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Mozilla Foundation Releases Firefox 7
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Firefox 7.0. It hasn't actually reduced my memory footprint at first glance, but let's hope that the memory usage doesn't keep growing like it used to. We'll also see if it crashes less often than once every three days or so."
The initial memory use of Firefox should remain similar to previous releases, but at least the heap shouldn't grow infinitely as it does in previous releases.
It's not that it's not tested. It's just that what the Firefox designers want is now completely divorced from what the users want. This has been clear for me since the 'awesomebar'*.
I'm trying out Opera. I used to be a Firefox promoter, moving people off IE6 and onto FF every chance I got; but now... all the browsers seem like necessary evils.
*Not that adding the awesomebar was bad... but forcing the awesomebar, and eliminating the option to turn it off, was. That's the behavior that indicates a company is putting marketing ahead of engineering.
I love the awesome bar. It's made my browsing faster and more efficient.
Since people compare software by version number, one is at a competitive disadvantage in number software sensibly. FF7 would be FF4.3 were it not for chrome, why not call it ff 2011.3 and be done with it.
How about everyone get over the version numbering already and enjoy the new features in this free browser? That'd be great.
The memory usage is now much better than Chrome. Speed is improved. None of my add-ons broke. We finally have text-overflow: ellipsis (long overdue!). WTF, people. This is a good thing, not a bad one, and if all you can do is complain about the damned version number, you apparently need to go get a life.
Here's to FF8 in 6 weeks, with improved font rendering and the compatibility assistant! (and a big preemptive SUCK IT to those of you who will inevitably complain about the version numbering and release schedule). If you like yearly release schedules, please switch to IE.