Firefox 3.6 released
The new release of Firefox offers improved performance, better plugin security, and new CSS gradient support.
Announced over on the Mozilla Blog yesterday by Melissa Shapiro, the latest build of the popular free-as-in-speech browser will be trickling out to users via the in-built update system over the next few days. If you can't wait that long, it's available for immediate download from the official site in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X flavours.
There are some pretty neat tweaks to the system for those who take the plunge and upgrade - not least of which is a speed improvement of around 20 percent to the browser's already pretty swift JavaScript engine, along with general performance enhancements that help the browser feel snappier to use. From a slightly less techie perspective, themes have been enhanced with the introduction of 'Personas' which can be applied without a restart - allowing users to change the look and feel of the browser in a single click on-the-fly.
The Plugin Check functionality which Mozilla developed back in October is now rolled into the main code, with Firefox 3.6 automatically checking for out of date of vulnerable plugins and helper applications in addition to the existing checks for updated add-ons. Some clever coding has also allowed the team to significantly reduce the ways a third-party application or add-on can crash the browser - without, the Foundation claims, "sacrificing our extensibility in any way."
The support for HTML 5's integrate audio and video playback functionality has been improved with 3.6, with support having been added for full-screen playback of any embedded video. How much use this will get, however, remains to be seen - although Google's popular YouTube service has started offering HTML 5 video support for playback without Adobe's Flash plugin, it uses proprietary codecs and as a result doesn't support Firefox.
Various other tweaks are included in Firefox 3.6, including support for feeding back the orientation of a portable device to a website for content customisation, linear and radial CSS gradient support, and the ability to use Web Open Font Format fonts in addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts. There's even been a modification to the automatic form filling functionality, with Firefox now suggesting content for fields based on similar fields filled in previously, rather than just identically-named fields.
With Firefox 3.6 being made available for free, as always, there certainly doesn't seem any reason for fans of the browser not to upgrade - although whether the new shinyness of 3.6 will be enough to tempt back those who defected to rival browsers like Google's Chrome remains to be seen.
Will you be upgrading to Firefox 3.6, or are you going to let others do the final round of testing before retiring your trusty Firefox 3.5 install? Are there features still missing that the Mozilla Foundation will need to add before you consider using Firefox as your main browser? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyAlready tried the alpha ages ago.
One gripe is that the webpages look smaller in firefox compared to chrome, or that could just be me and i have to get used to where everything is.
Ah more unfounded scaremongering against Google. Well done.
FF 3.6 is a big improvement to stability and once sufficiently tweaked almost keeps up with chrome, I just wish they would work on launch speed.
I'll bet it was the big button labelled, "Click here for cheesecake" that got you, wasn't it?
Good Lord, buy a SSD then! :|
innit ! it's like a second on my computer to clicking on the icon and it being ready at my homepage which is google.co.uk.
Aye but its more like 30s on my crappy work box.
Are you allowing scripts to run and are you sure you have 3.6 installed?
Also a rather good extension is available for personnas called personas plus it adds in a whole bunch of extra functionality and gives you access to every single persona on the site from the tools menu.
I use Chrome now for my main browsing, much cleaner and less mess surrounding the window. Have to put up with ads as no adblocker, but it's so fast it really doesn't matter.
Whoever made the comment on "my email started spamming people on my contact list (was rather annoying to be receiving emails from my own address telling me to go to some site to buy PSP's and other electronics)....." I doubt it has anything to do with it. In fact, my bet is you have a hotmail account. These are the main target of this spam hack. Also, as hotmail is webmail it is separate from your pc.
EDIT: Nice to see Personas are no longer an afterthought.
OT, I'm not that bothered about FF although my girlfriend uses it. I'll be trying it out on there but I doubt we'll notice much difference. Keep telling her to use Chrome since it takes up less screen space on a small netbook, but she's not interested.
Thanks for that.
Also, does scrolling feel "different" to you ? It does for me compared to 3.5. Cannot tell how, but it does. maybe faster or something. (smooth scrolling is still off)
tabmixplus, downthemall and xmarks are
just so you guys know
It also means it'll remember everything you've ever typed in there and show it to anyone touching your computer...
Example: you type "bittech" and as soon as you type the "b" it'll show you "Bittech" and "Bustybabes" and anything else with a "B" :D
Do I understand this right:
Mozilla shouldnt have changed that.
Fix it by doing this:
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-disable-open-new-tab-after-current-tab-feature-in-mozilla-firefox-3-6-beta/
ForecastFox worked for me no problem. FasterFox Lite did not work at first, but that was because the auto update was not working. There was an updated version that worked just fine.