A newer version of this comparison, which compares IE 6 and Firefox 1.0, is available.
Browser performance results from P3 500MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, Windows NT4 WS. Numbers are in milliseconds.
Last update: 2/19/2003.
Test IE 5.5 Mozilla 1.3b Opera 7.01 Flash 6 *
DOM - Create and append 60 190 561 -
DOM - Get elements by id 190 230 80 -
DOM - Assign a class 40 171 1903 -
DOM - Assign HTML 311 490 4436 -
DOM - Change background 50 231 151 -
DOM - Remove first child 90 130 2874 -
DOM - Change display to inline 50 270 9073 -
DOM - Clone and append 130 220 160 -
DOM - Get offsetWidth 571 151 2574 -
DOM - Assign onclick 30 60 100 -
DOM - Set attribute 30 150 10054 -
DOM - Remove attribute 30 140 171 -
Core - Empty loop 80 70 301 2424
Core - Object creation 311 511 180 711
Core - Date creation 260 3725 681 941
Core - Function declaration 10 160 40 230
Core - Simple negative condition 171 160 751 3606
Core - Array creation 370 791 190 1011
Core - Array population 231 151 160 1262
Core - Array sort * 36 25 64 911
Core - Implicit string conversion 180 610 661 3205
Core - String concatenation 120 0 270 1523
Core - String indexOf 60 391 190 1883
Core - Regexp test 100 150 341 -
Core - Regexp replace 220 821 24135 -
Core - Random 40 151 90 561
Core - Modulos 200 70 621 3985
Core - Dec to Oct 80 470 220 851
Core - Hex to Dec with parseInt 70 171 190 1051
DOM tests measured each listed operation on 300 elements. Core tests ran each listed operation 10,000 times, with few exceptions.