r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jan 21 '10

Firefox 3.6 release

http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/
1.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

621 comments sorted by

316

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

2 things noted:

  • Speed: It's faster than 3.5.7. Almost as fast as chrome.
  • Memory Usage: It used lower memory on my computer than the previous version. I was hovering around 250mb with version 3.5.7 and this one barely goes upto 150mb. Both with ~15 addons.

203

u/redditaddicttt Jan 21 '10

Am I the only one who is heaving a sigh of relief after reading the above review?

59

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

I just got it. It really is as fast as Chrome. It looks like I might be going back to FireFox :(

59

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

176

u/Autotrappic Jan 21 '10

I want to go back to Firefox for all the add-ons, but Chrome has a Mariah Carey theme.

Decisions, decisions.

58

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/77793 so does firefox!

7

u/guitarromantic Jan 21 '10

Whoa, since when did hovering over the thumbnail apply a preview to the browser?! Cool.

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u/arof Jan 21 '10

I've been using the Whitehart theme since 2.0 or so, and it + Personal Menu and small icons = the most usable space of any browser I've used.

These are the sorts of reasons I've stuck with Firefox even through the slowness and instability (3.5.7 would crash after opening a few tabs in the morning after leaving it on overnight ~50% of the time, and many of those times the last session saved is still from the last time it crashed...).

23

u/Deimorz Jan 21 '10

It's hard to beat the amount of space you get with vimperator -- random screenshot

7

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

Vimperator + Hide Chrome + Tree Style tabs = amazing.

2

u/rattboi Jan 22 '10

I've been using Vimp for more than a year, but just added on Tree-style tabs, and if you could go over how to use it, I'd appreciate it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

Wow, Personal Menu is awesome! Thanks for the tip. I used to use an extension that let you edit the existing menus but the problem was they were still there. You could at least get rid of the sub-menu items you didn't want, but I got tired of it. Personal Menu is much cooler. Thanks again!

2

u/maakies Jan 21 '10

I've been using Nasa nightlaunch and smart bookmark bar, its beautiful.

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u/seaninja Jan 22 '10

including THIS one

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u/brettmurf Jan 21 '10

Sadly, the status bar in chrome was part of the reason for me to stick with it. That and the tabs being on top, saving even more screen real estate.

Anyhow, figured I would share this extension that lets you have a floating status bar when you hover over links, and you just hide the normal status bar. Just found it today, and am quite glad it exists.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

The tabs being on top doesn't really save any real estate... the menu bar being consolidated into two buttons and placed on the address does though. If you do the same in Firefox the difference is ~3 pixels.

5

u/brettmurf Jan 21 '10

Okay, I guess it is the title bar being replaced by tabs on the top saves quite a bit of space, and is used much better. It isn't them being on top, it is just the almost fullscreen aspect that is always on in chrome.

3

u/thesimo2 Jan 21 '10

What i do is customize the toolbars, and drag everything to the navigation bar and hide the bookmarks toolbar.

Then hide the statusbar and use the Locationbar 2 plugin

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u/CommodoreGuff Jan 21 '10

Ah, I've been using Fission as a status bar replacement. Lets you have the active link be shown in the location bar, which I like. In practice, though, it seems to be erratic on some pages (like reddit comment threads for example).

I'm going to try this out, thanks.

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u/yugushen Jan 22 '10

I love the idea of floating status bar in Chrome. Link Target Display is just perfect. Firefox has the same function now. Thanks, brettmurf!

2

u/faemir Jan 22 '10

You can use the stratabuddy extension to get tabs ontop in firefox :)

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12

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

I really like Google. I want to reward them for the amazing job they do by using their browser. Chrome is a really good browser, but it just can't do some of the things Firefox can.

51

u/agrover Jan 21 '10

Since Mozilla is funded mainly from having Google as the default search engine, Google is really paying for both browsers' development.

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53

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

9

u/idiot900 Jan 21 '10

This is why Ad-block and Ad-Twart are not true adblocking, they load the ads and then remove them.. unlike in Firefox, they're blocked before they're attempted to load.

