This document explains the various browser and network components and how each piece can impact performance when benchmarking. The document also compares the capabilities and limitations of various benchmarking tools, as well as ways to design tests to avoid these issues. Also included is an overview of instructions on how to set up a benchmarking environment to conduct some of the testing processes discussed in the document. See the performance analysis in action: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=144386
Here’s a quote from part of an article written by Arstechnica on the whitepaper:
“Just before announcing that Internet Explorer 8 has been finalized, Microsoft has released a new report titled "Measuring Browser Performance: Understanding issues in benchmarking and performance analysis." The document explains the various browser and network components and how each piece can impact performance when benchmarking, capabilities and limitations of various benchmarking tools, as well as ways to design tests to avoid these issues. What makes this report extremely dubious is the chart that is buried at the bottom. It shows IE8 outperforming Firefox 3.05 and Chrome 1.0, something that no other test on the Internet has ever shown before.”
The chart mentioned is a summary of browser load times of the top-25 websites according to comScore, where IE8 wins out most of the time.
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