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Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Released
ink writes "Mozilla has released the third beta for Firefox 3.1 (which may become Firefox 3.5). This beta includes the new location bar, Mozilla's new JavaScript engine Tracemonkey, new HTML5 features and many other enhancements. It looks the same on the surface, but there are many changes under the hood."
FF isn't EVER going to have a pre-emptive threading and protected memory for tabs. Anyone who has taken a look at the stinking pile of shit that is the FF codebase can see that. It would require effectively rewriting the entire FF codebase from scratch. And if you were going to do that you might as well just go with Chrome that already has all of that fundamental work done and working incredibly well.
It is absolutely pathetic that Microsoft now has a browser that is the constant source of ridicule from open source users and developers that leaves their main browser technologically in the dust.
Chrome - pre-emptive threading and memory protection for tabs
IE 8 - pre-emptive threading and memory protection for tabs
Firefox - monolithic address space and all tabs are part of the same thread
Absolutely embarrassing.
What that means is Firefox will forever be riddled with memory and resource leaks over time as each tab gets opened and close leaving crap behind. And as more and more websites become more application like the lack of pre-emptive Javascript for Firefox is just going to become more and more painful. With Chrome and IE 8 you can have massive numbers of tabs with huge amounts of Javascript in each one and every single tab and the overall browser UI will remain lightning quick.
Everyone remembers FF devs flaming people in those FF memory leak stories from a few years ago. The anger comes from the fact they know they have a huge problem with the way FF is architected. Lashing out is a very common reaction from developers who are aware of some fundamental problem with their code that they know would require massive amounts of work they are unable or unwilling to fix.
The FF devs got away with it because they were compared to the horrible mess that IE was back then. Now IE has really gotten its shit together now with it great leaps forward with javascript performance, threading, and memory protection.
With Chrome and its incredibly clean and modern code base and extensions soon to arrive and the Linux version rapidly maturing, the only reason to keep using FF will be misplaced lingering fanboyism from the "IE sucks! I use FF so I'm cool" days.