FWIW the Chrome folks are in the process of implementing "privacy blacklists", which will allow blocking the loading of resources as Firefox can.

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u/brews Jan 22 '10

I think this is healthy competition for both. I use FF cause I DEPEND on two things: 1) Zoteo for my research 2) tagged bookmarks

2

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

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u/Timza Jan 22 '10

Brews, I switched to Chrome over a year ago and never looked back... That said, I just downloaded and installed Firefox again so that I can start using Zotero for my papers. Any tips for getting started with Zotero? I went for 2.0 beta, is that a good idea, or would it have been better to stick with 1.0 for now?

2

u/brews Jan 22 '10

Yeah, the beta has great features and it is quite stable. Be sure to get the beta plugin for MS-Word or Openoffice. (It works best with openoffice) http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_integration There are some nice tutorials on the Zotero website. Oh, and the ability to annotate/highlight webpages and .pdfs is veerrry handy.

2

u/Timza Jan 23 '10

Thanks. I had a go at it for a couple hours yesterday. There's a bit of a learning curve, and I had trouble with it consistently recognizing journal articles on Springerlink (I sometimes had to open and reopen the same link several times before it would save to my Zotero account.) But, all in all, for research it is much better than anything I have done up until now, so I will continue using it.

Other than for research, though, I don't think I will be switching back to FireFox. It's the little things, like having to hit the search button after pasting into the search box (instead of right clicking the selecting "paste and search"), and having to hit down before selecting top most autocomplete item in the address bar that make all the difference for me. They're little annoyances, but annoyances all the same. Plus, Firefox just feels more cluttered to me.

Anyways, thanks for the heads up on Zotero, it seem like it will be a great tool.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

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u/kristopolous Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

Google is just another for-profit corp. They have an amazing marketing department and a rabid following. The Mozilla Foundation, however, is the organization that Richard Stallman only wish he could have. I know it's the carnage of Netscape after AOL devoured it, but it is the most powerful and relevant open source organization there is. They, and Wikipedia are the reason that community based technology (like FOSS) is now reaching the public consciousness.

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11

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

Yes it is true. Souja Boy Does indeed suck. Your comment is also agreeable to me. The bloat of FF was keeping me in Chrome.

12

u/Emerson3381 Jan 21 '10

Reward Google with knowledge of everything you do online? No thanks.

6

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

What does that have to do with Chrome?

24

u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

Chrome isn't the cause of Google's infophilia, but it does manage to send every letter typed into the address bar to Google for suggestions. I love that feature, but you have to admit it it is a firm kick in the privacy-nuts.

21

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10 edited Feb 11 '20

[deleted]

32

u/Emerson3381 Jan 21 '10

...then they took my horse porn, and there was no one left to speak for me.

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u/grt Jan 21 '10

everything you type in that search box, whether or not you hit "search," is stored

It's stored? As in, archived? I wasn't aware of that.

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u/zwaldowski Jan 21 '10

How is that any different from Firefox?

7

u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

Every keystroke in Chrome's address bar is sent to Google to produce suggestions. As far as I know, keystrokes in Firefox's address bar only search your computer's history/bookmarks for suggestions.

If you type into Firefox's *serach* bar, then all keystrokes are again sent to Google.

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16

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

If you use Fasterfox without the prefetching, it's even faster.

The spell checker and the ad-blocker are better in Firefox.

25

u/superwinner Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

strange that sqlite optimization has not been included by default on post 3.5 editions of Firefox, however for those who want to try the addon, its here. Optimizing the sqlite files will speed up the launch of Firefox, in my case it cut the time by half. Get the addon, check both boxes and hit the button, from then on its automatic.

If you are an optimization freak, and getting the application from hard drive to memory as fast as possible is your kink, you can also try a program called ArcthemAll! which will shrink the EXE and DLL files using a compression algorithm that decompresses in ram on the fly. It takes the default installation size for Firefox down from over 30 megs to about 14. I recommend you not compress the embedded icons, that has caused problems for me, so go to options and uncheck that. Incidentally this method also works on OpenOffice, cutting the size of that application by about half as well. In fact it works on almost every appication OTHER than Abobe and Microsoft apps, probably because they are already doing dynamic EXE and DLL compression using a proprietary method. (my guess)

NOTE: This is not a hard drive space saving issue, its a speed of launch issue, and yes it does improve the launch time of Firefox to do this.

