

Firefox 3.5 is out - ptn
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html

======
f00
Argh. I want to love Firefox 3.5. Really, I do. Modern web standards. Faster.
Smaller memory footprint. Native Aqua widgets (effing _finally_).

The problem is, compared to Chrome and Safari, it's a dog.

I've been running the nightly (Shiretoko) for weeks now, and, like everyone
else, I'm hopelessly addicted to various extensions during heavy browsing
sessions (development, etc).. but when I want to pop up a browser, check
something quickly, and move on with my life, Safari is the browser of choice.
The initial launch speed and JS performance are orders of magnitude faster.

Gecko is a great layout engine, but my gut feeling is that XUL and friends are
holding it back. Agree? Disagree?

~~~
old-gregg
It's even worse on Linux. FF performance on Ubuntu/Gnome was pretty bad.
Starting up, scrolling and even window resizing made me feel like I was using
a Pentium II. I want back to OSX+Safari. I only fire up FF when I need
Firebug.

On the other hand, FF on Windows is blazing fast. So I doubt it's just XUL.

Edit: wow, they did Safari-like pixel-precise touchpad scrolling (OSX). Very
nice.

~~~
tc
I run FF on Debian (iceweasel), and it is acceptably snappy, but there is a
bit of a trick to this:

1\. Every extension you add seems to decrease performance by 30-50% (rough
numbers) [1]. So live with a bare essential set of extensions. For me that is
Firebug and FlashBlock.

2\. Keeping very many bookmarks or history items seems to destroy performance,
particularly with the "awesome bar." I disable history completely and have it
clear everything else on browser close.

Before I settled on this FF usage technique, FF would degrade in performance
over the course of months as it built up data in the profile. Eventually it
would become unusable [2] until I deleted the profile and started fresh. Now I
just prevent it from building up any data.

[1] As much as I used to like this extension, my experience has been that
ForecastFox in particular hammers browser performance.

[2] It would take _seconds_ , sometimes 10 or more, to open a new tab to
about:blank. With this technique though, I currently have ~ 25 tabs open, and
new tab creation is instantaneous.

~~~
quoderat
Or you could just run Firefox completely in RAM in Linux, as I do:

[http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/05/speed-up-firefox-by-
moun...](http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/05/speed-up-firefox-by-mounting-
profile-in.html)

It's fairly easy. There's a guide just for Ubuntu, too:

<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=991205>

~~~
smanek
I wish the OS was smart enough to do this automatically. I have 16GB of RAM on
my workstation, and rarely use more than 8GB.

------
ashleyw
Some rough figures:

    
    
      IE7: 0% (base, 1x)
      IE8: 24% faster (1.24x)
      FF3: 73% faster (1.73x)
      FF3.5: 183% faster (2.83x)
      Opera 10: 196% faster (2.96x)
      Chrome 2: 354% faster (4.54x)
      Safari 4: 427% faster (5.27x)
    

Personally I use Safari because I prefer WebKit (it being fast is nice too),
but I'm very impressed with Firefox 3.5. It makes a very good development
environment with all the extensions available for it! :)

~~~
jeresig
What are you using to arrive at those numbers? SunSpider, Dromaeo, some other
benchmark?

~~~
ashleyw
Peacekeeper: <http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper>

As I said, it's very rough, but seems to be a good indication of where abouts
browsers are in comparison to each other.

Though, once you get to a certain point (around 2x IE7, I'd say), it becomes
irrelevant to 99% of what you'd want to do. Or should I say, irrelevant of
what you _can_ do, while slow browsers still have high market-shares...

~~~
jeresig
I agree with your perception - most of the modern browsers are just fine at
this point.

I've been skeptical of Peacekeeper, though - the tests may be fine but it's
hard to tell since they haven't released the source of them, at all. I'm not
even really sure how to determine if/how improvements could be made. As far as
I know, none of the major browser vendors use Peacekeeper as a benchmark for
their engines (which is really what a good benchmark should strive for: to
push for the improvement of the browsers that it measures).

------
shizcakes
Here's a short python script to optimize your firefox databases:
<http://pastebin.com/m155f9e6e>

Close firefox, run it, be amazed. People have been claiming phenomenal speed
boosts (mostly if your profile has aged a bit).

~~~
timf
find ~/.mozilla/ -iname '*.sqlite' -exec sqlite3 {} 'vacuum;' \;

------
thorax
I thought their new stats page was really cool:

<http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/>

~~~
dpifke
Anyone know what SQLStream (the software Mozilla is using for the stats page)
costs? Their web site doesn't say and it looks very "enterprise-y" so I'm
guessing lots.

------
Xichekolas
Bah, the release notes link gives me a 404... here is the cached version of
the RC release notes from last week...

[http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:P21aJ836YuQJ:www.mozilla...](http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:P21aJ836YuQJ:www.mozilla.com/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/+firefox+3.5+release+notes&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

EDIT: A much better list...
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers>

EDIT#2: The What's New page that loads after installing also 404's...

~~~
Xichekolas
(Figured a third edit might be inappropriate.)

Aside from TraceMonkey and the new Gecko, my favorite new feature (in theory)
is probably the DNS Prefetching:

<https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Controlling_DNS_prefetching>

I say in theory because I haven't run any objective tests, but, subjectively,
things do seem to load a bit faster.

------
_giu
the new firefox is pretty fast and the new tab design looks good. I think I'll
pause google chrome for a few days.

update: if you have issues with old addons in firefox 3.5, John Resig suggests
you to do the following: Open about:config, right-click new boolean
'extensions.checkCompatibility', set false, restart. (via
<http://twitter.com/jeresig/status/2404695608>)

~~~
jimm
I read that somewhere else. When I went to look for that setting, I couldn't
find it. I'm on Mac OS X.

