Posted on 08/29/2012 4:44:20 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Mozilla has been waging a multi-year battle against memory bloat in its open source Firefox web browser. With today's Firefox 15 release, Mozilla is firing a major salvo in that battle, claiming a reduction in memory usage.
The memory reduction comes by way of plugging memory links in the way that third party add-ons consume memory.
In a blog post detailing the memory fix, Mozilla developers estimated that the memory improvement could be as much as a 4.8x improvement over the previous Firefox 14 release.
Perhaps even more interesting then simply yet another Firefox release is the fact that Mozilla is now also debuting a new browser specifically designed for tablets.
In June of this year, Mozilla relaunched its mobile efforts with the new Firefox for Android release. The initial release was focused on phones only and is now being expanded with a new tablet version of the browser. Mozilla's mobile browser for Android follows the same release cycle as the desktop browser.
"Firefox for Android makes it easy to get to your favorite sites with one touch with a personalized start page and a fresh, streamlined look," Mozilla wrote in a blog post. "This release includes a new Awesome Screen that delivers all of your browsing history, bookmarks, passwords and form data."
Over the course of this year, Mozilla has also made incremental gains with each browser release with its included developer tools. In Firefox 15, developers will now benefit from a new JavaScript Debugger.
"Firefox adds features that make it easier for developers to build amazing Web experiences," Mozilla developer Kevin Dangoor said in a blog post. "The new JavaScript Debugger is a fast, built-in tool to give greater insight into Web application code. Developers can also use the JavaScript Debugger over a local network to remotely debug apps running on Firefox for Android, greatly simplifying mobile Web development."
Both mobile and desktop developers will now also be able to use compressed textures in graphics. The end result means more effective utilization of memory for graphic intensive applications like games.
"Firefox makes animations smoother with an improved JavaScript engine and enhancements to WebGL," Mozilla stated in a blog post. "Firefox also provides game and other interactive content developers precision to within thousandths of milliseconds with high precision timing."
What does it break?
FF13 and Adobe Flash would not play together. Mozilla pointed fingers at Adobe. Adobe pointed fingers at Mozilla.
FF14 and Adobe Flash sort of work together, but Flash is choppy.
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When will Mozilla’s Rapid Release insanity end????? Numerous add-ons are no longer updated or lag behind the rapid release stupidity.
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Every time I get do a reboot, I get a Flash message of a new version. Then FF comes out with its new release.
I click cancel, because I don’t want to take the chance to see which breaks the other.
I started using Firefox a few years back, to keep the incidence of virus attacks to a minimum, as IE was a much more likely target. However, I have found that some merchandise web sites that use Java Script in the checkout process don’t work well (some don’t work at all) with Firefox. I reluctantly shifted back over to IE (9) and so far, I’ve been happy with the results. It seems a bit faster than Firefox (14). I’m curious to see if Version 15 will solve the aforementioned Java Script issue, and speed up Firefox to match IE 9.
That's fine with me.
I don't use a lot of extensions--AdBlock, NoScript, DoNotTrack, and RIP are the main ones. They seem to just work with each new update, though.
If you liked Firefox, give Chrome a try. It is faster than IE and now has most of the extensions like Adblock that Firefox has.
I only use Adblock on liberal sites like the NY Times and Washington Post, so I am not subsidizing them by being able to see any of their ads. On conservative sites or sites I like, I allow the ads to show as a sign of support, and click on some of them . One conservative site, DailyCaller.com has such intrusive ads (flashing and interrupting articles) that I block the aids there. But that is the only conservative site that I give the AdBlock treatment.
Thanks.
I use a Mac. Since version 12 Firefox has not worked well at all. I tried several times to get it to work. Rebooted, updated as much as I knew to update and tried again. Won’t work with AT&T / Yahoo mail since it locks up and won’t upload attachments.
Looked for some solution to problems, others seem to have them as well and have not found a solution either.
Really liked Firefox but it stopped working for some reason.
I had been using Firefox cross-platform for consistency of experience, plug-ins, etc. On the Mac and Win7 machines, I ditched it for Safari because it’s gotten so unstable and breaks add-ons at whim now. I still have it on my Linux box, as I haven’t found a better option yet.
The past several weeks, Adobe Flash has been constantly crashing when running with FF14, so much so that I've been using FF about half as much as in the past and making much more use of Opera, IE and Chrome.
Got an update for both FF (FF 15) and Adobe this morning. Hopefully the problem is solved, but I wouldn't put any money on it.
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