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Minefield Shows the (Really) Fast Future of Firefox
zootropole writes "If you are using Firefox 3 (or even Chrome) you should consider taking a look at Mozilla's Minefield. This browser (alpha version yet, but stable) would give a new meaning to 'fast browsing experience.' Some Firefox extensions aren't supported, but riding the fastest javascript engine on the planet definitely worth a try. Minefield's install won't affect your Firefox, so there's no risk trying it. It's fast. Really. And I'm loving it."
Reviews popping up around the web are overwhelmingly positive, calling the upcoming browser crazy fast, blisteringly fast, etc.
I dunno. I use the nightlies at work and the stable at home, it's very rare that anything is really broken in the nightlies and it crashes about as much as the stable version.
I don't use any extensions though.
I'm interested in using Javascript as an embedded language, it's too bad most of the current JS engines assume they will be running in a browser. Yes, you can build standalone TraceMonkey and SquirrelFish shells but it isn't very easy on all platforms (no Visual Studio project, etc) and they aren't very easy to embed.
For general application development outside of a browser I have found V8 to be faster than the others. It's also a lot easier to build standalone or embedded in other applications. It's also very easy to add extensions to (written in C++), especially compared to the other choice.
I'm keeping my eye out but right now V8 fits my needs the best. If the other projects would do a little work towards focusing on general application development in their respective JS engine then I might switch. Switching will be a pain in the butt though because my C/C++ extensions will have to be ported to each engine. I kind of wish there was less diversity because right now it's hard to tell which engine is going to take off (eg. Google could abandon V8 for one of the other engines like SquirrelFish since they are using WebKit anyway).
Unfortunately all of them, including V8, are pretty large compared to cleaner scripting languages like Lua which makes embedding them in mobile applications kind of annoying (although we're getting more and more space on these things).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
One thing I'm most impressed with is the SVG performance. It's starting to almost become an alternative to Flash for interactive applications. I like it and I hope it gets even faster.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Friend, nightlies is working build. It's sometmies very very stable. But sometimes, especially during some massive checkin period, it can be extremely unstable and may even be dangerous.
I definitely won't recommand it to you. I remember there was an incidence in Firefox(bird?)'s history when some guy's C:\Progra~1 is deleted while installing an early testing build (can't remember if it's mindfield, but it's early testing build for sure).
Personally, I usually start using new version of Firefox during Beta 1 for small version jumps like 0.1; and for those 1.0 version jump, I usually start using it after at least beta 3 (which, in my experience, is not stable enough for my taste neither). But then, it's just personal preference.
Going back to chrome. Minefield is not faster than chrome. Oh, and yeah it does interfere with Firefox. It gets completely confused if you try to launch it while a firefox.exe process is running. Also, since when should an Alpha version have the default setting of "set minefield to the default browser"???
To build on that point, in case not everyone understands the implications of this post, those that promote equal market access tend to be either a) the one with an idealist in charge or b) the one that believes that they really are the best on the market.
The fun starts when you actually have both of the above, because they don't shut down the market access for others once they get a majority of the market share. That generally means greater openness and creativity which creates new jobs and more focused disciplines.
This holds true in every market, by the way. Market regulation tries to do this artificially, but rarely works as well as it should. The alternative can be much worse or much better, though usually the former is the case.
"Little is much when little you need."
Yeah, I used to like and use NoScript. Then I realized that in order to make many websites usable at all, you have to enable Javascript anyway. I think NoScript is still fine for people who don't care how broken the web is (if a site doesn't work, just find another one right?), but I've found that for me, the potential of NoScript to increase security is limited, and it's just not worth the hastle.
Plus, it was really annoying when they recently started releasing a new minor version every other day or so. Amongst all the computers I use at work, school, home, whatever, it seemed like I was upgrading NoScript constantly. AdBlock Plus is all I really need nowadays, and BugMeNot is useful sometimes.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.