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Firefox 3 to be faster than the competition
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 13th March 2008
Firefox 3 beta 4 - things seem to be getting better with each successive Beta.
Firstly, Javascript performance: In Sunspider Javascript Benchmark, Firefox 3 beta 4 is currently twice as fast as Opera 9.5 beta and Safari, nearly three times faster than Firefox 2 and almost six times faster than Internet Explorer 7. Mozilla also claimed that with every successive beta, the performance has improved - between betas three and four there was a twofold improvement.
Another improvement, and one many of us have been after for a while, is the lower memory footprint.
Using Web 2.0 specific sites saw a 10 percent drop, and closing web pages actually frees 15 percent more memory now. No activity also sees a memory release as well. The only negative performance recorded was when surfing “regular” web pages saw a 9.5 percent rise in memory use.
You can check the specific results and even how to reproduce the tests on the Mozilla Links website. Obviously, personal usage will vary this – but if you work like Tim and have a million tabs open at once, it could provide some significant memory savings. (I might upgrade now - Ed.)
With Firefox 3, the developers claim to have concentrated on developing the browser for more complex web applications than basic web pages, as well as better graphic and text rendering architectures in Firefox’s core engine, Gecko.
If you’re interested in trying it out – Firefox 3 beta 4 is available here – let us know how you get on in the forums.
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Comments (31)
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Define "mess."
I think we're using two different programs here.
Yeah i've had no problems at all with FF2 :)
Everyone's had really mixed experiences with it. Sometimes it would crash all the time for me, and sometimes it ran perfectly for the longest time. For a beta, FF3 seems in very good shape other than my extensions being incompatible.
I never pay attention to memory use though - there are so many factors that go into it, not least of which being how much RAM the system has. All of the systems I use day-to-day now have 4GB, so 150-250MB out of there is not only a fairly small percent, but it wouldn't be used in any other way so if it can speed up the browser then so much the better.
Im a PHP Web Developer, and use firefox to develop, as well as any other websites i have open at any one time, before a couple of weeks ago this machine only had 512mb in it, and would frequently freeze as the system was using 600-800mb (plenty of paging going on) with firefox taking up between 300-500mb, its now got 1.2GB in it and is much happier, but firefox is still almost always the number 1 user of memory, at the moment i only have 2 instances open, one with 2 tabs, and one with 6 tabs and its using 146mb, only program beating it is photoshop which is consuming 170mb
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.capacity
yeah, with 4GB, even if Firefox takes up 1GB of space, and Vista takes up 2GB, i've still got 1GB free for even the most demanding game. (Crysis use typically at 1GB, at most, is Dx9 mode, uses 1.5GB)
how's reliability of Beta 3?? shall i upgrade or wait until it's released?
Come to the dark side and give opera a try, we have a cookies.
I have both explorers - Internet and firefox installed and i use internet explorer only when firefox screws up a page which happens often enough for me to warrant to keep it.
Im looking forward to FF3 however and hope these issues dissappear!
Wish they hadn't stuck those bloody vista buttons on it in B4 though :(
sometimes it likes to think i've got a US keyboard layout all of a sudden, which isquite annoying :p
however decided to try ff3 b4 and see if enough of my extensions work on it yet, turns out they do
and woah, it really is a lot faster
its actually noticeable, maybe my ff2 was just really bogged down or something but do want!
The new rss Icons are awful to look at, I wonder if there is a 'classic' theme available yet...
Other than that, it's good lol
It already exists. It's already out. And it generally is just firefox 12 months earlier.
java != javascript
Kimbie
there deffinatly is 64 bit compatible firefox
Opera has always been my favourite pure browser that I'd happily use in a terminal kind of machine / at school / in a library (unfortuntely dont normally have the choice to). It's just so far ahead of everything else... nice and simple. Want to zoom in, everything gets bigger. You can actually just zoom in youtube videos, which is useful for those of us with massive resolutions and so get tiny videos in the middle of the screen.
But firefox's customisation won it over for me. I've got it set up exactly how I want, and better yet it automatically syncs with my google account so if I format, I just login and hey presto it's back. I've got a program so whenever I see rapidshare links I just select them all and bang, they're in a folder on my hard disk. It's faster than torrents! Opera tends to struggle with download managers.
I haven't tested 9.5, I will do soon but I still don't know if it will be so utterly customisable as firefox.
Well you've got to tailor the software you use to what you want vs the hardware you have. Personally I like having software that I feel is really effective at letting me do what I want to - firefox is very customisable and mine is nearly unrecognisable from the stock one - performs the way I want. No doubt it uses tonnes of memory, but memory was so cheap I just bought a tonne.
On other PCs I prefer opera because it's slim, cut down, fast and just works brilliantly.