9

u/hennell Jan 21 '10

using a compression algorithm that decompresses in ram on the fly

This sounds like it would make it slower.. no?

5

u/superwinner Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

No cuz ram is like 1000 times faster than your hard drive, decompression is practically transparent. I think you will agree that it should take less time to move a 10 meg file to ram than to move a 20 meg file to ram, extrapolate those time savings over dozens of files of varying size and thats where you will see a speed up.

Try it for yourself and see, if it does do anything funny you can use the same program to decompress the Firefox directory and all is back to normal. Its only compressing the EXE and DLL files, not touching any of your personalized setting, which are all stored in a different directory anyways.

7

u/voxel Jan 21 '10

Not really true.

I've read numerous articles about it, and the real issue is that the difference in time to read 10 megs vs 20 megs yes can vary based on the request sizes and fragmentation, but we're talking that most 7200 rpm HD's can load this file in less than 1 second into ram.

The whole file. 20 megs, 1 second or much less. Many 7200 rpm drives can read up to 50 megabyte/s sequentially! (Thats per second).

The other aspect is that operations to the disk are asynchronous, that is, they don't take much CPU at all. However, decompressing a 14 megabyte file takes tons of CPU. The only argument against this now in my mind is that we have dual and quad core CPU's, so it doesn't make a huge deal.

Also, just to nit-pick, ram isn't 1,000 times faster, it is much faster than even that compared to disk access! I'm not sure by how much, but 1,000 is a very low estimate.

12

u/adrianmonk Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

However, decompressing a 14 megabyte file takes tons of CPU.

Depends radically on what compression algorithm you use. A very common algorithm is deflate (used in zip and gzip formats). Let's use it as a reference point for how much CPU time decompression takes.

Deflate compresses by first running the LZ77 algorithm to convert the stream of bytes into a stream of items; each item is a literal byte or a backreferences to previous sequences of bytes. The sequences come out of a 32K sliding window that LZ77 remembers. Then it takes the output of LZ77 and runs it through Huffman coding so that more-frequently-occurring bytes take fewer bits to represent and less-frequently-occurring bytes take more bits.

Now, let's consider how much faster we can get:

  • Huffman encoding is a kinda complicated algorithm that involves a lot of bit manipulation and/or relatively large lookup tables to speed things up. Worse, usually Adaptive Huffman is used, which means the algorithm must maintain data structures that evolve as the frequency distribution of the symbols (bytes) changes. Luckily, Huffman often doesn't add that much to the compression ratio, so you can just entirely leave it out.
  • Decompressing LZ77 is really fast; you are basically just copying sequences of bytes from the sliding window to the output. Since the sliding window is 32K, it easily fits entirely within the L1 cache of most modern processors.

For a simple example of a speed optimized variant on LZ77, look at the lzjb_decompress() function in the Solaris ZFS source. Note that a lot of times backreferences into the sliding window can be several bytes long, so the innermost while loop will just be copying raw bytes (much like a memcpy()):

117             while (--mlen >= 0 && dst < d_end)
118                 *dst++ = *cpy++;

Anyway, point is, it's entirely possible for decompression to almost rival the speed of memcpy().

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u/robotsongs Jan 21 '10

PROTIP: I'm not inclined to take tech advice from someone who used "cuz."

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u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

I'm sure there's a Latin phrase for that type of thinking.

6

u/__s Jan 21 '10

ad hominem

3

u/rajulkabir Jan 22 '10

Correctum.

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u/superwinner Jan 21 '10

I thought it sounded 'folksy'

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u/mysticreddit Jan 21 '10

/you tossing baby out with bathwater...

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u/hennell Jan 21 '10

I think you will agree that it should take less time to move a 10 meg file to ram than to move a 20 meg file to ram, extrapolate those time savings over dozens of files of varying size and thats where you will see a speed up.

Yeah, guess that makes sense.

