Firefox 3.1 beta 3 officially online
Mozilla has announced the availability of Firefox 3.1 beta 3. Firefox 3.1 introduces support for the HTML 5 video element, the new high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, and several other compelling features. This beta irons out some bugs and moves the browser a step closer towards the final release. Firefox 3.1 was originally intended to be an incremental update targeted for release in late 2008. Plans changed, however, and the feature set grew significantly. As a result of the delays and the large number of noteworthy improvements that are now included in the code base, the developers are presently working on changing the version number from 3.1 to 3.5.
The 3.1 release will bring a lot of very impressive changes, including performance enhancements and new features for users and developers. It includes Firefox’s new high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript runtime which significantly boosts the speed of script execution. In addition to faster performance, the JavaScript engine has also gained support for background processing with the new worker threads feature. Native JSON parsing support will also increase performance for certain kinds of dynamic Web applications. Firefox 3.1 delivers richer multimedia with support for the new HTML5 canvas element which is powered by a built-in Ogg codec. There are also some new rendering effects like support for using SVG filters on HTML. New CSS3 features implemented in 3.1 include shadows and border images.
Source: Ars Technica
Comments(35)
Long Live Firefox!
IE is still king, and the fastest browser out. FF was good at the beginning, but now is just a bloated piece of cr@p. Runs sooo slow and takes forever to even open up. IE just works, is responsive, and barely uses any memory.
@IE:
And you are from which parallel Universe?! :p
Just take at look at the new Benchmark-Side of FutureMark: http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/index.action
LOL @ 2 IE
What a pile of horse cack
@ 4
Ok, let me see…
Firefox mem usage: 121,456
IE mem usage: 40,329
STFU.
Firefox FTW !
@ IE, you are a n00b !
STFU if you don't know how to make a proper comparison.
memory hog bloatware, thats what firefox is the last 2 years.
Have any of you even tried the latest IE?
i've been using firefox for maybe 10 years, i never been a fan of explorer. firefox is the best there is… period!
Long Live Firefox!
I can only hope these IE lovers are just trolling. I can't imagine there's people out there which are that out of it.
I just ran that futuremark benchmark and the results were:
Firefox 3.1b3 with FOURTEEN addons installed and scored 727
Vista's default IE7 scored 232
I then closed them both and loaded this page with each one.
Firefox's memory usage was 39,200 MB, IE's was 63,200
And MOST importantly was that when I loaded this page on each one, in IE, I saw 2-3 in page ads and a RIDICULOUS FULL PAGE POPUP AD. I cannot believe rlslog would use that full page ad crap, shame on you.
I use Firefox with Adblock Plus and have never seen a single ad on rlslog nor 99% of other websites.
I'm not saying Firefox is the fastest, but it's plenty fast enough and it allows for what I would consider essential addon's.
Use Opera, its better than both internet explorer and firefox. Use once, you will know. Go here > http://www.opera.com
Chrome ftw….LOL!!
firefox is indeed bloated. i need 20-30 addons to customize it to my liking. whats up with that? they should take a look at maxthon, where you dont need a separate addon to change the tab clicking behavior for example. things like that are just too important to leave out.
maxthon used to be my default browser but since it's based on IE, it is quite slow. so i had to put up with all firefox's faults in return for its speed.
i really like chrome, it "feels" light and im waiting for adblock and 'tab clicking options' to make it my default browser. im currently using it alongside firefox.
what i dont understand however is WHY MOST BROWSERS WONT LET YOU RUN A DOWNLOADED FILE WITHOUT SAVING IT FIRST. JESUS FKING CHRIST. opening torrents in chrome is a nightmare
#5 IE
IE is a part of the Windows OS so what your seeing is only a part of the actual memory usage. IE is still king… of the crap browsers I agree.
#10 maxthon
maxthon is just another IE shell browser wannabee… as your just adding bloat on top of crappy IE.
#15 softhunterdevil
If Opera was so good then why do they still only have a tiny fraction of the browser usage numbers compared to Firefox. Granted I would much rather see people go to Opera long before they downgrade back to crappy IE of any version.
#17 dex
what i dont understand however is WHY MOST BROWSERS WONT LET YOU RUN A DOWNLOADED FILE WITHOUT SAVING IT FIRST. JESUS FKING CHRIST. opening torrents in chrome is a nightmare
Firefox does not allow you to run files like *.exe for security reasons (and for people to not be able to blame Firefox for infecting computer
) as one should also scan them before running the exe. Firefox can open .torrents into a torrent client if you set it up depending on OS as I can do it on Linux with Firefox builds from Mozilla.
@ IE
Im going to have to agree with you dude. I was a full time user of FF, but it started dragging after a few patches making me start migrating over to IE. I was astonished by the speed IE had over FF, Im just waiting for Internet Explorer 8 to get out of RC status before I do a complete transition.
