Browsers re-tested in the IE9 Testing Center, different results surface

Update: Retested Mozilla Firefox w/ proper trunk build, thanks Kirkburn for the heads up (and schooling).

Shortly after the release of the Windows Internet Explorer Testing Center – a site housing a comprehensive browser feature implementation test suite – there have been some grumblings regarding the accuracy of the data within. More specifically, Microsoft performed a comparison of its Internet Explorer 9 browser technology – currently in developmental stages – to stale builds of Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, and … that browser no one cares about (sadly) – Opera.

Sounds like a valid argument to me. I decided to re-test using builds of Mozilla Firefox “Namoroka” (1.9.2.5pre), Mozilla Firefox “Minefield” 3.7a5pre, Google Chromium (6.0.397.0/46552), and Apple Safari w/ a newer WebKit engine (r58804) that matched release dates with Internet Explorer 9 (May 5, 2010). After clicking around the site a hundred or so times in each browser, the results… changed. Each browser made noticeable improvements in areas like CSS3 and DOM; Apple barely beat out Chrome for the most improvement, while Firefox proved to be a bit slower (but error free). The numbers, Ed Bott’s favorite meal, are below. The takeaway here isn’t the numbers – forgive me if I made a slight error – but the fact that you can’t compare bleeding edge browser builds with stale release builds. That’s just not fair.