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Saying things to make the subject go away avoids useful investigation. As usual, the money needs understanding.

For example, Mozilla Foundation is a rich, rich corporation. No one should make the mistake of thinking that work on Firefox is done mostly by volunteers.

But where does all the money go? Did you see $78.6 million worth of improvements in Firefox in 2008?

Did you see improvements suggesting that Mozilla Foundation had $168 million in assets in 2010? -- (Official PDF file, see page 2. Numbers are in thousands, as it says at the top of the page.)

Firefox is a world-class asset. No other browser has all the features. There is no substitute for the capabilities of Firefox together with Firefox add-ons. (Mozilla Foundation calls one thing by 3 names: Add-ons, extensions, and plug-ins.)

But Firefox is unstable. Firefox instabilities are experienced most frequently by those who open many Firefox windows and tabs, and leave them open while putting the computer into standby or hibernation several times. That is the pattern of use of those who do a lot of online research. The crashes and memory gobbling have been reported for more than 10 years, since version 0.9 of Mozilla Suite, before Mozilla began using the name Firefox. Firefox is still unstable even though the change reports for almost every version say there have been "stability improvements".

Firefox crash info:

about:crashes
Put about:crashes into your URL bar and press ENTER. Firefox will then show a list of crashes of the copy of Firefox on that computer.

Crash info for all users and all versions:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox

Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 10.0, the version before the most recent:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/10.0

Version 11 is less stable. Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 11.0, the most recent version:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/11.0

Top crashers, version 11.0:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/11.0/14

Notes:

1) The lists of crashes are ONLY the ones that Firefox caught and that were submitted. The lists do NOT include crashes that did't start the crash reporter. The lists do NOT include crashes that weren't submitted to Mozilla Foundation.

2) The crashes are often preceded by rapidly increasing memory use. Firefox often corrupts Microsoft Windows, so that Windows needs to be re-started. When Firefox corrupts Microsoft Windows it often damages operations in Windows that are not connected with browsing.

Saying things to make the subject go away avoids useful investigation. As usual, the money needs understanding.

For example, Mozilla Foundation is a rich, rich corporation. No one should make the mistake of thinking that work on Firefox is done mostly by volunteers.

But where does all the money go? Did you see $78.6 million worth of improvements in Firefox in 2008?

Did you see improvements suggesting that Mozilla Foundation had $168 million in assets in 2010? -- (Official PDF file, see page 2. Numbers are in thousands, as it says at the top of the page.)

Firefox is a world-class asset. No other browser has all the features. There is no substitute for the capabilities of Firefox together with Firefox add-ons. (Mozilla Foundation calls one thing by 3 names: Add-ons, extensions, and plug-ins.)

But Firefox is unstable. Firefox instabilities are experienced most frequently by those who open many Firefox windows and tabs, and leave them open while putting the computer into standby or hibernation several times. That is the pattern of use of those who do a lot of online research. The crashes and memory gobbling have been reported for more than 10 years, since version 0.9 of Mozilla Suite, before Mozilla began using the name Firefox. Firefox is still unstable even though the change reports for almost every version say there have been "stability improvements".

Firefox crash info:

about:crashes
Put about:crashes into your URL bar and press ENTER. Firefox will then show a list of crashes of the copy of Firefox on that computer.

Crash info for all users and all versions:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox

Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 10.0, the version before the most recent:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/10.0

Version 11 is less stable. Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 11.0, the most recent version:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/11.0

Top crashers, version 11.0:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/11.0/14

Notes:

1) The lists of crashes are ONLY the ones that Firefox caught and that were submitted. The lists do NOT include crashes that did't start the crash reporter. The lists do NOT include crashes that weren't submitted to Mozilla Foundation.

2) The crashes are often preceded by rapidly increasing memory use. Firefox often corrupts Microsoft Windows, so that Windows needs to be re-started. When Firefox corrupts Microsoft Windows it often damages operations in Windows that are not connected with browsing.

Saying things to make the subject go away avoids useful investigation. As usual, the money needs understanding.

For example, Mozilla Foundation is a rich, rich corporation. No one should make the mistake of thinking that work on Firefox is done mostly by volunteers.