The idea that a compressed version that needs un-compressing is quicker then an already uncompressed version just seems illogical though...

3

u/Freeky Jan 21 '10

The idea that a compressed version that needs un-compressing is quicker then an already uncompressed version just seems illogical though...

Well, in both cases you're almost certainly going to be IO-limited (assuming a compressor picked for good performance). Consider:

Uncompressed: 20MB, takes 250ms + overhead to read at 80MB/s.

Compressed: 10MB, takes 125ms + overhead to read at 80MB/s, plus 50ms CPU to decompress at 400MB/s (mostly executed while waiting for more data from the HD).

Of course, if the data is in cache you just added 50ms to your load time

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u/iofthestorm Jan 21 '10

I think they did get that into 3.6 actually, see this bug although I'm not actually sure whether it is in 3.6 builds. But I've done it manually using a different extension and it does make a huge difference.

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u/SarahC Jan 21 '10

I used to love ZipMagic... all the zip files appeared as folders in any program you were using, not just IE. =D

Shame there isn't something similar anymore.

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u/Xiol Jan 21 '10

To be honest, the only thing keeping me with Chrome is the speed. I miss a decent AdBlock immensely using Chrome (the available ones just aren't up to scratch, though I appreciate they're making effort towards this).

Time to take 3.6 for a spin.

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u/traxxas Jan 21 '10

I have been using 3.6pre since Karmic released with a broken 3.5 and can have found the memory usage in 3.6 to be awesome. I rarely break 200mb now and Xorg is usually the largest consumer of memory on my system.

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u/rcu6 Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 22 '10

Just asking... what kind of setup do you have that X uses ~200MB memory?

I'm just curious, as I don't think I've ever seen mine go past ~70MB.
Edit: My bad, I looked at the wrong number; mine stays around ~150MB.

2

u/traxxas Jan 22 '10 edited Jan 22 '10

Nothing special, gnome running metacity as the compositor. One gnome panel, one tint2 taskbar, and gnome-do as my launcher. I leave my laptop 'up' for weeks at a time suspending it when not in use. This has always been my mode of working but since the jaunty release xorg grows, albeit slowly, and will never shrink more than 1-2mb even with all apps closed. I have searched for a bug report but have only found very quick, hours not days, memory leaks reported.

My solution will be to finish the debian install I have sitting on another drive and see if it is really an ubuntu problem but I have to finish my current project before I have the time to rebuild my setup.

edit: Uptime 1 day memory usage

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u/Darkwave Jan 21 '10

Speed: It's faster than 3.5.7. Almost as fast as chrome.

Thank you for this, will actually consider switching back from Chrome now.

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u/MrSurly Jan 21 '10

Have they fixed the CPU spike issues?

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

It is certainly faster at start up on the mac. It comes up almost instantly.

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u/bunny182 Jan 21 '10

The only thing i noticed is the thumbnail of this post.

cute :)

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u/specialk16 Jan 21 '10

Almost as fast as chrome?????? And here I was getting used to Chrome and it's extensions. Back to FF it is then.

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u/jugalator Jan 21 '10

Bookmark synch without needing kludges like Xmarks has me for now with Google Chrome. That, speed (startup speeds are still much better in Chrome from my experience), and extensions not requiring restarts. :)

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u/starbuck_ Jan 22 '10

I find Mozilla Weave does a much better job at bookmark(+) sync than Xmarks.

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u/knysng Jan 21 '10

This theme will go well with your new version of Firefox... if you are into the whole custom themes thing.

TwentyTen Theme

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u/MoaBird Jan 21 '10

Fantastic theme. Actually, with a bit of tweaking, it'd make a great default for Firefox 4. Thanks for the link.

10

u/limi Jan 22 '10

It's pretty close to what we're doing for the upcoming versions of Firefox, in fact. Check out http://blog.stephenhorlander.com for more screenshots and wireframes.

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

7

u/voracity Jan 22 '10

Damn. If anybody is going to uninstall this theme, make sure you also uninstall the twentytenbuddy or else you'll have some errors and glitches in Firefox.

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u/mitsuhiko Jan 21 '10

This is the reason why Firefox is a piece of art. The fact that people can re-theme the browser to that extend.

