• Firefox 3.5: First Look

    Firefox 3.5: First Look

    Rahul Srinivas, Jul 02, 2009 1215 hrs IST

    We take the Firefox 3.5 for a spin. Find out if we are impressed

    Faster, occasionally even faster than Chrome

    private browsing mode could be better

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New Gecko Engine, It's Faster!



So, whats new? The Release Notes should make things clear for you, but let me just run you through the main changes inside the browser. Firefox 3.5 comes with the latest version of the Gecko rendering engine, the traditional rival to the WebKit layout engine used by the likes of Chrome and Safari. It promises faster rendering speeds (although the speed improvements are no longer noticeable when you have other things in mind). In fact, Firefox 3.5 claims to be over twice as fast as Firefox 3, and (hold your breath) ten times as fast as Firefox 2!



Then there is full HTML5 support, native support for video and audio content and for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio. The new TraceMonkey Engine for JavaScript promises better performance for web applications. Firefox 3.5 is also developer-friendly with support for a lot of new web technologies. More on that here. If you still feel the browser needs to be faster, you might rather wait for the next iteration of the browser codenamed Namoraka, which promises a lot of performance enhancements.


 

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First Look at Opera Mini 4.2
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Google Chrome -- Out of Beta But Still Buggy
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Firefox Firefox 3.5 Mozilla Browser Chrome Opera Internet Explorer Safari Gecko Webkit



Discussion Board
(12) Comments
Grim
,Bangalore, on Jul 25, 2009 12:37 AM
Too good Rahul, you actually came out and justified what you wrote in your review. Not all reviewers can be credited with doing that. Cheerio. P.S - I still prefer Firefox ;)
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Aditya
,Mumbai, on Jul 16, 2009 12:06 AM
Your benchmarks should probably have been mentioned along with values for other browsers. Most readers will not know what the numbers imply.
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Ayan Debnath
,Kolkata, on Jul 04, 2009 01:28 PM
Dear Author, I personally don't know what kind of PC used in this test, probably a PIII, you should throw it in the water. The scores you have posted is actually SH*T. Probably, asked by M$. Here is my score: SunSpider: 1522.8ms (lower is better and its even lower than Mozilla clams) V8 Benchmark Suite: 236 (higher is better) My config: AMD(939) 4200 with 2GB DDR400 with WinXP-SP2. Firefox with normal setup.
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Rahul Srinivas
,Mumbai, on Jul 04, 2009 04:20 PM
It wasnt a P3 of course. I tried it on a Compaq Presario V3149AU running AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-52 processor. Quite an old workhorse you know? Also, the decision to do this on this machine was deliberate. I did have better specced machines in my arsenal, but I chose this one because not everyone has the latest machine around. I do however agree that I should have mentioned my "test bed" there to avoid confusion. Oh and MS dint ask us to anything. We actually don't listen to them (or anyone else for that matter) much. Everyone will have different scores for the tests you have mentioned here, so I aint reading much into it -- except of course for the Acid3 test, on which FF consistently scores 93 - everywhere. Of course Acid3 is system independent.
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jason
,Chennai, on Jul 02, 2009 01:45 PM
have you thought about enabling the tracemonkey through the registry. That makes one hell of a difference in speed.
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Hemanth Kumar R
,Hyderabad, on Jul 03, 2009 04:03 PM
If your add-ons are not compatible with the new version, install a firefox add-on, 'Nightly Tester Tools'. This will override the compatibility issue you have with the new version and you can enjoy your add-ons as normal.
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Shreshtha
,Delhi, on Jul 03, 2009 12:10 PM
Tip - There is a plugin in Firefox which makes it even faster. Really fast. Just give it a try. plugin = fasterfox lite. -Shreshtha
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Shreshtha
,Delhi, on Jul 03, 2009 12:07 PM
Firefox 2.0 Great Bug Now again showing in Firefox 3.5. Bug - Browser crashes whenever you signoff from Gmail. Its so annoying.
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Jai
,Delhi, on Jul 02, 2009 05:28 PM
Mr. Srinivas is an obvious Chrome fan. He is trying to discover faults in FF which do not exist. Reviewers are expected to be dispassionate. Therefore, the quality of this review is questionable.
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Rahul Srinivas
,Mumbai, on Jul 02, 2009 08:15 PM
Jai, IMHO, preferring to use one browser over the other doesn't make one a fan of that browser. If that was the case, everyone is a fan of at least one browser. While it is correct that I personally prefer using Chrome, it doesn't necessarily make me a blind Chrome fan. I however do agree that multiple mentions of Chrome in this piece might have made you believe so. Therefore, I can see where you are coming from. As for discovering "faults" in FF, the only one I could find was the Private browsing mode thing I mentioned in the article. I have been using Firefox on my laptop ever since launch and I am loving it. At office, I prefer using Chrome. Yes, reviewers are meant to be dispassionate, but cant we have a choice of our own? :) Keep writing! Thanks.
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dhaval shah
,Ahmedabad, on Jul 02, 2009 04:59 PM
Really its works faster than ever...
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Bobby
,Pune, on Jul 02, 2009 02:28 PM
The update doesn't recognise any of the plug-ins or addons evident from the red exclamation marks. One needs to unistall the s/w of the plug-ins and then re-install. I could get Real Networks working onto you tube videos after reinstallation.
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