But where does all the money go? Did you see $78.6 million worth of improvements in Firefox in 2008?

Did you see improvements suggesting that Mozilla Foundation had $168 million in assets in 2010? -- (Official PDF file, see page 2. Numbers are in thousands, as it says at the top of the page.)

Firefox is a world-class asset. No other browser has all the features. There is no substitute for the capabilities of Firefox together with Firefox add-ons. (Mozilla Foundation calls one thing by 3 names: Add-ons, extensions, and plug-ins.)

But Firefox is unstable. Firefox instabilities are experienced most frequently by those who open many Firefox windows and tabs, and leave them open while putting the computer into standby or hibernation several times. That is the pattern of use of those who do a lot of online research. The crashes and memory gobbling have been reported for more than 10 years, since version 0.9 of Mozilla Suite, before Mozilla began using the name Firefox. Firefox is still unstable even though the change reports for almost every version say there have been "stability improvements".

Firefox crash info:

about:crashes
Put about:crashes into your URL bar and press ENTER. Firefox will then show a list of crashes of the copy of Firefox on that computer.

Crash info for all users and all versions:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox

Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 10.0, the version before the most recent:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/10.0

Version 11 is less stable. Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 11.0, the most recent version:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/11.0

Top crashers, version 11.0:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/11.0/14

Notes:

1) The lists of crashes are ONLY the ones that Firefox caught and that were submitted. The lists do NOT include crashes that did't start the crash reporter. The lists do NOT include crashes that weren't submitted to Mozilla Foundation.

2) The crashes are often preceded by rapidly increasing memory use. Firefox often corrupts Microsoft Windows, so that Windows needs to be re-started. When Firefox corrupts Microsoft Windows it often damages operations in Windows that are not connected with browsing.

They seems to have fixed most issues by Firefox 10 and even beter in Firefox 11. They also are fixing a lot of extensions. They also added a lot of tools moreto find problems:

http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/

Here you go, now you'll be able to start using all the proper diagnosis tools like about:memory?verbose
Don't forget to follow the Memshrink and Snappy progress.

Here you go, now you'll be able to start using all the proper diagnosis tools like about:memory?verbose
Don't forget to follow the Memshrink and Snappy progress.

http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/category/memshrink/

Start there. They are working thru the memory issues. They have a pretty good idea where they are at (and how to fix them). They just figured out a huge one with a common plugin (mcafee) that they do not control.

They are also building in metrics to help people find the bugs instead of 'in task manager it is using 1.5 gig' (about:memory).

All in all I have been pretty happy with the 4-10 series. The only thing that pissed me off was the movement of controls. "learn yet another layout..." sort of thing.

Most of the speed increase for this last version came from the memshrink project (it was a decent one too).

If you are seeing crazy memory metrics they have steps they would like you to help them with to get it fixed...

Transcripts would be nice.

Much easier would be to use WebM. Not only Flash bloated and insecure, it is tied to a binary blob which is available on a decreasing number of important systems. Firefox, Opera, and Chrome all support WebM. There's no excuse to not be using it for the video already and reach a larger public.

Insightful? Really?

This keeps coming up... http://blog.mozilla.com/privacy/2011/11/09/dnt-cannot-be-default/

"As Do Not Track picks up steam and standardization is well underway in the W3C, people have begun asking, âoeIf Do Not Track is so good for the web, why donâ(TM)t you turn it on by default?â

Frankly, it becomes meaningless if we enable it by default for all our users. Do Not Track is intended to express an individualâ(TM)s choice, or preference, to not be tracked. Itâ(TM)s important that the signal represents a choice made by the person behind the keyboard and not the software maker, because ultimately itâ(TM)s not Firefox being tracked, itâ(TM)s the user.

Mozillaâ(TM)s mission is to give users this choice and control over their browsing experience. We wonâ(TM)t turn on Do Not Track by default because then it would be Mozilla making the choice, not the individual. Since this is a choice for the user to make, we cannot send the signal automatically but will empower them with the tools they need to do it.

Do Not Track is not Mozillaâ(TM)s position on tracking, itâ(TM)s the individualâ(TM)s â" and thatâ(TM)s what makes it great! For that reason we have no plans to turn on Do Not Track by default."