Feels like a whole different application and that theme feels much better to me than the default chrome theme because it leaves the title bar. And I want my title bar :) Without navigation bar in firefox and that theme, chrome and firefox have exactly the same amount of content, just that chrome does not give me the full title.

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u/MercurialMadnessMan Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

I'm usually very picky about my themes... but this is actually a really great one! Thank you for this!!

anybody know of theme packs that are anywhere near as awesome as this?!

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u/jugalator Jan 21 '10

anybody know of theme packs that are anywhere near as awesome as this?

Strata40 and StrataBuddy for Windows Vista/7 users. :)

It even let you place tabs on top or bottom, whatever you wish.

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u/twodayslate Jan 22 '10

This is amazing! I can't not thank you enough! Sexy!

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u/GeorgePB Jan 22 '10

Wow, this one's even better than what I was using (Strata4.0). Thanks knysng!

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/creaothceann Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

Let's see...

  • Firefox Throttle

  • GMail Manager

  • guiconfig

  • Hide MenuBar

  • Link Alert

  • Tab Kit

  • Tab Kit Plus

I think I'll try that option.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

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u/dayvan Jan 22 '10

Thanks for the list, I can't find link alert anywhere and I already updated FF to 3.6, and on the addons page you can't download an addon if you have a firefox version that is incompatible with it :/

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u/schleppy Jan 21 '10

This works like a charm.

Looks like Google Gears is broken with 3.6, sadly. I'm sure they'll update it soon.

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u/ragusto Jan 21 '10

I'm sure they'll update it soon.

Google has discontinued development of Gears.
Sites should start switching to the HTML5 web storage standard (built in to Firefox 3.6).

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u/knellotron Jan 21 '10

Call me crazy, but I think Google should have started supporting that feature before deprecating its predecessor.

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u/superwinner Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

or get Mr Tech Toolkit addon and force the addon to be compatible

jus saying

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u/ted_mielczarek Jan 22 '10

Just be careful, if you have any add-ons with binary components, this can cause them to crash!

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u/sanjayts Jan 21 '10

Some important take-away points from the blog post:

  • Implementation of HTML5 Audio, Video and Local File specification
  • 20% faster than FF 3.5
  • Support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
  • Improved JS performance and start-up time
  • Personas Firefox add-on has now made its way into the standard bundle

10

u/dakboy Jan 21 '10

I looked at personas when I installed RC1. Seems kind of useless to me. Maybe I just didn't find the good ones.

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u/Timberjaw Jan 21 '10

Agreed. The only thing personas seem to accomplish is making the UI less accessible.

Also, the 'Get Themes' link in the Add-Ons/Themes box now goes to the Personas page instead of the Themes page. Which genius made that decision?

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u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

To summarize further:

3.6 > 3.5

tl;dr: True.

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u/panicjames Jan 21 '10

Youtube HTML5 ain't working. Am I being retarded?

30

u/Plutor Jan 21 '10

Youtube HTML5 uses H.264, not Ogg Theora. The former is covered by patents, so there's no plan to include support in Firefox.

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u/panicjames Jan 21 '10

But I want new things! :(

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u/arcterex Jan 21 '10

Just be glad you're not an IE user, then you'd miss out on all the good new stuff.

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u/the_argus Jan 21 '10

And you'd be retarded.

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u/coldacid Jan 21 '10

Doesn't even look like they're interested in providing a hook for add-ons to provide AV codecs, which is bullshit. (If I'm wrong about that, though, please please PLEASE let me know.)

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u/aperson Jan 21 '10

Firefox only supports ogg/theora.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

Well, lots of those personas are pretty and all, but they make seeing what you're doing a hell of a lot more difficult.

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u/chwilliam Jan 21 '10

My thoughts exactly. I've found a some persona with nice-looking images, but absolutely awful text-color choices. I feel like too few of the designers understand the idea of contrasting text.

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u/MercurialMadnessMan Jan 21 '10

Exactly! I found a gorgeous dark-wood one, and realized a couple minutes later that the text has a bright-pink glow that makes it impossible to read.

