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Ben Firshman has ported the vNES into Javascript. Seriously… in JavaScript. While that’s pretty cool itself what it really shows is the blinding fast speed at which Google Chrome can handle JavaScript. In Google Chrome you get Full speed, 60 FPS emulation. Firefox… about 10 FPS. Now you can goof off with some cool old school NES games right from your browser… as long as your browser is Chrome (COMEON GOOGLE… GET EXTENSIONS IN THERE SO I CAN SWITCH!)

http://benfirshman.com/projects/jsnes/

Firefox uses SQLITE databases to store lots of its settings. By the time the databases grow and Firefox starts working slowly. It will take a lot of time to load during startup, the overall speed will be effected, and browsing Histories will be too slow. This is very common problem and it occurs largely because of fragmentation of databases.

SpeedyFox takes care of any database fragmentation and thus makes Firefox zippier. You might not see a difference if you try SpeedyFox on a fresh Firefox install, it works great after you have been using Firefox for some time. Just close Firefox, run SpeedyFox and point it to the profile you want to optimize.

Once installed, SpeedyFox automatically detects your Firefox’s default profile. If you have more than one profile, you can select the one you want to optimize from the drop-down menu. If you have portable version of Firefox, choose your profile path manually by selecting “Custom…” profile. All you have to do is hit the Speed Up Firefox button.

The optimization process can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour depending on how large your databases are. The whole optimization process is safe as it does not effect your history, bookmarks, passwords, etc.

Download SpeedyFox here.

Mashable does a great writeup on why IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On. The serious downsides to IE6 are:

- CSS v2 (Cascading Style Sheets): This is the code that enables almost all design on the web. In other words, designers have to hack up websites just to make them load in IE6.

- PNG Transparency: A great deal of .png images don’t display correctly in IE6. It basically kills using them in design work.

- General Security: Just like not updating your virus software can get you riddled with spyware, not updating your browser can be a gateway to attacks. There are even code snippets that will shut down IE6. I won’t tell you what they are, but you can find them on Wikipedia. It’s unstable.

- Digg , Facebook , and YouTube (soon): Both Digg and YouTube have announced that they’re cutting back on IE6 support. Facebook already gives you suggestions for better browsers if you try to log in with IE6. You won’t be able to Digg articles or browse YouTube via IE6 in the near future.

You should read through the entire article though if this is something that is of interest to you because they go into HTML5 as well as how IE6 is hurting web development progression in general. As a “web guy” I can’t wait for IE6 to die. When a client says they want to target IE6 (I usually say “current release + one version back” but sometimes they object) I utterly cringe because I know what a PITA it will be.

Catch the full article on Mashable.

Firefox 3.5 can tell websites where you’re located so you can find info that’s more relevant and more useful.

I’ve been pretty excited about the entry of the Chrome browser into the browser wars. For starters it has the full force of Google behind it. Secondly, since they essentially launched the AJAX revolution with GMail Google is keenly aware of JavaScript performance. Let’s put it this way… very fast JavaScript only makes sites which make heavy use of JavaScript more useable. Read that as “Google wants to web-enable everything”. Back in March of this year Google released a faster beta version of Chrome that boasted some performance enhancements. However, since Chrome is not your typical stay-in-beta-forever Google product (I’m looking at you GMail!!!!) it wasn’t something most users downloaded. Well, with their 2.x release you now get their 25-35% speed increase in benchmarking tests, along with a few other pluses (most of which other browsers have had for some time now). Seriously though, the real story here is the V8 JavaScript engine and it’s performance… which in a word is… SICK!

Ok so let’s look at what else you get first:

• Improved New Tab Page: The most requested feature from users was the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section.
• Full Screen Mode: If you’ve ever given a presentation or watched a large video using Google Chrome, you might have wished you could use every last pixel on your screen for the content. Now you can hide the title bar and the rest of the browser window by hitting F11 or selecting the option in the Tools menu.
• Form Autofill: Filling out your information in forms over and over again can be tedious. Form autofill helps by showing information you’ve previously entered into the same form fields automatically. If at any point you want to clear out your information, that’s easy to do from the Tools menu.

Cool… most of that other modern browsers already have. But how much faster is it? Well, hit up the V8 Benchmark Suite – version 4 in your favorite browsers and see. You can get the full scoop on what each of the tests mean by visiting the site, but here’s the results on my system:

Chrome 2.0.172.28:
Score: 3759
Richards: 3475
DeltaBlue: 3925
Crypto: 3112
RayTrace: 4104
EarleyBoyer: 5980
RegExp: 1342
Splay: 7590

FireFox v3.0.10
Score: 287

Richards: 257
DeltaBlue: 314
Crypto: 163
RayTrace: 253
EarleyBoyer: 352
RegExp: 197
Splay: 692

As you can see Chrome’s v2.x release spanks tha pants off FireFox v3 in raw JavaScript performance. Of course, Chrome doesn’t offer the full experience of FireFox. Namely, it’s lacked extensions. While I appreciate the speed provided (and yes… GMail IS faster in Chrome) I don’t know that I can live without Adblock or Better Gmail 2. However, if Chrome gets extensions prior to the latest beta of FireFox making out of the door then it could be a serious contenter.

Read more about Chrome on it’s features page and if you feel so inclinded grab a copy for yourself from the download site.