Clearly GP, and at least 4 moderators disagree. I do, too. Just because the Firefox team says it is so, does not make it so.

Insightful? Really?

This keeps coming up...
http://blog.mozilla.com/privacy/2011/11/09/dnt-cannot-be-default/

"As Do Not Track picks up steam and standardization is well underway in the W3C, people have begun asking, âoeIf Do Not Track is so good for the web, why donâ(TM)t you turn it on by default?â

Frankly, it becomes meaningless if we enable it by default for all our users. Do Not Track is intended to express an individualâ(TM)s choice, or preference, to not be tracked. Itâ(TM)s important that the signal represents a choice made by the person behind the keyboard and not the software maker, because ultimately itâ(TM)s not Firefox being tracked, itâ(TM)s the user.

Mozillaâ(TM)s mission is to give users this choice and control over their browsing experience. We wonâ(TM)t turn on Do Not Track by default because then it would be Mozilla making the choice, not the individual. Since this is a choice for the user to make, we cannot send the signal automatically but will empower them with the tools they need to do it.

Do Not Track is not Mozillaâ(TM)s position on tracking, itâ(TM)s the individualâ(TM)s â" and thatâ(TM)s what makes it great! For that reason we have no plans to turn on Do Not Track by default."

I like browserid, atleast when it gets out of the beta-stage (which it should in the coming months):

https://browserid.org/about
http://identity.mozilla.com/post/7616727542/introducing-browserid-a-better-way-to-sign-in

It is a quick and easy way to verify you are the owner of an email-address and an open specification.

Then Firefox will get it in the browser-UI, here is an old mockup:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/4/4c/IdentityInTheBrowser.png

Firefox still has about 25% of the market, if those users get an easy way to login to sites that should help with adoption.

They were lifted a decade ago as the web took off. True Korea and China still use activeX in any banking or ecom site but that is because users still use IE 6 so why bother changing to SSL? The same users still use IE because EBAY and their bank still require activeX because users still use it in a viscious cycle etc.

WTF? eBay requires ActiveX? Since when? I don't recall PayPal ever requiring installation of an ActiveX control, much less eBay. I really think you're spreading misinformation...

I suspect that he/she meant in South Korea. Until recently, IE6 had a ludicrously high (98.6%) market share there. This is because around a decade back they got tired of waiting for the improved version of SSL and designed their own encryption called SEED instead, which virtually all online commerce in the country used.

The Netscape SEED plugin was abandoned early on, leaving only the IE ActiveX SEED control supported. Hence everyone had to use IE. Since (for good security reasons), ActiveX use is more fiddly with later versions of IE, everyone there stuck with IE6.

Apparently this *has* started to change, and IE6's share has fallen drastically in the past 2 or 3 years, though IIRC it was still in the twentysomething percent range the last time I checked.

(Not sure what China has to do with it- SEED is pretty much only used in South Korea. Maybe the OP was getting confused)

Could a Slashdot editor please add to the summary info about teh Koch brothers payola for organizations relased at the same time, and the new built-in government tracking software? Even a link too a website with coverage about the Apple iPad vs. Google Android would do.

Fixed your post to meet slashdot editorial standards.

At least for one of my add-ons, they broke compatibility. That one shows "Not available for Firefox 10.0". Mozilla announced "All add-ons will be made compatible by default in the upcoming Firefox 10 release", but it didn't work.

(The add-on works fine under Firefox 10. It's Mozilla's download/upgrade/update/approve system, "AMO", that's broken. I have some of the same add-ons for both Firefox and Google Chrome, and the Google Chrome store system works much better than Mozilla's. This reflects Mozilla's focus on the browser being in control, rather than being a slave to the "cloud". Firefox updating and their "AMO" try to slave their browser to their servers. Mozilla isn't very good at that.)

Could a Slashdot editor please add to the summary info about the Extended Support Release for organizations released at the same time, and the new built-in web developer tools? Even a link to a website with coverage about the new changes to Firefox would do.

Oh, and just sandbox the damn stuff, and get rid og 93% of the possible security issues...