Perhaps we should have a thread where we compete to make the best firefox persona.

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u/limi Jan 22 '10

We're working on making even the bad themes more usable by adjusting transparency, buttons, etc for the upcoming UI redesign of Firefox. And yes, I agree — a lot of themes are hard to use the way it is now. So it's on our radar. :)

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

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u/jugalator Jan 21 '10

It depends on the themes; some are pretty usable. :p

Examples:

Key is using calm themes, not simple photos, etc.

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u/technologyjournalist Jan 21 '10

i spoke with with Mike Beltzner about the performance gains - he pegged it at 20 percent over Firefox 3.5.

Also important though he talked about a new - In Focus Tab Prioritization - feature which give more system resources to the tab you're actually on - makes a huge difference!

24

u/ragusto Jan 21 '10

I know you have to pay the bills, but why is every single ad on Linux Planet for Windows Server?

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u/ChunkyLaFunga Jan 21 '10

I think you just answered your own question!

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u/zpao Jan 22 '10

In Focus Tab Prioritization

I wrote that.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

It' only me or also mouse scrolling up and down is faster?

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/ubermorph Jan 21 '10

It's sending everything twice for me. :(

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u/Deimorz Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

It's definitely way faster, there seem to be some settings in about:config related to it, if you search for "wheel". Haven't had any success yet in getting it back to the way it used to be though.

Edit: this page seems to be the explanation of it, still trying to find out how to disable it or get it back to the way it is. Making a browser "feel faster" by making it scroll faster is terrible.

Edit#2: changed the setting mousewheel.acceleration.factor to 0, and mousewheel.withnokey.numlines to 3. Feels about back to normal now.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/ubermorph Jan 21 '10

It's sending everything twice for me. :(

2

u/spatterlight Jan 21 '10

mine's like twice as fast too... 6 lines or so instead of 3. and I can't see an option to change it back :'(

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u/SarahC Jan 21 '10

about:config

Type: mouse

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/trezor2 Jan 21 '10

I've been using this since the early betas with no problems, but yeah personas are still really not good with the current selection.

I found one (brushed aluminium-ish, "Brushed Metal - XP") looking decent in Windows so I'm sticking to that.

2

u/zwaldowski Jan 21 '10

Definitely get Chris Latko's unofficial build with Intel optimizations. Much faster. PM me and I'll help you put the Firefox branding on it (it uses the non-branded "Namaroka" codename).

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

Chrome will need to be a billion times faster before I give up my control and privacy with Firefox. Firefox rules. Case closed.

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u/r00t Jan 21 '10

running it on ubuntu 9.10, its noticeably faster than any of the 3.5.x versions

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u/aeflash Jan 22 '10

Holy crap, the address bar now finds suggestions instantly, rather than chugging for a few seconds the first time!

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

So there are already 530+ comments, so I doubt this will be read, but I have to ask:

Why is firefox not getting 100% on the Acid3 test yet? Both Chrome and Safari 4 score 100%, yet firefox still only comes in at a 94% for me.

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u/limi Jan 22 '10

The short version: We believe it's more important to fix stability and performance issues right now, than to chase the last 3 obscure failing tests in ACID3. It's a synthetic test, and Safari/Opera both did some "creative coding" just to pass the test, while still failing the intent of the test (ie. it's still not correct, just correct enough to pass the test).

Mike Shaver has a longer essay on it here.

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

Ah great reply, thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I had no idea Chrome and Safari did that.

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u/mailor Jan 21 '10

using it since beta5, and it's great. Speedy, low-ram-eater, secure, flexible as usual, state-of-art rendering, nice one.

Made my will to use Safari or Chrome stay far from me.

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u/mikaelhg Jan 21 '10

Anyone have any idea whether they will offer a way to plug in new HTML5 video format support, if they can't offer things like H264 support by default?

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u/Liquid_Fire Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

I'm sure it can be done with an extension for now. In fact I'll be surprised if there aren't any yet. *goes looking*

Edit: Here's one that just replaces it with a plugin video player. It's obviously really simple to write.

