perform about the same. So in real-world use, your mileage may vary depending on how many Javascript-heavy sites you regularly access and exactly what that Javascript is doing. The exact device you're using may be a factor here as well, since with newer and faster iOS devices, the additional performance added by Safari's Nitro Javascript engine is a diminishing return.



Personally, I've found no noticeable performance differences between Safari, Chrome or the 1Password browser for any of the sites I hang out at. If I actually pulled out a stopwatch and clocked it to the tenth-of-a-second, Safari would probably be faster in some cases, but if I can't tell the difference, I don't really care.

cpabster

My guess is you're talking a few (hundred at best) [b]millisecond[/b] difference in various operations.