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Firefox 7.0 Beta Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the another-day-another-version dept.

An anonymous reader sends word that the first Firefox 7.0 beta has been released. One of the big areas of focus for this version will be performance enhancements. One optimization "Reduces memory use and improves performance areas including responsiveness, startup and page load time, even in complex websites and Web apps." Another addresses one of Firefox users' long-standing gripes: "The JavaScript garbage collector works more frequently to free up memory and improve performance when you have many tabs open or keep Firefox running for a long time."

3 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Memory Reporting by MozeeToby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not in the summary is an opt in feature that will report your memory use (presumably along with what pages you are on and extentions you are using) back to Mozilla so they can finally put the "but FF using 2 GB of RAM on my machine" bugs to rest, either by fixing them or by dispelling the myth depending on which is the case.

  2. Re:Really? What's the point of this version number by JMJimmy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What do you use instead? That's been my big problem - the plugin libraries of other browsers are no where near as extensive and a lot of the functionality I use daily just isn't there.

    Plugins used daily:

    - Snap Links Plus ---- a few upgrades and this should replace traditional highlighting in a browser
    - QuickDrag ---- removes the need to do ctrl+click to open in a new tab
    - Adblock Plus ---- simply hiding ads isn't enough for ABP, it must stop them from downloading to preserve the precious 20gb of data transfer/month I have
    - Element Hiding Helper ---- for those few pesky ads you can't block from downloading
    - Modify Headers ---- this one is gold
    - FireFTP
    - Canadian English Dictionary
    - IE Tab Plus ---- for those pesky active x controls (not used daily but useful)
    - Morning Coffee ---- how else would I open all my favourite sites at once? certainly not with the "dialpad" or whatever that monstrosity is called
    - Chatzilla
    - about a dozen different web development tools from Firebug to Live HTTP headers to MeasureIt... just too many to mension

    There's just no option that does all that... at best I might be able to do it across 4-5 different programs if I dropped some of them. Slowly though they are no longer supporting 3.6 and I won't upgrade due to the numerous issues from their release model to their UI and so on... eventually I'll have switch to another browser because neither 3.6 nor 7+ will be worth using.

    It was good while it lasted.

  3. Re:Aw c'mon by cachimaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think that's the idea, to stop developers from relying on version # and start coding to standards.