Hands on with blazingly quick Firefox 3.5; RC due next week
Mozilla Corp. has delayed the release candidate of Firefox 3.5 from this week ‘til next, but NBR's tests reveal it'll be worth the wait - this fox is blazingly fast.
Typically the browser itself will ship two weeks after the release candidate, allowing for final bugs to be fixed, which means the company will be pushing it to reach its end-of-month deadline for Firefox 3.5's final code.
Your correspondent has been (completely unscientifically) testing the 3.5 Beta 4 version with Windows Vista, and can confirm that the new browser is quick enough to warrant a ticket.
Thanks to the new TraceMonkey Javascript engine under the hood, the browser eats video and flash intensive web sites for breakfast, loading them in half the time of Firefox’s current version, 3.0. As an added bonus, no additional plugins are now needed to view flash or video content.
Google Chrome and Apple Safari are still the browsers to beat when it comes to speed however. ComputerWorld notes that Firefox 3.5 “is almost twice as slow as Chrome 2.0 at the benchmark with a recorded time of 1,225.6-millisecond to Chrome 2.0's 704.0. If speed is what matters the most to you, Chrome is the browser for you.”
Apparently a memory cycle collector is now in place to free up memory no longer used by modules that requested it but failed to release it properly, but my experience with 21 tabs open and 6 add-ons installed shows it’s still something of a system hog, eating up 430,000k of memory after an hour and a half with the tabs open. Closing them did free up memory however, and others have praised its memory fixes.
The web standards compliance test Acid3 does show impressive test results for Firefox 3.5 Beta4 of 93/100 compared Firefox 3.0.0.10 with 71/100, although both Google Chrome and Apple Safari are reported to score 100/100, which may or may not explain their speed advantage.
Other cool features include an improved search bar, with the autocomplete list that appears when you start entering letters in the location bar no longer restricted to web addresses but also looks into bookmark and history page titles and tags, making it more comprehensive.
Then there’s the ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation, which is pretty nifty.
Ultimately, Firefox 3.5 looks like it goes a long way to reclaiming its crown as the browser to beat in the face of stiff competition from Chrome and Safari. While the new Firefox isn’t quite as fast as the aforementioned, it is of comparable speed, and offers agenda-setting features – and customisability that the other two have a long, long way to go to catch up.
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Comments and questions20
I really appreciate the OS integration on the 3.5. Touchpad gestures finally work which was a major reason that I did not like it before. One you get used to the built in gestures it is hard to go back. Also being able to get my google toolbar back is great, really missed that in Safari.
I have used FF since the early days and until 3 weeks ago I swore I would never change. Chrome is FAST
Just wanted to clarify that a browser's ACID, ACID 2, or ACID 3 score is simply a measure of how fully it implements the specifications for several popular web standards. A lot of it is dealing with obscure corner cases. It has no positive correlation with performance. Indeed, one could argue that a higher ACID score may hint toward lower performance, due to needing to spend more time checking special cases than a naive (incomplete) implementation.
Not just fast but nice to use and easy on the eyes.
I liked Opera 9.62 a lot too but had to revert back to IE for too many sites unfortunately.
IE7 looks like a joke in comparison to the others and I didn't even bother to look at IE8.
IE8 is very good compared to IE7
I'm a web designer and developer. I use Safari as an everyday browser, FF for testing and editing (it has heaps of 3rd party plug in support), Chrome and IE6-8 for testing.
I think it might be fair to say IE has had it's day. If the new version of Windows due out later this year turns out to be like Vista - then Microshaft.. sorry i mean Microsoft are in big trouble.
I can see in the next 2 years the web and mobile being totally dominated by Apple and Google.
After spending some time with Firefox, IE8, Chrome and Safari.....the choice became much easier to make.. Firefox without a doubt.
If speed is your only criteria then Chrome is your browser. However, You're comparing the speed of two bullets which makes little difference in real world usage.
IE8 is very good all around until I got to adding functionality. IE plug-ins leave much to be desired and in some cases will co$t you.
When considering functionality and customization, I came to the same conclusion that Mitchell did. Chrome and Safari have some major work to do if they plan on closing the gap with Firefox.
