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.
I never trusted Gill Bates and Gal Dore!
I do have IE on my PCs; but I don’t use it, mainly because so many pseudo-aMericans insist bad things will happen if I attempt to remove it...?????
I’ve got my own issues with Google. But is Microsoft any better? Certainly Facebook isn’t, though they’re not really relevant here.
Adblock, mouse gestures - might be some other features that it has that the regular Chrome doesn’t that I’ve forgotten.
I did not spend a lot of time analyzing the difference between Chrome and Chromeplus. I found Chromeplus, tried it, liked it, decided it was a more comfortable fit than Firefox and so adopted it. Browsers are not a big deal to me.
I’ve had nothing but trouble with FF5 - it would hang. Will 6 make it better or worse? I had to switch to IE and believe me, I want OUT. I have a new machine with 12 gigs of RAM, quad processors, and Win7 Professional.
This concern of ShadowAce - I got tired of that with Firefox.I guess I would say that Chromeplus fills all my needs out of the box. I haven’t added any add-ons at all. I was forever messing around with them with Firefox.
“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'm still on 5.
“Oh, those c-r-a-z-y mouse gestures...heh!”
I’m not sure how to take that!(?) But page-back/page-forward gestures which are all I ever use - those are essential to me.
I honestly don't know which ones--if any--would be lost in the upgrade. I use several that seem to update themselves fairly quickly with each firefox update.
We'll see.
The other thing is software that’s constantly ‘on’, communicating on the Internet, and taking up too many resources. My Lexmark All-In-One software is like that—never anything else from Lexmark for me!
It actually does feel better.
Should you upgrade on the advice of someone using it for a whole minute?
Totally your decision :-)
I just installed FF6 and it locked up on FR ... not the best first impression but I'll give it a week and decide if it makes my primary or alternate browser (currently IE9[32bit] and FF5 (because my work apps function better on FF5 than Chrome).
Kinda sucks, even if the improvements are actually improving things...
“The other thing is software that’s constantly ‘on’, communicating on the Internet, and taking up too many resources. My Lexmark All-In-One software is like that—never anything else from Lexmark for me!”
You might want to get a freeware program called Winpatrol. All those programs make registry changes, and this software will not allow that without your approval, and will also help you identify which process is doing it should it get installed, and allow you to easily disable it.
http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html
They ran an ad implicitly admitting that their software sucks but promising to improve it in the future?
Some sort of update was installed, thinking it was for Windows & and Firefox has been upgephuqued ever since.
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