I'm calling bullshit on that statistic

There really isn't any new news about this.

I would have thought the more appropriate Mozilla news is that they have released Rust 0.1 or general browser news that natively supported WebM browser share exceeds natively supported H.264 share

This submission looks like typical content farm / blogspam junk so here's some useful links instead:

• The BrowserID main page: https://www.browserid.org/
• Mozilla Identity Team's blog: http://identity.mozilla.com/
• Source Code: https://github.com/mozilla/browserid

I don't know what is so different in Chrome that it is so much faster and usable in general...but Firefox needs to get with the program.

Chrome has a multi-process architecture.

http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture.html

Firefox does not but they're working on it.

http://blog.mozilla.com/products/2011/07/15/goals-for-multi-process-firefox/

They originally planed to implement a multi-process architecture with the Electrolysis project but they've since put it on the back burner.

http://lawrencemandel.com/2011/11/15/update-on-multi-process-firefox-electrolysis-development/

Have fun waiting for a competent sandbox.

Bullshit. I'm calling you out on this.

You may be interested in following/helping the Snappy Project.
A couple of things in particular to track the progress of are off-main-thread compositing and re-architecting session storage.

You'll have to provide sources for Firefox's alleged instability. Here's a link to Mozilla's Firefox crash statistics. If you can link to a report about Chrome's stability, it would be very useful.

As for memory, Mozilla have been working on reducing memory in Firefox with the MemShrink project. Nicholas Nethercote's blog has the latest reports on improvements to the upcoming versions. Even then, it's been established before in testing that Chrome is a relative heavyweight when it comes to memory.

You'll have to provide sources for Firefox's alleged instability. Here's a link to Mozilla's Firefox crash statistics. If you can link to a report about Chrome's stability, it would be very useful.

As for memory, Mozilla have been working on reducing memory in Firefox with the MemShrink project. Nicholas Nethercote's blog has the latest reports on improvements to the upcoming versions. Even then, it's been established before in testing that Chrome is a relative heavyweight when it comes to memory.

BrowserID is actually quite promising due to some really interesting design decisions. Plus it actually really usable (unlike openID) and decentralized by design (unlike facebook or google login integration). I recommend this video to learn a little about it: http://identity.mozilla.com/post/13459806252/another-introduction-to-browserid-for-webfwd

Try reading http://identity.mozilla.com/post/7669886219/how-browserid-differs-from-openid for the difference between BrowserID and OpenID.

TLDR: OpenID is harder to integrate into the browser, and needed a third party for every login (meaning it just swapped Facebook, Twitter or Google with someone else that could potentially track you).

Answering my own question, it looks like it does more or less come out in the reports. Here [pdf] is their financial report for 2009-2010. It reports that they earned "royalties" of $101 million in 2009 and $121 million in 2010

Its odd that this income would be lumped under royalties, because the definition of royalties usually implies the payment for the use of something owned by the payee. Such as income from book sales, etc. Mozilla also makes some income from the sale of various products on their web site, per that PDF.

But assuming you are correct, and Revenues and other support represents the bulk of their income, it would appear that Google is paying for substantially ALL of the development for TWO browsers, Chrome, and Mozilla, as well as providing code for Chromium.

Answering my own question, it looks like it does more or less come out in the reports. Here [pdf] is their financial report for 2009-2010. It reports that they earned "royalties" of $101 million in 2009 and $121 million in 2010, and they explain their royalties as follows:

The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2011. Approximately 84% and 86% of royalty revenue for 2010 and 2009, respectively, was derived from this contract.

So that seems to imply that "a search engine provider" paid them around $87 million in 2009, and $102 million in 2010. Of course, the current deal may be substantially higher or lower, but that's probably a ballpark figure. Somehow considerably higher than I expected, but now that I look it seems Mozilla has >600 employees, which is also many more than I expected.

That's because of the memshrink project (earlier report on /.). You can read a weekly status report on Nicholas Nethercote's blog.

Another project that's recently started is called 'Snappy', which aims to increase the responsiveness of users' interactions with Firefox. There's a thread on Mozillazine tracking updates on Snappy.