~~~
spooneybarger
you have to add it. right click when in about:config to add a new entry.

~~~
jimm
Thank you.

------
Davertron
I'm still running Ubuntu 8.10, anyone get the release running there yet and
want to share how they did it? Ideally I'd like to avoid trashing my old
3.0.11 install or profile...

~~~
andyn
I have to run various versions of Firefox for testing purposes. What I've done
is to download the binary from their homepage and then run them with the
appropriate command line:

    
    
        /path/to/firefox2 -no-remote -P ff2
    
        /path/to/firefox3 -no-remote -P ff3
    

-no-remote allows me to run separate profiles at the same time, -P specifies a profile name. So they don't run updates on, or ruin the other profile.

<http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments>

~~~
Davertron
Here's what I did (using andyn's method):

Download the linux version of firefox 3.5 from [http://www.mozilla.com/en-
US/products/download.html?product=...](http://www.mozilla.com/en-
US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-US)

Untar and unzip firefox-3.5.tar.bz2:

    
    
      tar xjf firefox-3.5.tar.bz2
    

Move the new firefox 3.5 directory to /usr/lib:

    
    
      sudo mv ./firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.5
    

Create a shell script to run firefox using andyn's params. Create a file (I
called it firefox.sh) in /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/ with the following contents:

    
    
      #!/bin/bash
      /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox -no-remote -P <profile_name>
    

Note: Substitude <profile_name> with whatever you want to call your Firefox
3.5 profile; just make sure when prompted at first-run you create a new
profile with the same name.

Make the shell script executable:

    
    
      sudo chmod u+x /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox.sh
    

Simlink the shell script into the /usr/bin dir, or somewhere on your path:

    
    
      sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox.sh /usr/bin/firefox3.5
    

Run the script from the command line using:

    
    
      firefox3.5
    

Enjoy!

~~~
mattyb
For those of you who want 'firefox' to run 3.5 with your current 3.0 profile,
you can do the following:

    
    
      tar xjvf firefox-3.5.tar.bz2
      sudo mv ./firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.5
      cd /usr/bin
      sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox firefox-3.5
      sudo rm -f firefox
      sudo ln -s firefox-3.5 firefox
    

You can run 3.0 by using 'firefox-3.0', which should already exist.

------
steerpike
Since installing 3.5RC and even upgrading to 3.5 my login state for sites
hasn't been respected by FF. I have to log back into every site I visit every
time I restart firefox - anyone have any suggestions as to what I can try to
fix this? Cookies are on, passwords are stored and I'm not in privacy mode.

------
anand003
Private Browsing !!!

yeah.. but when I hit Ctrl-Shift-P It just overrides the current window ! And
I have to hit that again to the public firefox browser. !

That just seems weird ! Atleast thats what the default does

------
ttam
what the freck happened to using cmd/ctrl + arrows to organize the tabs?? i
usually have dozens of tabs opened and i used that feature to prioritize them!
now they took it away and it's frecking annoying

------
amix
It feels a lot faster, at least on Mac OS X. The interface seems to be much
more responsive as well. It's nice to see they have focused on performance :)

~~~
CrLf
I didn't notice any difference. Seems to take as much to start and is still
noticeably slower than Safari.

Seems to use much less memory though.

------
zandorg
I tried out the <video> tag on the 3.5 About page, but it still uses Flash. I
thought the whole point was to go native and avoid Flash?

~~~
ramidarigaz
Not sure what your issue is. I checked the Tour Firefox 3.5 video, and it
worked like a charm, no flash req'd.

~~~
zandorg
I right-clicked on the video and it says 'Flash 11'.

Is it possible that if Flash isn't present, it shows it natively using
Firefox?

------
compay
The Acid3 test page is currently down. Coincidence?

------
tsally
Great, 4 of the top spots taken up by Firefox, PHP, Wireshark, and Virtualbox
release notes. I know we've had this debate before, but I don't see why anyone
wants 15% of their news to be release notes. If I care about these projects
(and I do), I'll subscribe to a related RSS feed or mailing list. The only
possible benefit I see is some useful discussion about new features, but
honestly that's hardley enough benefit to compensate.

I've only seen the volume of release notes go up in the past month. I don't
think we should reward the people that post them with karma. That will just
encourage newer users to post more release notes for more and more
tangentially related products. I wouldn't be suprised to see some scripts pop
up that automatically post release notes of significant projects (as we've
seen in the past with pg's essays). Heck, even if we restricted outselves to
release notes of software used by YC companies, we'd still be overwhelmed.

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but honestly we can do better.

EDIT: For those claiming that they are in it for the dicussion, point me to
any useful discussion so far in any of the 4 mentioned stories. As of this
writing I count 2 or 3 useful comments, and maybe 1 useful discussion. So I
don't buy it. Rephrasing the release notes certainly doesn't count.

Firefox: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680853>

Virtualbox: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680692>

PHP: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680649>

Wireshark: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680286>

~~~
w1ntermute
Well, these tools are essential to many hackers, so the posts are definitely
relevant to HN. IMO, it makes much more sense to view all such news in a
central location (i.e., HN), rather than subscribing to individual projects'
RSS feeds, where one would also be notified of developmental releases.

~~~
olefoo
Shouldn't your central location be your rss reader? Most of the projects you
mention have low-traffic announce feeds that only post on release.

You are basically demanding that a scarce public resource (HN front page) be
used up to satisfy a need you could take care of on your own.

It's kind of humbling to see the tragedy of the commons playing out so clearly
here.

~~~
yangyang
Perhaps I'm unusual, but I find the dicussion is often as interesting as the
link (perhaps not for this item :-). And you don't get that on an
announcements RSS feed.