I've tried them all, but I'm not going to go without my Firefox extensions, so the others have a loooonnnggg way to go if they want me to use their product on a regular basis. I'd stick with Firefox 2 over the others for this very reason, but good thing I don't have to. I'll live with being 500 ms slower and having the functionality and custimization I really want!!!
I personally have benched chrome, 1, 2 firefox 3.5pre (nightlies) against each other throughout firefox 3.5 development.
The difference is now Firefox 3.5 is on par with chrome 1. The times overall times are now neck and neck and only vary by 20ms. However, Chrome 2 is now twice as fast as chrome 1 (meaning, it does the bench in half the time).
But real world usage... i really can't tell that much of a difference between chrome 2 and Firefox 3.5, its slightly better, in only SOME situations. While at times, it feels like a dead draw.
Since they share a few of the same developers, Chrome and Firefox are starting to look alike.
IE8 is faster than IE7 but it is no where near as fast as chrome or ff3.0.10. The sad thing is M$ advertises IE8 as being the best innovated browser... Yea... Right.... IE8 sucks!
This article is OK but it sounds like the author doesn't really understand web technologies:
"Thanks to the new TraceMonkey Javascript engine under the hood, the browser eats video and flash intensive web sites for breakfast"
How can a javascript engine make video or flash work any faster?
Flash is a browser plug-in technology which means the bulk of the work is carried out independently of the browser.
Also, javascript will make 0% improvement on video (except for adding an interface to the new html5 video tag which is only featured on a few sites at the moment).
"As an added bonus, no additional plugins are now needed to view flash or video content."
The html5 support for the video tag enables ogg theora video to be played out of the box but I'm pretty sure that Flash content will require the Adobe flash plug-in.
The Flash plug-in is proprietary so I really doubt that Mozilla will be shipping it with Firefox.
I love Firefox, but I don't appreciate people being mislead about what the new version will achieve.
Hi Guy,
Thanks for your input. As you can tell, I'm by no means a web developer and not an expert on how the technology works.
If you can explain what technology the browser uses that has lead to much improved video playback that would be great.
Also if you go to the Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 page: here:http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5b4/whatsnew/
You'll see that it is Mozilla that claims you can now watch video without the need for "any plugins or external media players" so if it's not down to technological improvements, perhaps they have inked a deal with Adobe.
Kind regards,
Mitchell Hall
If Google's Chrome or M$'s IE8 -- DID take up a plug-in/add-on function, there would more than likely be an extension like adblock [plus] someone ports over for it.
...They would create the very tool that could set them out of a job (or a department anyways)
...its not even in there interest to do these things...
Technically the Mozilla site is correct. What they mean is IF a web sites switched to ogg for video, no plugin is required. Firefox 3.5 will be the first browser that supports one video format without a plugin. As ogg is royalty free websites can save money over real format / Flash / Quicktime / WMV. It opens the door to websites it will take a while before the sites cross it.
Mitchell, as I mentioned in my post - video is delivered via the new HTML5 video tag and the OGG theora open source codec. Flash is irrelevant.
I'm really glad you like Firefox and have obviously noticed a speed increase but maybe next time you should run the article by a web developer before publishing it.
Unfounded positive claims on a browsers performance can cause future negative reviews because users don't actually see the speed increases in the reported areas and feel disappointed.
Guy, sites like http://skycitycinemas.co.nz/ and YouTube both load much quicker than with FF 3.0, but as I said, it wasn't scientific testing.
It's a good idea to run stories by a web developer to avoid sloppiness over explaining why it's faster, so thanks for your input.
Cheers,
Mitchell
The main reason why I will not use IE is that when you click to open a new tab it sits there for an extremely long time before the new tab is usable. A new tab in Firefox opens almost immediately.
Did you guys enable javascript tracing on your firefox 3.5 tests?
Checkout: https://wiki.mozilla.org/JavaScript:TraceMonkey
It is just a question of proper compilation.
And compilation is a thing you can do with Mozilla Firefox but that you cannot do with all the competition.
Check at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=195473&package_id=231607
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