I've tested that particular version of Opera and it didn't feel any faster than firefox. It probably doesn't matter much, though. All browsers (that fully support javascrpit) I've tried were very slow.
I don't get why it's so slow. Aren't there efficient ways to execute javascript? I mean, GUIs in python, perl and other interpreted languages aren't nearly as slow as a javascript GUI, like gmail's e-mail client. What's going on here?
No offense intended, but I challenge your claim that Javascript is slow.
I've seen (and worked on) incredibly complex javascript that is also very fast. It's a matter of writing efficient code, and avoiding some of the "pitfalls" of specific browser implementations.
I'm no javascript developer, so I see it only from the user perspective. Maybe the developers aren't doing a good job, I don't know. But all javascript gui I've tried (gmail, mibit, meebo) are far slower than any other e-mail reader, irc client and IM client I've seen, respectively. And the javascript clients lack lots of features, which I think is probably due to javascript being so hard to program.
If the goal of the web is to deliver a good platform for running programs, shouldn't javascript, DOM, or whatever it takes for writting programs for web be reviewed?
When I said I wasn't a javascript developer, I meant I never actively wrote big programs in it, but I did a bit of hacking with it. I found it much more annoying to program than python, for instance.
I don't get why it's so slow. Aren't there efficient ways to execute javascript? I mean, GUIs in python, perl and other interpreted languages aren't nearly as slow as a javascript GUI, like gmail's e-mail client. What's going on here?