RSSFirefox 3.6 public beta slated for 10/14, promises faster startups, loads
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 7, 2009, 2:54 PM
Mozilla's stated goal for its next version of Firefox, first and foremost, is a perceivable improvement in the time it takes to do things, not just render pages. We saw a big performance jump in JavaScript execution and page rendering in Firefox 3.5; but for 3.6, the developers want to apply the same level of improvement to responsiveness and process activation.
Although all Mozilla daily builds -- even the "private" alphas -- are publicly downloadable, the public may be formally invited to render its opinions on version 3.6 on Wednesday, October 14. That's the decision made during a Mozilla planning meeting Monday.
Originally, Mozilla wanted to have 3.6 release candidates available by this time; the public beta process was supposed to have been in full-swing by now. In the interim, the organization has been posting daily builds labeled "beta previews" instead of "alphas" or "alpha previews" -- almost ready to be not ready for prime time.
Still, the new browser has an opportunity to make a public show of its everyday performance improvements, including in departments such as page loading. Betanews tests on recent daily builds of Firefox 3.6 show just over 40% speed gains in that department. Our recent CRPI index for a preview build of 3.6 Alpha 2 is 8.67, versus 6.80 for the stable Firefox 3.5.3.
According to the minutes of Monday's planning meeting, released yesterday, engineers in charge of the "Namoroka" development track (where Firefox 3.6 currently resides) plan to freeze code development on the current "beta preview" sometime this week. A daily build of 3.6 was released at about 9:30 EDT this morning, and there's no word as to whether it's the last build before the planned freeze.
There is no formal release date for the finalized version 3.6 just yet. However, a newly published list of goals for upcoming releases places 3.6 release as sometime within the fourth quarter of the year, with a promise to be "less crashy than Firefox 3.5." Also on that goal list is Mozilla's intention to produce a public alpha of version 3.7, the focus of which will be a completely revised theme for the front end. A recently published Mozilla page on the topic now points to a "firm initial direction" for a new design, which makes more liberal use of aesthetic features such as transparency and dimensionality.
"Firefox feels dated and behind on Windows," the design team writes. "Especially Vista and Windows 7. These issues include absence of Glass, anemic purple toolbar color on Vista, tall and bulky UI footprint, element overload, inconsistent toolbar icon usage/style, lack of a tactile look & feel and perhaps too great of a divergence between the look on XP and Vista/7." The team aims to overcome these perceived deficiencies by reducing the number of buttons -- for example, by converging Stop and Reload into one button -- and adopting neutral tones and glass textures to enable the application to blend better with the desktop and the user's choice of color themes. The same degree of transparency may not be available in version 3.7 for Mac or Linux yet, but the design team aims to implement similar aesthetics for non-Windows users "going forward."
October 14 is also the scheduled date for the first public betas of version 3.5.4, the next round of bug fixes to the stable release.
For me Firefox greatest strenght is that it is not following a world domination scheme of providing a browser in order to push other proprietary products. At least not in the sense that Google and Microsoft are doing. They're not turning into an OS company any time soon. When ChromeOS comes out you can bet there will be a version of Firefox for it. And all those Firefox extensions will be there. And thats the thing. Using a Google, Microsoft gives great integration with their products but limits the user in terms of other services. Firefox allows you to get a good experience in all plantforms
Score: 0
|You probably mean just Microsoft and forgot to mention Apple. Google is actually working with new services that help you pull your data OFF their systems. They pretty much have to, however, as people thinking long-term don't want to put their data in proprietary systems like Apple/Microsoft, and it becomes a competitive advantage to say "our systems are open, you can walk away anytime."
Score: 0
|"The same degree of transparency may not be available in version 3.7 for Mac or Linux yet, but the design team aims to implement similar aesthetics for non-Windows users "going forward." "
Does that mean that they are going to make Firefox look like Vista / Win 7 even when it's run on Linux???
Surely Mozilla should be aiming for the browser to look NATIVE on every platform (even individual Windows versions) rather than "aiming to implement similar aesthetics" across various different GUIs.
Score: 0
|An update of the build-in libtheora, for the theora video codec, to 1.1 would be nice.
It has more features, bugfixes, performance.
(Decoding video is said to be about 1.5 to 2 times as fast as the currently used 1.0)
More svg support would be good, and MNG support.
Score: 0
|The nightly builds seem to be working almost exactly like version 3.5.3 for me, thankfully. Even if they're not trying to catch Google Chrome's speed, the browser is just fine, as it's overall very quick.
Score: 0
|Oh but Mozilla is definitely trying to catch Google Chrome's speed. Mozilla does not want to be a distant number two or three to Google Chrome's page rendering speed. A browser that starts up fast and renders pages very fast will hold a significant edge over the competition.
Speed may not be everything but it will always be a very important factor for every browser out there.
Score: 0
|Overall speed, yes. And at this, Firefox (and even IE) have Chrome beat.
Score: 0
|Boy, the FF updates sure are few and far between compared to the 2.0 days. Have all the fun ideas been exhausted? I think my #1 beef with FF to this day is still bookmark management. Other than that, browser are just boring. :)
Score: 0
|I agree! But truth to tell I have yet to find ANY bookmarking system which really does what is needed - whatever that is...
Score: 0
|You're quite and utterly wrong.
All major Firefox releases have been roughly a year apart. Firefox 3.6 is the first release ever to be shipped (?) in 6 months.
Score: 0
|That is a nice looking UI. I would devote more of browsing time to FF if they implmented that. I agree that the current version is VERY dated looking. It's nearly as dated looking as Safari.
Score: 0
|https://addons.mozilla.o...n-US/firefox/addon/4988
Score: 1
|@mjm01010101 - why would you want to make Firefox look like IE8? IE8 does not look nice.
It's about time Mozilla combined the Stop and Reload buttons into a single one out of the box, something that we've had to manually do via a userChrome tweak for years. I've also been using the TinyMenu addon, which collapses the whole File menu bar into a single button that can go on the same bar as the address bar. And then there's the Toolbar Bookmark Menu button I use, which has all my bookmarks under a single button, also on the same bar as the address bar. So I've got only 1 bar above the tabs, not 3.
Score: 0
|Exactly. There's a Firefox 4 theme running around that uses about 6 different add-ons and takes roughly 10 minutes to set up, but it is hella worth it.
Looks like the SS above minus the search box (now combined with the address bar) and the reload/stop button is on the end of the addressbar instead of before it.
Not seeing a "Home" Button in the SS. Big WTH there... Other than that, the bookmark bar can be closed (or put into a button with just one addon), so it looks pretty good.
down from 5 UI addons to 1. I can deal with that.
Score: 0
|I see very little difference between the screenshot and my linked theme. I guess my point was that the screen UI doesn't look all that great to me. Vast quantities of screen real-estate wasted, just like IE does.
Score: 1
|The titlebar is wasted space in any vista/7 program.
The differences between the two screenshots are minimal, but he was dissing that as well, the way I read it.
Combine the reload/stop buttons, combine the search/addy bar, remove the bookmark bar. Would get rid of a lot of inconsistent functionality (when will you ever need the reload and stop buttons visible at the same time? Why the need for two text-entry bars?).
...and IMP, bookmarks are outdated. I have everything I need on my homepage or in my saved sessions, always a single click/keystroke away.
Score: 0
|this may be quite personal, but in fact the purple-ish tinting of the interface in 3.5 (rather than Vista/7's light blue) looks horrible AND breaks integration instead of achieving it
Score: 0
|IE look mjm? it's supposed to look better, but like firefox >_>
Score: 0
|That's sweet. Thanks for sharing that theme!
Score: 0
|