Before anyone starts to hate, I have a pretty high-end rig. Nevertheless, FF starts as if it were a dx10 game!
Firefox has a strong userbase developing shtload of addons, I wouldn't even be able to effectively browse the internet without them, that's why firefox is the only choice(speaking about adblock+ and firebug for example).
I'm FF user since 2.0 version and I must agree with that fat boy IE, it consumes much memory, probably because some memory leak bugs that the Mozilla developers can't find. 100mb of memory for 3 openned web sites is too ridiculous! Btw, currently using FF 3.0.7 and I'll test now this new version with these such "performance enhancements". Let's see if the memory bugs still remain.
IE you're dead long time ago hehehe, I hope never cya in my system.
FF is much better the only thing which i noticed that it takes a longer time to open … but this is on my old pc:)
i am aware of the supposed 'security reasons', the companies think we are all stupid. i always know what im downloading, i dont need to scan anything, i just want to run a setup.exe once in a while without having to save it first. even if they dont want this enabled by default they could make it optional, but noooooooo…
firefox does have an extension that solves the problem but thats not the point. i want all the proper customization options out of the box, not after 30 addons installations, uninstallations and browser restarts.
and yes, firefox can open .torrents, thats why i only mentioned chrome.
Actually 2 is right. The soon to be released RC 2 build of IE 8 out performed Chrome AND Firefox and scored second only too Safari.
i'm using the latest trunk build of firefox (aka minefield) with 2 addons (one of them being adblock)
running the benchmark from peacekeeper i get 957 Points with my rig, IE7 does 243 Points… do i need to say more? even my firefox 2 with a ton of addons does more than IE7
i've tried them all, but none of them give me the same useful addons as firefox, thats what makes ff the best…
Quite amazing that there's over 20 comments now and neither those nor the original article actually quoted the official URL for downloading Firefox 3.1 Beta 3. It's:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
It's generally a sub-10MB download and comes down quickly, so torrents/file-hosting URLs seem utterly pointless to me. As for the 3.1 (soon to be renamed 3.5) pre-releases, I miss the close tab button on each tab myself – it's bewildering that it's not shown by default any more.
New on Blu-ray Log:
——
Quantum of Solace 2008 BRRip XviD AC3-PRODJi
——
http://www.bluraylog.info/?p=151
A note for mac users:
I have just run the browser benchmarks on my macbook pro with osx 10.5:
Safari 3.2.1 858
Firefox 3.1b3 515
Firefox 3.0.7 344
Although this release of FF shows a significant (50%) performance boost over the previous version it still lags way behind safari.
First Off Internet explorer is faster than firefox if u dont disable all ur history and crap….otherwise firefox is the browser to use speed etc…cleanup auto when closing everything addons… try facebook on internet explorer vs firefox ..it was built for firefox.
For once I am appreciating the conversation here
I love Firefox for its customization options and I feel much more secure surfing/using it over IE, but yeah, it does drag sometimes. If I run uTorrent with it things can get very clunky indeed; don't know if it's because system resources are being sucked up by coordinating information transfer to and from the C drive or what. Just upgraded to a quadcore and things are faster & smoother but there is still some lag working in FF. Some of it seems to be dependent on the site I'm looking at, too (server issue?)
@ rkl thanks for the link.
#23 dex
Even IE downloads the file first before running so technically Firefox would do the same even if allowed.
#26 rkl
As for the 3.1 (soon to be renamed 3.5) pre-releases, I miss the close tab button on each tab myself – it's bewildering that it's not shown by default any more.
But the tab close icons SHOULD be there by default and the browser.tabs.closeButtons preference is still set at 1 in 3.1 builds including the recent 3.1b3 test build, just like with 3.0.* and 2.0.0.*. Perhaps you have a Tab related extension conflicts as I seem to recall somebody asking this one time and found the culprit shortly after. I'll see if I can find this information again and report back.
I like firefox but I've greatly preferred Opera for the last yr. I don't bother with IE unless some college class requires me to do something on some program I can only make work with it.
Because ie comes with windows, ie users are too lazy to try anything new, stay on that dying dinosaur. Opera feels like netscape. Chrome and safari both suck. I've never had a crash with FireFox and the security is the best compared to the rest especially ie. Besides an easy way to hack the OS is through the browser.
IE is such garbage, anything's better.
hate to say this, but here goes, I am a die hard firefox user, and will probably never change, but my g/f (and person I share this computer with? uses AOHELLS free browser, and if she changes to another browser? I am going to hers.) reason we use separate browsers, cause we have different bookmarks. I know we are all supposed to hate AOL, and I do. But their browser is actually my favorite.