Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Released 273
ink writes "Mozilla has released the third beta for Firefox 3.1 (which may become Firefox 3.5). This beta includes the new location bar, Mozilla's new JavaScript engine Tracemonkey, new HTML5 features and many other enhancements. It looks the same on the surface, but there are many changes under the hood."
Javascript performance improvements for *nix (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm looking forward to them resolving the bit where the *nix Firefox builds performed slower than the win32 builds, supposedly due to Profile Guided Optimizations in javascript:
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/benchmarked-firefox-javascript-linux-and-windows-and-its-not-pretty [tuxradar.com]
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes, many people are actually refusing to upgrade because of it."
Do you mean many as a lot of people or many as in a very vocal minority?
Re:Here's the question: - (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say Safari on iPhone vs. Fennec on Nokia is going to be the primary arena in which people see any comparison.
On the modern desktop, speed is much harder to notice.
Re:definitely feels faster, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
(And yeah, chalk up another brickbat for the Awfulbar. Spent the better part of the first day disabling it to restore most of the old bar's functionality. I remember URLs, not "title" elements. Please, for the love of Dobbs, if you're not going to back out this monstrosity, at least give users the option to ignore the title element while "searching" the URL history. The web is not AOL, and some of us do not navigate by keywords.
You're probably in the minority on this one. Firefox is targeting normal people, not nerds, and normal folks don't remember URLs particularly well.
Re:It always amazed me (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox 3.5 won't have support for other codecs than those that are built in (various Xiph [xiph.org] codecs (Vorbis, Theora) and Wav). Since it won't be possible to install extra codecs for use in Firefox Firefox won't contribute to "normal people" installing random codecs from the net. If/when support for [mozilla.org] system [mozilla.org] codecs [mozilla.org] land (probably after 3.5) you may get the problem you describe.
Re:New location bar? (Score:5, Insightful)
AwesomeBar is not search. AwesomeBar is made so you can make shortcuts that don't require you to enter the URL. It gets smarter over time. Just use it some.
I can't understand why people are so pissed over it, I love it. It really did change the way I use the browser.
Re:No Preemptive Javascript In Firefox? (Score:4, Insightful)
You could say essentially the same thing about Linux. It's an ancient monolothic design, implementing a still-more-ancient system. Its I/O scheduling is still completely fucked up, making it just painful to use as a desktop. But like Windows, it's popular because it's popular.
I don't think your comparison is all that apt, but if we go by it, there's still a crucial difference between it and the situation with browsers, and it is that there are mainstream browsers other than Firefox now that offer, or are soon going to offer, multi-process tabbed browsing. Also, the true benefit isn't performance, it's stability. Let Flash or Adobe Reader slow down or even crash or hang, it will only bring down that single tab it runs in...
Re:PPL still use FF? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yep, I fully expect to be modded down for stating my sure to be very unpopular opinion here.
I believe you mean your very unpopular, entirely off-topic opinion here. Yes, it's true! Trolling about Chrome on a story about Firefox's latest beta is, in fact, off-topic.
I will never understand why some people care SO much about mod points or flags... dumbest thing ever... who cares!
Re:No Preemptive Javascript In Firefox? (Score:3, Insightful)
>>It is absolutely pathetic that Microsoft now has a browser that is the constant source of ridicule from open source users and developers that leaves their main browser technologically in the dust.
Unless you account for rendering web pages. ....which i guess not everybody does. *shrug*
Re:Should be obvious why FF devs use to flame peop (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)