I've been relatively unhappy with the performance of Firefox on my new Intel iMac. The Rosetta technology is a great tool for moving PowerPC apps over to the new platform, but for something as big and bloated as a web browser, well there's really no choice but to go native.
I was surprised that Firefox has not yet come out with a universal binary version of the browser. At the Apple WWDC developer conference last year one of the sessions on porting apps to the new platform featured a live demonstration of the very minor changes needed to get Firefox to build.
I just discovered that there is a test version of the browser that is built as a universal binary. OK, so it's still alpha software but I need the extra speed. Besides, this isn't anything new for me. I first started using the Netscape Navigator browser at some sickening low version, 0.89 I believe, back in the day when you could get almost daily releases of the app.
So this post is now being written with the "Deer Park" browser. Wow, this thing is fast. I can't believe how fast pages are loading now. Even our top secret LOB site is rendering pages at breathtaking speed. I guess this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. After all, the old PowerBooks that we all have at work are aging machines.