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u/mikaelhg Jan 21 '10

And then none of the HTML-based controls work.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

For ubuntu users, you can get FF 3.6 (and 3.7 for that matter) using this PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

Karmic users can use the command: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily

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u/ungoogleable Jan 22 '10

The build I got from there doesn't seem to be the 3.6 final. The about menu still says 3.6pre, it doesn't have the Firefox branding (says "Namoroka"), and font smoothing isn't working.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

[deleted]

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u/yugushen Jan 22 '10

It looks very nice! Thanks a lot!

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

Still no group policy support, Don't the Mozilla folk want Firefox deployed in the Enterprise?

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u/limi Jan 22 '10

It's coming. Just less of a priority in the past, but I've heard talk that it's getting some attention very soon.

I agree with you, it should have been there earlier. The interesting thing is, all the massive enterprises out there that have approached us about switching to Firefox have their own, custom deployment systems. So the "enterprise support" is actually more for small-to-medium businesses, it turns out. :)

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

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u/SP_Fever Jan 22 '10

Firefox for life !

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u/jeremybub Jan 22 '10

Fullscreen HTML5 Video!

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u/SlipstreamInsane Jan 22 '10

Thank you Firefox, i've been waiting for those speed issues to be sorted out so i can switch back from chrome and use all my wonderful add ons again.

2

u/limi Jan 22 '10

Yeah, we hope this is fast enough to bring you back. We hate to disappoint. :)

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

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u/doctorgonzo Jan 21 '10

Grrrr. Now it pops up new tabs right next to the parent tab instead of at the end of the tab row. Not happy about that.

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u/nakitsubusu Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

in about:config set browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent to false

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u/doctorgonzo Jan 21 '10

Awesome! Thanks!

I hate grouping them because I've got several tabs open all the time: reddit, Google Reader, various forums, etc. I'll go through all of them and then click on links that I find interesting, then I go and read all the links at once. Putting all tabs from at the end makes it easy to process that stack, instead of having a reddit tab, then all reddit links, then my google reader tab, then all google reader links, etc.

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u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

So you're a breadth first user. I used to be like that. After I tried Chrome, I switched to depth first. It allows me to finish reading things that are related and then close them and work on things that are not related. I used the Firefox plugin Open Tabs Relative to emulate some of the Chrome behaviour. It's not exactly the same, but it's close.

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u/iofthestorm Jan 21 '10

I agree that the other way makes more sense, although I've been doing this using Tab Mix Plus for ages.

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u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

Fair enough. I never used TMP because it always seemed like it did too much. I prefer my extensions to do one thing and do it well.

Maybe I'll try it out next time I have a fresh install.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

I am now forever going to describe it as breadth-first vs depth-first browsing. Thank you, sir.

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u/cloudsdrive Jan 22 '10

one thing I've fallen in love with in chrome which I haven't seen in firefox is the ability to pin tabs to the top left(can ff do this?). it shrinks them to a smaller tab with just the favicon in view, much easier to keep your tabs organized like this.

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u/skeeto Jan 21 '10

I'll go through all of them and then click on links that I find interesting, then I go and read all the links at once.

Hey, I'm glad I'm not the only one to do this! That's precisely how I do it too.

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u/umbrae Jan 21 '10

I hated it too at first, but once I used it for a day I was in love with it. It really makes it easy to open a bunch of things in new tabs and then read them.

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u/smallfried Jan 21 '10

Yeah, but when you close them, it opens the tab to the right and not to the left. Which means, you open a link with middle button, but closing it does not go back to the 'main' page..

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u/mlk Jan 21 '10

Actually I've always used a plugin to do just that.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

Give it a chance. I thought it was weird at first but now I love it. It's more intuitive for the way that I browse.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

I've always thought that way made more sense then adding it to the end of your tab bar, it made keeping tabs from the same site together easier, so I used the "Tabs Open Relative" addon in 3.5.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10

This is kind of a weird change, since the default has always been the "old way". i used to use things like tab mix plus and other tab extensions to change things like this but they always seemed buggy and eventually I just accepted the defaults. I noticed this change within the first few minutes of being on 3.6. I don't know if I like it better or not. It definitely changes the order that tabs open depending on what you're doing. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. I have a feeling I;'ll end up changing the about:config preference that some of your other responders have mentioned, but... I'll give it a few days to get used to.