Search/URL combined: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
It's called the "Awesome Bar" and has been around since 3.0, I think.

The tabs have moved around back and forth a few times, actually. Here's a blog post and video by one of the Mozilla designers from 4.0: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2010/06/24/why-tabs-are-on-top-in-firefox-4/

Or, you could just download Chrome.

Search/URL combined: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
It's called the "Awesome Bar" and has been around since 3.0, I think.

The tabs have moved around back and forth a few times, actually. Here's a blog post and video by one of the Mozilla designers from 4.0: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2010/06/24/why-tabs-are-on-top-in-firefox-4/

Or, you could just download Chrome.

How is the GUI design is so dumb that users are confused about the simplest of tasks, and have to rely on information stumbled upon a web forum? How is that good, solid design? It means the use is *not* intuitive.

Look, we could all be driving cars with joysticks. But we stick to the steering wheel because it's a pretty good interface design. If you want to redesign something, then you ought to pull your very own personal internal Steve Jobs out of your ass. It had better be something better than a joystick.

That is stupid design. You are raising the user's cognitive load, instead of unloading it. That's why we have GUIs, because it's so much simpler than learning to concatenate Korn shell syntax, Bash syntax, and remember a shitload of esoteric commands (although all Unixheads do...). We unload the user's cognitive load, his/her working memory, etc. The user becomes more relaxed, productive...GUIs are not necessarily or always better, though, as we know from experience (see below GUIs X CLIs).

Mac OS X is a wonderful example where GUI can meet Unix-style CLI intelligently (Automator): http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/

You wanna see example of a simple and intelligent interface, done by people who thought long and hard about how to do these things? Try this demo of the Enso interface (follow on-screen instructions):

http://www.schuderer.net/ensoid/

Enso is now open source (it used to be Windows-only - BTW, I just learned this today), with the nice New BSD license.

http://code.google.com/p/enso/

Here's more brainfood on interfaces (GUIs X CLIs): http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2007/07/05/the-graphical-keyboard-user-interface/

Mozilla's sites are still badly broken. See status here.

I've also found myself very frustrated with it stalling, starts loading a page, hangs for 5 seconds, then continues. Definitely not all the time, but enough to piss me off and remeber it keeps happening. Doesn't sounds like the browser I championed for years as being snappy, I want my web browser to load pages accurately, be quick about, and not to complain (or eat up a shit-ton of my RAM - not that I need it for anything else, I just want it to be available, just in case).

Snappy project
Memshrink project

I've also found myself very frustrated with it stalling, starts loading a page, hangs for 5 seconds, then continues. Definitely not all the time, but enough to piss me off and remeber it keeps happening. Doesn't sounds like the browser I championed for years as being snappy, I want my web browser to load pages accurately, be quick about, and not to complain (or eat up a shit-ton of my RAM - not that I need it for anything else, I just want it to be available, just in case).

Snappy project
Memshrink project

the general slow feel that XUL gives the UI.

Snappiness improvement project

Note: I have no idea if Firefox ever got around to admitting and fixing this bug. That's the problem with ignoring your userbase. They tend not to come back.

Here, proving the userbase wasn't ignored, and now you can no longer claim ignorance and be voted up for it.

Does anyone know where the money they get from Google goes?

Anyone who can read, use the web, and cares probably does, since they publish their audited financial statement on their website.

Aren't they a non-profit that's freely distributing a community-developed piece of software?

From the information in the report cited below, they are a non-profit "that exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project", and whose "purpose is to develop open source, standards compliant, free Internet applications that will be useable free of charge to tens of millions of users" and "to develop foundational technologies that will be used by content and software developers to develop standards compliant online content and open source internet software."

That's what their financial statements from 2009 (latest available from their website) talk about: 10 people and ~ $1.5M in budget.

The latest financial statement available on their website is the consoldiated report for 2010 on 2009. And it has, for 2010 (2009 in parens) $123M ($104M) in revenue and $87M ($61M) in expenses, $63M ($40M) of which is software development, $12M ($13M) of which is general and administrative expense, $10M ($7M) of which is branding and marketing, and $2M ($1M) of which is program services (all figures rounded to the nearest million.)

