

Ringmark tests out Mobile Safari

Source: Facebook The Ringmark performance tests are now fully open source according to a post by Facebook's Matt Kelly. Ringmark is designed to test mobile browsers for functionality and performance and then classifies the browser in one of three rings. Previously, Facebook had open sourced the tests of Ringmark and contributed them to the W3C, but had not open sourced the server-side code which helped run the test.

Now, after cleaning up the code over the last months, the company's developers were happy to open source the rest of Ringmark and the rng.io site which hosts the test. The site, which includes PHP and uses node.js for some interactions, is available in source form on GitHub, and is licensed under a 3 clause BSD licence. The site will require an HTTP server with PHP on Mac OS X, Linux or Windows to run.

The developers have also been enhancing the Ringmark tests, adding the first pass of their performance tests, specifically for drawing. A Ring 1 browser must be able to animate 50 sprites at 30 frames per second and a Ring 2 browser must animate 100 sprites at the same frame rate. The developers are now looking for help from 2D game designers in particular to help create and contribute further tests. "App developers - and particularly game developers - are completely dependent on a fast browser. If not, their game won't perform well and users won't play it" notes Kelly.

(djwm)