Posted on 08/17/2011 4:46:57 AM PDT by ShadowAce
At Mozilla the trains run on time. The open source group is out with its second rapid release browser today, providing users with improved functionality and performance.
Firefox 6, which is being officially released by Mozilla today, follows Firefox 5, which debuted in July. Both Firefox 5 and 6 are part of Mozilla's new rapid release cycle, which aims to deliver more browser updates with incremental features. Previously Mozilla had released major browser update on a less predictable cycle with long with development cycles of a year or longer in between releases.
While the new rapid release cycle does not present the same volume of new features as the longer release cycles, Mozilla is confident that the process is working.
"We’re refining our own process constantly and are seeing dividends with smooth transitions as a release moves from Aurora to Beta to release," a Mozilla spokesperson told InternetNews.com
The Aurora channel is Mozilla's development release for Mozilla and is followed by the beta and then finally the release. Work is often done in parallel on Aurora and Beta channels as part of the rapid release cycle methodology.
One of the key improvements in Firefox 6, which will further be expanded upon in Firefox 7 and 8, is performance improvements.
"With Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux, Panorama users will enjoy faster start-up times because tab groups are only loaded when selected," Mozilla's spokesperson said.
Panorama is a feature that debuted in Firefox 4, enabling users to group tabs. The Panorama feature began its life as a Mozilla Labs project known as Tab Candy.
Firefox 6 is also being released for Android users. The new Android release offers faster zooming, crisp text and reduced pixelation due to enhanced image rendering.
"There are even more improvements coming in Firefox Beta and Firefox Aurora," Mozilla's spokesperson said.
For developers, Mozilla is including a new tool called Scratchpad that is intended to make it simple to quickly enter, execute, test and refine JavaScript snippets in Firefox without needing to work in a one-line console.
"Scratchpad is a simple tool, and we want it to stay that way," Mozilla's spokesperson said. "We’re planning a handful of improvements to Scratchpad that will show up in Firefox over the coming months, but the simple text editor that runs JavaScript core will remain."
Firefox 6 will also support the Event/Source specification that is an emerging standard at the W3C.
"This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events," the W3C specification draft states. "The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS."
Mozilla isn't the first browser to implement Event/Source. Both Chrome and Opera already support the draft specification.
The last version of Firefox for Android was disappointing; I’ll see if this one is any better.
I’ve been a whole lot happier since switching from IE.
The first step was admitting that I had a problem.
Chrome for me.
ChromePlus here. Switched from Firefox about 3 months ago.
Interesting—I hadn’t heard of ChromePlus before!
Chrome = 100% Google spyware. They know ever website you visit, search term used, etc.
At least with Firefox with Noscript, AdblockPlus, BetterPrivacy you can avoid tracking and spying.
If they have "incremental features" then why jump whole version numbers? I'm still running Firefox 3.6 so I've missed two "major" versions already.
Opera 11.5!
Opera 11.5!
So nice, it posted twice.
It has AdBlockplus, anon browsing,and mouse gestures built in. Search right from the address bar. I like the bookmark layout more than Firefox and I find I spend a lot less time messing around with addins than I did with Firefox. I go back to Firefox every now and then but keep on coming back to Chromeplus.
http://www.chromeplus.org/download.php
I bailed on Chrome the morning after I watched an “It gets better” ad sponsored by Google (specifically, Google Chrome) a few months ago. Gotta stand for something.
It seems like just yesterday that they were stuck on 3.xx
Mozilla is getting ridiculous with their rapid releases.
I just upgraded to 5 (bypassing 4 altogether) a few weeks ago.
I looked on their website, but could not find a definitive list of improvements/changes for 6. Is it worth the effort? One earlier review (from a year or so ago) indicated that 6 would be only minor improvements with 7 being some significant improvements.
I lost a few extensions/add-ons when I upgraded from 3.6 to 5. How many might I lose upgrading to 6? I don’t know — I may not bother to find out, unless I can find a good description of what is new/better in 6.
The search in the address bar is part of the regular Chrome. What’s your favorite of ChromPlus’s added features?
My experience with Microsoft Office and such is that over-featured software becomes a real issue, but useful features are, well, useful.
The search in the address bar is part of the regular Chrome. What’s your favorite of ChromePlus’s added features?
My experience with Microsoft Office and such is that over-featured software becomes a real issue, but useful features are, well, useful.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.