

Firefox 5 Details: Social Sharing, Extension Integration - peternorton
http://www.conceivablytech.com/6581/products/firefox-5-social-sharing-home-tab-pdf-viewer-tab-apps

======
w1ntermute
I hate to keep beating what appears to be a dead horse, but in my experience,
it's still alive.

Firefox _still_ has performance issues, even with version 4. Not even 5
minutes ago, I had it start using up 100% CPU on 2 cores and had to killall
it. No Flash, <5 extensions.

So hopefully Mozilla won't forget about performance in their rush to add all
these "social" features. I don't know about other people, but I probably won't
use them at all.

~~~
pcwalton
As always, if you have steps to reproduce we would love to hear them. Startup
time is still the #1 performance metric we optimize for.

~~~
dendory
Performance? Don't make me laugh. Want an easy example, here's my old blog
(don't mind the ugliness I changed it long ago) it takes over 10secs for me to
load on Firefox. Chrome loads it in 0.2secs. That's what, 5000% faster for
Chrome? No CSS at all, just pure JavaScript. Click on the "Display Next 30
entries" at the bottom of the page and notice how it takes 5-6 secs every
time, while Chrome does it instantly.

<http://dendory.net/blog.old.html>

~~~
riobard
Come on… though I don't use Firefox that much other than testing compatibility
ever since Chrome was stable enough for daily use, but FF4 is significantly
faster than 3. Your page loads in <1sec in both Chrome and FF4 on my machine.

~~~
Qz
Same for me, <1 sec for the page, as well as the more entries button.

------
jedsmith
Then: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.

Now: Every program attempts to expand until it can annoy the user's friends.

~~~
foca
Welcome to the future. Sadly, we don't have jetpacks or flying cars yet.

------
felixc
I desperately hope that the "social" features are implemented as an add-on
(presumably installed by default) that can be removed by those who do not want
them.

~~~
philikon
Much like with other features we've added recently (Sync, Panorama, etc.),
these features won't impact you at all if you don't use them.

------
ericflo
Holy crap, the loading bar on top of the tabs is genius! File upload indicator
will be similarly awesome.

------
tiles
I'm excited to see Identity Management finally being rolled into the browser.
Mozilla's been talking for some time about binding your accounts to the
browser itself, rather than loose, forgotten usernames and passwords.

~~~
stanleydrew
Yes, this is really important. I'm hoping that with Firefox moving in this
direction the Chromium team will incorporate similar features.

------
jamesbritt
Since there are Mozilla devs here, let me ask a question: Why? Why not have
the browser be really solid for strictly HTML/JS processing, provide a stable
extension/plugin API, and have everything else be an optional add-on?

Why do I need a PDF viewer built into a browser? Why an RSS feed reader built
in? Why bundle in "social" features? Why not leave these to user-selected,
user-loadable options?

------
ZeroGravitas
It mentions playing MP3 files. Is this just going to call out to a 3rd party
service or is it do with the fact that MP3 patents (for decode at least) are
supposed to be running out soon. Or will Mozilla pay the licence fee and
provide a free plugin, similar to Fluendo's plugin for Linux, in anticipation
of the patents running out. Will they add support in the audio tag?

------
beck5
when does a browser become a platform? The lines are getting blurry.

------
joshu
Oh sure, NOW add the social sharing. Grrn

~~~
stanleydrew
Hate to downvote you since I know you are a well-respected member of this
community, but I can't figure out what you're getting at with this comment.

Are you suggesting that Mozilla should have acquired Delicious to incorporate
social sharing features within the browser? Or am I totally missing something
obvious?

~~~
joshu
Or maybe I spent a lot of time trying to get browser folks to do it to no
avail.

(there are now more delicious people at moz, especially weave, than there are
at delicious.)

