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Firefox 8 20% Faster Than Firefox 5
An anonymous reader writes "Thanks to continued improvements to start-up and first paint performance, tweaks to memory footprint and garbage collection, and the addition of a new 2D graphics backend called Azure, Firefox 8 is some 20% faster than Firefox 5 across all major metrics — and actually about equal with Chrome 14 on JavaScript and 2D rendering performance. Azure (which is new with Firefox 7) replaces Cairo, and instead of dealing with Direct2D and Quartz, it allows Firefox to deal directly with the Direct3D and OpenGL subsystems — resulting in a 20% speed boost under Windows, and probably even more under OS X."
Your post could've been here if you had a faster web browser.
I know it's been said before, but this new release system is fucking retarded.
I'm this close to dumping Firefox on every machine I touch.
Firefox 6 is so out of date, my parents will probably use it when it comes out.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
FF8 is the nightly branch, FF7 is the smaller-than-beta branch ("aurora"), and FF6 is the alpha branch. Mozilla hasn't suddenly started to number their versions geometrically, although that would be hilarious.
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You fools are only benchmarking Firefox 8!! Well I benchmarked Firefox 14 and it's plus 10 faster than Firefox 4.
I appreciate the benefits of rapid versioning and release cycles, but really, this is ridiculous.
Do you have any idea how it complicates Web contracts? We used to be able to say "your website will be compatible with current version-2 of the browsers" but now that would be ridiculous. We'd never be able to deliver since we would be stuck in a infinite testing loop.
We'll have to start writing "your website will be compatible with Firefox 5" and by the time we deliver Firefox 12 will be available. I guess we'll have to add a clause about how Microsoft, Google and Firefox are all teenagers who compare their peni- I mean version numbers to feel good about themselves.
Apple aren't being childish with the whole issue and using sane version numbers. And Opera has been out for quite a long time, though they do seem to be jumping into the version bandwagon as of late.
By my calculations, if Firefox had started this version numbering scheme with its start in 2004, we would now be running Firefox 61.
If they Mozilla had adopted it in 1998, this would be Firefox 113.
Bonkazoids.
We just got our web site rendering correctly under Firefox 5, and now there not one but THREE new versions in beta that we also need to test with.
Just a quick note from the web developers and web site QA testers around the world to the Firefox development team... you're really starting to piss us off.
From what I can tell, Mozilla seems to have four versions of Firefox being developed and/or maintained at any given time:
Current - Whatever is currently released. Only bugfixes usually get ported to this release. Currently FF5.
Beta - Feature-frozen and reasonably stable, but not quite ready for prime time. Will be the next release. Currently FF6.
Aurora - Feature-frozen, but not stable. Early QA happens here, though it gets more fleshed out in Beta. Currently FF7.
Nightly - This is where the new feature development happens. Currently FF8.
When it's time for release, everything gets promoted: when FF6 is released, FF7 will become Beta, FF8 will become Aurora, and new development will start on FF9.
I kind of like the idea of putting new code through two entire cycles of public testing. All the same, I do wish that Mozilla would add a Long-Term Support cycle every few versions, akin to Ubuntu's LTS cycle, that people could count on to be supported for more than just a couple of months.
It is true that sane IT departments upgrade their browsers regularly, but not all IT departments are driven by sanity. This is a sad fact that Mozilla needs to account for, and there's a tested model out there that isn't too dissimilar to Mozilla's own. They should seriously look into adapting the differences.
I am already using version 21, its the pre pre pre alpha pre beta pre pre gamma delta pre RC pre build, I'm so bleeding edge I have to buy tampons at the store. My insurance company wont even insure my computer because all my software are practically from the future.
Can I light a sig ?
If your addon is on addons.mozilla.org
Does addons.mozilla.org offer private hosting of bespoke addons used by a single company? Does addons.mozilla.org offer hosting of addons whose use requires payment? Or is addons.mozilla.org intended solely for addons intended for public use at no charge?
they've begun automatically testing addons for compatibility
I seem to remember reading that any add-on incorporating a native code component will automatically fail the test.
Precisely the opposite. It's our previous abstraction layer that's too slow, and we're replacing it with a thinner one, starting with the easier things like Canvas. See Introducing the Azure project and Azure vs Cairo.
The shareholder is always right.
When I saw "Firefox 8" in the title, I fell into a panic. What happened to 6 and 7? People weren't meant to upgrade their browsers to new major version numbers weekly! No one could possibly survive that pace, their mouse buttons will burn out at the furious pace necessary to install that often! Think of the effect that has on the women and children!
It'll be alpha on Friday, beta on Sunday, released next wednesday and discontinued next friday.