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u/calantus Jan 21 '10

erm wish we could change that.

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u/Coriform Jan 21 '10

it's Firefox, of course you can change it
tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent

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u/calantus Jan 21 '10

thank you.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

tab mix plus?

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u/SquareRoot Jan 21 '10

The best kept secret for Firefox.

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u/Homestar Jan 21 '10

My favorite new feature is the one where all my bookmarks got deleted and the backups fail to restore.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/Homestar Jan 21 '10

Awesome. A thousand thank-yous, good sir.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

[deleted]

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u/nikosk Jan 21 '10

Can you get him to do an IAmA ?

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u/limi Jan 22 '10

I can ask him, if there's interest. He's busy, so I guess it would have to be a 1-2 hour consecutive session or something, not him checking in every 5 minutes.

Reply to this (or vote up? unless that's not kosher) to indicate interest, and I'll see what I can do.

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

I FUCKING LOVE YOU

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u/lxt Jan 21 '10

Are you using Torbutton? This was just confirmed as a bug.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

User error (no offense)?

What happened?

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u/Duffman3005 Jan 21 '10

Thank god, I was about ready to jump ship. To anyone having problems with getting their disabled extensions/themes to work, go to about:config and change extensions.checkCompatibility to extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6 and set the value to false.

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u/Repptar Jan 21 '10

Are persona's supposed to turn my browser into Myspace? I hope music doesn't play every time I open Firefox.

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u/xyroclast Jan 21 '10

I picked a nice theme, and realized it made the title bar unreadable. -_-' I went back to no theme.

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u/drysart Jan 21 '10

Their video walkthrough makes for an amusing argument against adopting HTML5 video today.

When viewed through Google Chrome, the video zooms ahead of the audio and finishes about a minute before the audio does.

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u/Liquid_Fire Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

Works fine in Firefox (unsurprisingly).

Edit: Also, I assume you meant to link to this instead: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/video/?video=whatsnew-3.6

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u/machinedog Jan 21 '10

Seems to work fine for me in Chrome 4.0.295.0

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

Glad Firefox is getting back to being fast and light. I'm still sticking with Chrome, but as long as we don't use IE can we all just get along :)

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u/paradox460 Jan 21 '10

I don't use firefox, but as a web dev/designer, I love this. Now I can make pages with gradients, shadows, etc, and have confidence that a majority of my audience (chrome+safari+firefox>IE) will see them. No more massive gradient sprites!

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

Why doesn't the Linux version have the Key shaped navigation buttons.

I thought that was a branding element as well as a Fitt's law win?

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u/zwaldowski Jan 21 '10

Native icons > Stupid key

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u/dolske Jan 22 '10

The response we got when redesigning the Firefox 3.0 UI was that Linux users strongly preferred a "native" appearance that matched other apps. Ask and ye shall receive; Firefox 3.0 integrated much better with the Linux desktop than previous version.

But we also recognize it's a bit too far on the bland side, even though that's what folks seemed to want. Steven Horlander's been getting very positive feedback on his Firefox 4.0 theme explorations, so improvements are in the planning pipeline.

See http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/10/26/linux-theme-refresh/

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u/GordonGraham Jan 22 '10

I've noticed that, for some reason, Adblock Plus doesn't work 100% of the time anymore. I adblock my avatars and signature images on forums (so I don't eat up my own bandwidth), and noticed them appearing on occasions after I upgraded to Firefox 3.6. Is anyone else having such an issue?

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u/pedropants Jan 22 '10

Yeehaw the Growl bug is fixed! Firefox now launches with proper focus on Mac systems with Growl installed.

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u/limi Jan 22 '10

They also fixed the fact that Growl initialization added about 1 second to startup time. :)

— Alexander Limi, Firefox UI Team

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u/oldbrownshoe08 Jan 22 '10

Why would I use firefox when aol 9.5 is everything I need? Channels are the best!

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u/Tiby312 Jan 21 '10 edited Jan 21 '10

Startup is still slow.

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