I have no idea where you got the $1.5M in 2009 budget from.

But $100M??? Assuming an average salary of $100K, that's 1000 people.

First, they don't have $100M in expenses, they have $123M in revenue and only $87M in expenses. Expenses include things besides just personnel costs, and personnel costs themselves include more than just salary (if you estimated personnel costs as twice salary, you'd be a lot closer than if you estimated, as you have, at the salary itself.)

Or are they really spending as much as Nike and Coke on marketing?

Unless Nike and Coke spend $10M or less per year on marketing, no.

The Firefox add-on system has been infected with this problem. It used to be that you could write add-ons for Firefox, put them on a web site, and let users download them. Now, Firefox has what's essentially an "app store". Add-ons have to go through an approval process which takes about two months. Then they have to be hosted on Mozilla's site. Mozilla tracks how many users are using each add-on through a back channel in the browser. Because of the new policy of very frequent updates to Firefox, add-ons have to be updated regularly, and for add-ons on the Mozilla site, this happens automatically and remotely. So your add-on is now tied to Mozilla's "cloud".

Firefox itself is slaved to Mozilla's "cloud" now. It's become much more demanding about insisting that it be updated when Mozilla issues a new version.

It's still possible to host add-ons on your own site, but warning messages appear if they're loaded, and they rapidly become obsolete and break as Firefox changes. It's still possible to turn off updates of Firefox, but by default, you get nagged. The jaws are slowly closing on Firefox users.

This is what passes for "open source" today.

Amazing that there is still no way to private message on Slashdot! As you can see in my other comments, I am running the Mozilla-supplied binaries. I have dozens of crash links with date and time submitted. However, all but three result in "We couldn't find the OOID you're after. If you recently submitted this crash, it may still be in the queue." (they are not recent). Here are the three that actually work:

http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-d7ad42bd-e605-4104-bea4-782712111130
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-c635334d-a688-46b5-95f4-c60d92111115
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-13648d6a-0e9f-47ef-a1cc-a72bc2111018

Amazing that there is still no way to private message on Slashdot! As you can see in my other comments, I am running the Mozilla-supplied binaries. I have dozens of crash links with date and time submitted. However, all but three result in "We couldn't find the OOID you're after. If you recently submitted this crash, it may still be in the queue." (they are not recent). Here are the three that actually work:

http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-d7ad42bd-e605-4104-bea4-782712111130
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-c635334d-a688-46b5-95f4-c60d92111115
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-13648d6a-0e9f-47ef-a1cc-a72bc2111018

Amazing that there is still no way to private message on Slashdot! As you can see in my other comments, I am running the Mozilla-supplied binaries. I have dozens of crash links with date and time submitted. However, all but three result in "We couldn't find the OOID you're after. If you recently submitted this crash, it may still be in the queue." (they are not recent). Here are the three that actually work:

http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-d7ad42bd-e605-4104-bea4-782712111130
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-c635334d-a688-46b5-95f4-c60d92111115
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-13648d6a-0e9f-47ef-a1cc-a72bc2111018

I think a large performance gap will be fixed when JavaScript engines support type inference. JavaScript is dynamically typed, which is slower. But if the engine can figure out what type a variable is, it can optimize for that and be just as fast as typed lnaguage JIT VM:

http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/11/10/type-inference-to-firefox-beta/

I think it will be (a lot better) when they've added this important part:

"Type Inference brings JS improvements to Firefox Beta"

"Javascript is a dynamically typed language, and without knowing the types of values a JIT compiler needs to generate code that accounts for all the possible types of the involved values. This significantly slows down execution of the program in comparison with a statically typed language like Java. With TI integration into JaegerMonkey, we are closing a significant part of this performance gap. Ongoing Mozilla projects are being built to leverage inferred type information. With these projects, primarily IonMonkey, Mozilla’s next generation JIT compiler, we hope to close the performance gap with Java completely."

http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/11/10/type-inference-to-firefox-beta/

See http://blog.mozilla.com/privacy/2011/11/09/dnt-cannot-be-default/

That reasoning is pathetic. What do you think most users want as the default: to be tracked, don't care, or not be tracked? Mozilla just went with the status quo instead of making an informed decision by either doing a survey or using some common sense.

