Download Firefox 3.5 from official website or simply update your current version via updates.
Firefox 3.5 Officially Released
After 5 beta releases Mozilla finally released new Firefox 3.5 claiming it is up to twice faster than it's predecessor when dealing with Java scripts. Other features include awesome bar, private browsing such as in Internet Explorer 8, improved security and memory footprint, instant website ID, restore session and more. Otherwise graphically Firefox 3.5 has mostly the same appearance with a few details changed.
Download Firefox 3.5 from official website or simply update your current version via updates.
Download Firefox 3.5 from official website or simply update your current version via updates.
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It does promised performance improvements, but i also noticed a few poor areas:
1. It starts up pretty slowly, at one time it even need to take a full 10 seconds before the windows even pop up...
2. I noticed that Firefox's rendition of intensive Flash games do not improve significantly. For Facebook applications which uses Flash such as Pet Society, the resources usage often peaks at over 200,000 memory consumption, at worst even up to 350,000.
Just a thought, though. Otherwise Firefox 3.5 looks pretty solid.
@Be James
Thanks again for you valuable findings about Firefox. This is appreciated feedback.
Majority of these "twice faster" improvents refer to java scripts which is not used in all websites at all, and therefore in real world such improvements does not have much effect really. You found out that yourself at Flash performance and you were absolutly right at finding this out. Sharp eye!
More or less all these "improvements" and "WOWS" are marketing strategies to gain popularity over competition. For example when you visit official Mozilla website, you see a speed comparison chart of former Firefox versions up to now where Firefox 3.5 seems to perform roughly 16x faster than Firefox 2. Does anyone have a feeling that F3.5 is actually 16 times faster than former F2? I hope you know what I am trying to say. If you ask me these charts are more or less useless. The best thing to do is to try some web browsers yourself to find out manually which is faster and better for yourself. This is the most relevant experience you can get. Those "16" times improvements refer only to one small part of browser performance in certain conditions but not to general performance at all.
Do not bother about 10 seconds delay James. If it only happened once, than it was probably some bug, memory overload (due to superfetch) or your hard drive was very occupied by doing something else.
Honestly, i'd never even bothered to care about what they said all these times...all i did is as what you said: just grab a copy of the browser setup file and install, then see for myself it's performance. Articles on web kept on saying that Opera browser is not as bad as it was and that testing shows that it is very solid, but when i tried out their browser, it even failed to load some of the websites i considered popular!
IMO, you're right about the startup part, Thomas. The first few times it took some 10 seconds to start up, but then the waiting time decreased to an average of 5 seconds for the last few attempts. I guess this is where superfetch kicks in...=D
@Be James
Do you mean it used to take 10 sec before and now it takes only 5 sec, or you mean that Firefox loads in 5 seconds after you already launched it several times after computer has been turned on? This is huge difference you know. In application launch time we know threee different loading times so called "cold, warm and hot start". The difference is this.
Cold start means that certain application is loaded for the first time after computer has been turned on. In that scenario application is fully loaded from the hard drive and this takes the longest time.
"Warm start" is what we call when application has been launched for the second time since computer has been powered on. In that scenario application is partly loaded from HDD and partly from RAM itself. This takes usually 2x less time to launch.
"Hot start" is what we call when application is launch for the third time or more. In that case this application no longer starts from hard drive itself, but fully from RAM and this takes the shortest time of all three starts.
I hope I did not write this too complicated. But I wanted to show you difference between launching application for the first time and for the third or fourth time.
So if you were talking about that scenario that Firefox launches for the first time in 10 seconds and than after a few more launches takes "only" 5 seconds (computer must not be rebooted), than this is due to cold-warm-hot starts. (BTW if FF loads in hot start in 5 seconds, this is way too longer and there is something not right).
Man...this is written way too complicated :). I hope you understand what I wanted to tell.
You are doing right about creating your opinion about products based on your own experince after trying them out yourself. This is the best way companies do no "screw" you with their "shiny" advertisements.
The 1 thing they finally added that I've been missing in FF. + buttom next to the tabs so I can just click to create a new tab. I don't use FF as often as I do IE so never learned the hotkeys.
@Brian
Hotkey for opening new tab is ctrl+t. This combination works with most web browsers. I use this hotkey all the time. I takes too much time to even grab mouse to do it. :) wink
@Brian
Double clicking on the tab bar also works.
But I think useing the hotkeys for opening new tabs (Ctrl+T) and windows (Ctrl+N) is faster :D Like Thomas said.
Think that you guys have missed out on the 'close tabs' shortcut key, which is just as useful...it's Ctrl+W, if anyone is interested.
I discovered that combo ctrl+w yesterday. Unfortunately unintentially when I closed 3 importants tabs.
But this combo are essential for people who spent hours behind computers every day. I am really glad they exist.
@Thomas
You can open them again by going to History -> Recently Closed Tabs -> And select the one you want to open again or you can use this shortcut key Ctrl+Shift+T.
@medjam8
Thanks for suggestion. I did this the first thing after I lost tabs, but I usually open history by ctrl+h combo. I tried your combo in Opera and it really opened last closed tab. This is even better than going directly to history and search among all those links. Excellent mate.
I'm a big fan of the new release, I think they have improved everything they set out to do. You definitely need to learn the shortcut keys, it will make your life so much easier.
I`ve always use Firefox, but if you want speed, I recommend chrome, its super fast
Firefox 3.5 is really faster than the previous versions IMO, but have a look at Safari !
It is really difficult to say which browser is faster. I am using Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari on daily basis and they are all fast.
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