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Firefox 13 Released, Debuts Brand New Tab Page and Homepage
MrSeb writes "Mozilla has officially released Firefox 13. Unlike Firefox 12 (or 11, or 10, or indeed many of the recent Firefox versions), Firefox 13 is an important release with a handful of much-needed features that are long overdue. There's a new New Tab Page launcher, with your favorite and most-used websites, and a new default home page with one-click access to Bookmarks, Settings, Add-ons, etc. SPDY is on by default, too, which should help ameliorate the perceived speed difference between Chrome and Firefox. Finally, the developer tools (Page Inspector, Style Inspector, etc.) have been tweaked and updated!"
I've seen this news all over the web since yesterday, however, the "new tab" page as it is, isn't a Chrome feature, it actually comes from Opera, which had it way before Chrome existed.
after I updated to 13. Sorry, I'm not using a tablet or smartphone Firefox guys. Please design it for the platform I'm using.
Speed dial is one of the first things I disabled when I tried Opera. Now I need to get rid of it in Firefox too.
They were fixed in Firefox 7: http://www.gadgetvenue.com/firefox-7-to-use-up-to-50-percent-less-memory-08114900/
If by fixed you mean browser usability was sacrificed in order to make the apparent memory usage drop, then yes. My biggest complaint with these memory "improvements" is in regard to image handling:
- Images are now decode-on-draw meaning they display slower and background tab images are not decoded. Browsing an image gallery or some other image-heavy site is now obscenely painful in Firefox.
- Decoded images on background tabs only live for 10-20 seconds and then are discarded at which point they must be re-decoded when the tab is activated. Long-lived tabs like Gmail now flicker every time you switch back to them as images are re-decoded.
These are just the two that come to mind right away. Luckily they can be fixed by tweaking some about:config settings (image.mem.decodeondraw and image.mem.min_discard_timeout_ms). Unfortunately many cannot be fixed so easily.
I'm really tired of the Firefox devs choosing (usually wrong) user complaints over good design and usability practices.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I love Firefox and use it every day, but I'm getting a little tired and confused with some of the features they keep putting into the core. I've always thought one of the great things about Firefox is the extensions; and while other browsers offer similar 'add-on' concepts, Firefox just seems to do it better. Why aren't they concentrating on just making a seriously good browser engine and then leaving the extra stuff to the extension developers. Or, if it's something important, get with the extension developers and help them out, offer a 'Firefox suggested extension package' that downloads and enables extensions by default. That way, all the 'normal' users get the cool goodies, and the rest of us can turn them off or uninstall them all together if it's not something we need.
For instance, the new development centric stuff they have in FF13 is nice. But it doesn't hold a candle to the development tools that have been in IE9 and Chrome for some time. I use Firebug for all my web debugging needs in FF and it works wonderfully. Get with those guys and improve their already awesome extension. Don't try to re-invent every cool extension and add it to the core. Not everyone needs it, not everyone wants it. Just build the fastest, most standards compliant browser out there that offers an amazing extension engine and you'll have a winning browser.
I just fear FF 3.6 becoming the new IE 6...
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