Not that I think it matters outside of principle, because I don't expect Do Not Track to be honored unless it's enforced by law.

http://people.mozilla.com/~dmandelin/KnowYourEngines_Velocity2011.pdf (or http://www.slideshare.net/newmovie/know-yourengines-velocity2011 if you prefer them on slideshare) is a good set of slides to read about things you want to avoid to make your JS fast.

False information + scornful tone = Troll.

Yes, they're focusing now on reducing "jank"
Once that's done, they'll continue work on the Electrolysis project

Finally abandoned FF at v8 (Score:4, Insightful)

How is this insightful?

browser started completely freezing and crashing after 60 seconds.

The guy doesn't even bother locating what the problem is. For all we know, it could be some crap that has nothing really to do with Firefox, but say Norton Toolbar ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680274 ), which is one of the leading crashers on the Firefox statistics ( https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/7.0.1/14 ).

With no information on where the problems are being experienced, you can't make an informed opinion on whether or not it's even the FF developers at fault here.

Switching software over a crash problem without first finding out what it is really isn't something I expect to see from Slashdotters.

That log you pasted at https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/7.0.1/14 looks like the stuff of nightmares. It makes me glad I have so few bugs in my own software (I guess using C# helps a bit too).

Unfortunately, Mozilla Foundation suffers from poor management. The rapid unexplained major version changes are only the most visible evidence.

Mozilla Foundation is a rich, rich corporation. No one should make the mistake of thinking that work on Firefox is done mostly by volunteers.

Did you see $78.6 million worth of improvements in 2008?

Did you see improvements suggesting that Mozilla Foundation had $168 million in assets in 2010? (Official PDF file, see page 2. Numbers are in thousands, as it says at the top of the page.)

Firefox is a world-class asset. Firefox is extremely important partly because those who need to do a lot of research online depend on Firefox and Firefox add-ons such as Session Manager, Session Manager Export Tool, Mozilla Archive Format, Flashblock, Multi Links, and Tab Mix Plus. There is no substitute for the capabilities of Firefox together with Firefox Add-ons. (Add-ons are also known as extensions and plug-ins.) For those who do research, Firefox is simply the best browser. Firefox is literally a world-class asset.

Biggest flaw: Firefox is unstable. The first step in good management would be to fix the instability of Firefox. There would be a huge additional advantage in doing that, as someone else mentioned. Investigating how Firefox can be so unstable under Microsoft Windows might reveal flaws in Microsoft Windows that make the OS so unstable when using Firefox.

Firefox instabilities are experienced most frequently by those who open many Firefox windows and tabs and leave them open while putting the computer into standby or hibernation several times. That is the pattern of use of those who do a lot of online research.

An example of research: For example, in researching HDMI cables there are numerous manufacturers, distributors, online sellers, explanations of HDMI standards, explanations of the U.S. National Electrical Code, and online reviews. The research is made far more complicated by the many companies that try to take advantage of the ignorance of the average person about cables. Good research is important because HDMI cables are often embedded in the infrastructure of buildings. Poor cables may need to be replaced when video equipment is upgraded, sometimes requiring the tearing apart of walls. Equipment upgrades may be years away, but are almost certain to happen.

One condition of instability: Windows XP 32-bit with Service Pack 3, for example, becomes unstable when Firefox has taken all the available memory, and is beginning to require the OS to use virtual memory. It seems a reasonable guess that Microsoft will be slow to fix Windows instabilities since poor experiences encourage people to buy new versions. Microsoft requires payment of the full price for each new version of Windows. Microsoft does not allow upgrade pricing even when a previous version has had many flaws, as with Microsoft Windows Vista. The laws against unfair business practices of those who have virtual monopolies have had no effect on Microsoft, apparently.

Firefox crash info: Here are some links for those who want to discover more about the instabilities in Firefox.

about:crashes
Put about:crashes into your URL bar and press ENTER. Firefox will then show a list of crashes of the copy of Firefox on that computer.

Crash info for all users and all versions
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox

Crashes per 100 active daily users, version 7.0.1, last week's version
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Fir