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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.
Firefox 6 is so out of date, my parents will probably use it when it comes out.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.
Agreed. I thought I was reading The Onion.
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.
Firefox 8: "The Ocho"
Firefox 8 has a version number that is 100% greater than Firefox 4. Now there's a big improvement for you.
Tell that to the extentions that constantly break on new major version.
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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.
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!
Is it possible to check compatibility of installed extensions before your upgrade? Other than going to the homepage of each extension, that is.
If not, that would be a nice option:
"A new version of firefox is available. Checking list of extensions for compatibilty issues ... Done! From 10 installed extensions, the following are incompatible with the new version. Would you still like to upgrade?"
It is now. It wasn't once before. At one point, version numbers had meaning, that is until marketing and people such as yourself decided it really didn't matter.
I've worked doing both support and development and for me, a version number is not 'just a number'. It tells me something about what I can expect.
The number should be as follows: major.minor.patch.build
A major version bump means there WILL be compatibility issues. API changes require a major bump. Massive UI/Feature changes warrent a major bump a lot of the time.
A minor version number means it probably won't break anything unless you have some dependency on a specific bug that has been fixed, which should be unlikely if you followed documented APIs and such. May introduce minor new features, should mostly be features that you missed on the release or where incomplete due to deadlines. Occasionally the 'heh, I forgot that obvious small feature that makes a world of difference' goes here, but for the most part this should be reserved for fixes that may accidently break compatibility.
A patch version number change means you shouldn't notice any difference other than a security/bug fix.
The build number is a unique identifier for the developer to reference internally as an exact point in time snapshot of the package. Thats the number that allows the dev to reproduce the exact same build.
With the exception of a major number change, all other changes shouldn't result in massive breakages, for instance a major version change is the only thing that should break Firefox plugins en masse, and it should be avoided if there is any possible way to do so.
I want to know what to expect from an upgrade, traditional version numbers help me at a glance determine my risk.
Firefox (and Chrome) is taking an approach that I could only describe as amateur and completely lacking of any experience of having to support someone elses software product. It indicates you (Mozilla) don't give a flying fuck about what happens to the people who use the browser or what their experience is like, just that they get their way.
And for the record, going from 4.05 to 4.08 generally would result in my response being something like:
Great, another Firefox release, wonder how much this one breaks?
The only people who randomly see a new version of software and get excited for no reason aren't relevant to this conversation. Normal people (the majority of us) have better things to do than worry about the latest release of Firefox. Anyone who does get excited needs to seek counseling.
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