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Firefox 3.5 Hits Release Candidate Milestone

Posted by timothy on from the veritable-buffet-these-days dept.

macupdate writes "Firefox 3.5rc1 has started trickling to users (mirrors and appropriate pages should all be updated soon). You can read the release notes. RC1 still scores a 93/100 on the Acid3 test."

6 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Beta "99" by Freetardo+Jones · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's the old preview build. This is the RC link.

  2. 93/100... by mejogid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I still don't understand the obsession with Acid tests - they measure performance in incredibly obscure areas and have a comparatively small bearing on real world performance. Webkit and Opera in particular have designed to the test to an extent, resulting in good scores but not necessarily comparable general compliance. I'm also slightly confused by the use of the word "still" - none of these bugs are severe enough to risk breakage leading up to a release candidate. I believe far more relevant are performance, bug fixes, features and HTML5/CSS3 support (which make far more of a contribution to moving the web on that Acid Test scores do) - areas in which Firefox 3.5 has improved dramatically. Talk about focusing on the negatives...

    1. Re:93/100... by glop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why don't I have mod points today?
      The parent is so right. The video tag means that youtube and all the web streaming websites can work without Flash. And since Firefox users update quickly, this means 20% of Internet users will be able to do that within 6 months. That's pretty big when you think some people try to make us believe that HTML5 is 10 years away...

    2. Re:93/100... by Phroggy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Acid tests are designed to highlight rendering bugs in current browsers, giving browser developers a chance to easily see where something is going wrong. All major browsers currently pass Acid2, which means if you create a web page that only uses the kind of code that Acid2 tests for, you can be sure it will render precisely the same way in current versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc. This is a huge step forward; ten years ago, it wasn't uncommon for a page to work correctly in one browser but be completely unusable in another.

      Now that all the major browsers pass Acid2, we need to find other ways in which web pages can display differently between different browsers. Since there is an official standard that defines what the correct behavior should be, we have something to test against; this is what Acid3 does. You're absolutely correct that passing Acid3 should not be the top priority, and failure to pass Acid3 is not a good reason for a user not to choose Firefox. However, the remaining things that prevent Firefox from passing Acid3 are indeed bugs, and eventually, they do need to be fixed. There are also other bugs in Firefox, that also need to be fixed, and many of these are more important than the bugs that cause Acid3 to fail.

      I agree that HTML5 and CSS3 are awesome, but if browsers can't render them correctly, they're not much good. Acid tests are an incredibly useful tool for browser developers to ensure that this happens. Acid4 is already being planned, and will help to find bugs in the way browsers handle HTML5 and CSS3 and SVG and other stuff, taking into account some of the lessons learned from problems with the Acid3 test (for example, Acid3 tests rendering speed; Acid4 will not).

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  3. v3.5 and still no MSI package for Windows by denis-The-menace · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish Mozilla would make up their minds: are they going to target the Corps or not?

    Even if you can get an MSI from Frontmotion (http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/download_firefox.htm), the corps will never go for it unless it comes off the Mozilla servers and is on the same web page as the current XPI installers. It's a "warm and fuzzy" thing that they need.

    If Mozilla could somehow sanction those MSIs from Frontmotion then the corps would be more comfortable with it. Even a link from here (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html) would give FrontMotion's MSI package credibility.

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
  4. Re:Still the slowest browser. by mejogid · · Score: 5, Informative

    CNet show firefox being substantially faster as of March in terms of browser performance. Admittedly firefox is a dog to start up, but that's one of the major goals for 3.6 last I checked. Having used the betas for a while, it's been a long time since I've felt I'm waiting on my browser as I did in versions 3 and particularly 2. I don't think anyone with a decent PC is going to be frustrated by the performance on 3.5, and with additional improvements already underway in trunk I don't think firefox is in any way falling behind. Oh, and how is private browsing broken in 3.5?