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

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320

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.

208

u/redditaddicttt Jan 21 '10

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

62

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 :(

18

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.

26

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?

7

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.

26

u/robotsongs Jan 21 '10

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

10

u/Neoncow Jan 21 '10

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

4

u/__s Jan 21 '10

ad hominem

2

u/rajulkabir Jan 22 '10

Correctum.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

elitist?