It does a number of tests by applying MooTools, JQuery, Prototype, YUI and Dojo to an HTML document and reports the total times of each library at the end.

Just out of curiosity I applied the test using Firefox 3 and IE6 (my employer’s browser of choice).

Take a look at the results:

The difference in the times is staggering! Firefox out-performs by at least 200% (and way more for some of the frameworks).

Here’s the kicker

Because many companies continue to use IE6 as their corporate browser (largely because their standard disk images use the default browser that comes with XP SP1) serious web developers are forced support IE6 to at least a minimal degree.

I don’t like IE6 – for personal projects such as this site, my support for IE6 really is a token gesture (but I still endeavour to make the site visible in IE6). Sadly for commercial projects when as wider range of browsers need to be supported to keep a client happy, a web-developer ignores IE6 at their peril.

Even the edit window in Wordpress doesn’t resize gracefully in IE6. Half of what I’m editing is hiddent behind other div containers and I don’t blame Wordpress for that. IE6 stinks.

According to W3School’s browser usage statistics, 14% of their visitors were using IE6 in May 2009. IE6 is like a bad cough that just won’t go away and I blame narrow-minded and lazy IT departments for its perpetuation. Get with the times, you Luddites.