
Firefox 3.6 Released - johns
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/
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toisanji
I remember when I used to get excited when a new version of firefox came out,
but now I just don't care. The performance is abysmal and frustrating. I am on
mac and even though chrome doesn't have an official release yet and no
plugins, I have already switched 100% to it. I do hope that we will eventually
see competition between the browsers again, but at this state, I don't see
that much coming out from mozilla.

~~~
MikeCapone
My main browser on the Mac is now Chromium 35449 (very stable, and extensions
work on it).

Firefox has become what is was created to fight (at least on the Mac). Sad..

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rbanffy
"Firefox has become what is was created to fight"

I don't believe Mozilla has become a monopoly abuser ;-)

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jauco
Ff was created as the lightweight alternative to the mozilla browser (i.e. The
thing that was also branded as Netscape)

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mpakes
After using Chrome for 6-8 weeks, I can't go back. Firefox has so many things
going for it (history, extensions, compatibility, etc, etc).. but I can't
handle the slowness. The JavaScript performance deficit is bad enough, but the
outrageous startup time puts it over the top. I'll keep it around for
occasional compatibility testing, but it's no longer the go-to browser.

~~~
pdubroy
Startup time is MUCH improved in Firefox 3.6. Chrome still feels slightly
quicker, but we're talking on the order of 100s of milliseconds. For something
that I do once a day, at most, the difference is negligible.

~~~
mpakes
It does seem to be improved, but on my system (new-ish MBP running OS X),
Chrome and Safari startup is nearly instantaneous, and Firefox still lags. I
don't know how it compares on Windows.

Still.. bravo to the Firefox team for making a big improvement in this
department. My ire is now refocused on the (lack of) JavaScript performance.
:-)

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pdubroy
Do you have a lot of plugins installed? I tested on a 6-month-old MacBook Pro
13", on both OS X and Win7, and Firefox starts up pretty much instantly (less
than 500msecs). Agreed, Chrome and Safari seem marginally faster, but I don't
close my browser very often, so it really doesn't matter.

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grandalf
I wish Firefox would adopt the single location/search field.

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xiaoma
Firefox lets you customize that. Here's what I do:

1) First, get rid of the search box. Go to View, then Toolbars, then
Customize. That will pop up a box with all of the possible wigits you can
select. Click on the search box in the upper right portion of your Firefox
window and drag it into that box.

2) Now with the search box gone, the next step is to make the location bar act
as one. To do this, type “about: config” into the location bar. Then select
“keyword.url” and enter
“[http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=”](http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=”).
Now whatever you type into the location bar that’s not a URL will do a Google
search. You have to exit and re-start Firefox for this to take effect.

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diN0bot
furthermore, with the search box gone, apple-k (or ctrl-k or wahtever) will
automatically load google search. (whereas before it would focus on the search
box)

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moe
The slowness eventually drove me to chrome. And so far, not looking back...

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cscotta
It strikes me as a bit disingenuous to criticize the performance of a browser
while openly admitting that you haven't tried it.

I've been an avid Safari user for years, but switched back to Firefox at
3.6b5. The performance improvements they've made are incredible, and with the
GrApple theme applied, it looks just like Safari. Plus, I get back some
sorely-missed keyboard shortcuts, Firebug's awesome profiling support, and the
"snappiness" that I'm used to in Safari.

But until you've actually tried the latest release (genuinely - not 10 minutes
working from a disk image), please consider refraining from commenting. An
aspect of the software you used to hate might have been improved.

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moe
You are right, I should have tried it before. Now I did. It's still so slow as
to make me wonder how I ever put up with it.

No Idea what's up with the "hate" terminology. The only browser that can even
invoke strong feelings in me would be IE. My comment was simply my spontaneous
reaction to the headline, no reason to get all hot & bothered.

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boundlessdreamz
My javascript performance comparison between Firefox 3.6 and Chrome and Safari

[http://www.manu-j.com/blog/firefox-3-6-vs-chrome-vs-
safari-j...](http://www.manu-j.com/blog/firefox-3-6-vs-chrome-vs-safari-
javascript-performance/432/)

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invisible
You really should use a test that focuses both on pure JavaScript and also
DOM/JavaScript interaction. The fact that Chrome processes JavaScript faster
doesn't necessarily mean that Firefox is slower in a real application that
interacts with the DOM (although it may be, I'm not sure).

Edit: See <http://dromaeo.com/>

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boundlessdreamz
Sunspider and V8 are standard javascript benchmarks. I have found that the
test results compare favourably to real world usage. For example Google wave
is sluggish on firefox while chrome has no problems with it.

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imurray
I was suffering horrible hangs will some sites updated, notably Facebook.

On upgrading Firefox to 3.6 I had to edit the install.rdf of the "It's all
text" extension to allow it to work. I noticed a comment on the Mozilla add-
ons site saying that this extension could be the cause of the slowdowns.

Anyway (with the hacked install.rdf) "It's all text" still works in Firefox
3.6 and my slow-downs have gone.

Happy! I didn't want to swap to Chrome without "It's all text", noscript and
adblock plus.

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docwhat
Hi! I'm working on making It's All Text! work with Firefox 3.6. If you have
troubles (such as right clicking on gumdrops) then turning on "Remove all
bugs" actually does what it says, for a change. o_O

I looked at doing a chrome version of "It's all text!" but chrome doesn't have
a way to launch an external application short of creating an NSPlugin. Which
I'm not sure I want to have to support across all the chrome platforms.

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Raphael
Would it be possible for sites to impose a persona onto visitors, like
<http://www.getpersonas.com/> does when you mouseover certain areas?

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clofresh
It's disappointing that Firefox 3.6 only supports Ogg for their <video> tag,
especially since Youtube and Vimeo have started beta testing their html5
players.

