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Firefox 15 Released: Silent Updates, Compressed Textures, Add-on Memory Leak Fix

Posted by Soulskill on from the when-in-chrome dept.

Mozilla released Firefox 15 today, and it brings a number of interesting changes. First, the browser is finally switching to a "silent" update model, like Chrome. (No doubt in answer to endless complaints about their rapid release cycle.) In addition, Mozilla says they have "now plugged the main cause of memory leaks in Firefox add-ons." Add-ons commonly hold extra copies of sites in memory when they don't need to, and the browser now has a mechanism to detect this and reclaim the memory. Another significant improvement is the addition of native support for compressed textures in WebGL, which is a boost for high-res 3D gaming. Here are release notes for the desktop and mobile versions.

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  1. Old story, or something new? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The Firefox developers have been claiming memory leak fixes since before it was called Firefox.

    Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Open a lot of windows and tabs and see for yourself. Maybe you don't normally do that, but people who do research online often see Firefox instability.

    Should software updating be a system service? Suppose you like the Firefox version you have? Should updating be a system service, as with Google's Chrome? Most people don't know how to disable system services. Some manufacturers try to stop disabling by giving their services misleading names.

    These are the Google system services I see on one Windows 7 computer:

    Google Update Service (gupdate)
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe" /svc

    Google Update Service (gupdatem)
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe" /medsvc

    Google Updater Service
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Common\Google Updater\GoogleUpdaterService.exe"

    Is Google so all-knowing that it can alone decide what should be on user's computers? Or will Google become more and more adversarial and disfunctional eventually go the way of HP and Tektronix?

    I like Firefox. I think Mozilla needs a better top manager.