RSSMozilla releases Firefox 3.0.11 update as Chrome 3 explodes in Win7
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 11, 2009, 2:44 PM
Though a formal announcement is expected any time now, a stability and reliability update for the stable track of Firefox 3.0 was moved out of the beta stage and to the public release area of Mozilla's servers this morning. Version 3.0.11 was under development for several weeks, as the organization worked to implement what has mainly been described over the past several, eventful weeks for Mozilla as stability enhancements.
The code freeze for revision 11 began way back during the first week of May, and a check of the build notes shows that Linux editions were being especially pesky throughout the past few weeks. The exact nature of security fixes have not yet been made public, though the organization could provide descriptions as soon as tonight.
Mozilla's updates come in the wake of Microsoft's massive Patch Tuesday, which saw the first round of Internet Explorer 8 patches for Windows XP, Vista, and surprisingly Win7. That prompted us to perform a fresh round of browser tests on IE8 after the patch. We only recorded a very minor downtick in IE8 performance in Win7 and Vista, certainly not enough for folks to visibly notice. Our relative IE8 performance index for Vista now stands at 2.07 -- meaning 207% the performance of IE7 in Vista -- and 2.26 in Windows 7.
In an indication that Google's developers are concentrating on Windows 7 performance, its latest development build of Chrome 3.0.187.0 posted a definitive speed boost there...at the unexplained cost of a speed drop in Vista, enough to give Apple Safari 4 the lead for that operating system for the time being.
The new Google build posted the fastest regular expression handling score we've ever seen on the SunSpider benchmark: 18.4 ms, versus 29 ms for the final Safari 4 and 244 ms (no, we're not missing a decimal point there) in Firefox 3.0.11. Scores like this, coupled with Chrome 3 recapturing the six points of 100% Acid3 compliance it inexplicably lost in the last round, helped it climb to a record score on our physical platform of 14.18, versus 13.86 for the previous Chrome 3 build in Win7. The previous record was 14.12, posted by the final Safari 4 Beta in Vista, not Win7.
But the needle went the other direction for Chrome 3 in Vista, tallying an 11.93 versus the final Safari 4's 12.11. General JavaScript performance was slower for Chrome 3 in Vista for all categories -- it wasn't just one test that did it in.
Chrome is an awesome browser. Unfortunately I will never be switching to it because I refuse to let go of my drop down address bar.
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|Who cares about the performance number just use any dang browser and surf the net
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|Who even cares just use the dang browser an let that end the story
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|I'll gladly use Chrome when:
- Their sandbox works reliably for every Windows install of mine instead of showing "Aww..snap". Last time I checked, Google wasn't even able to determine what seemed to cause these errors.
- When it starts behaving and begins installing to Program Files instead of Documents and Settings\Users.
- When Google starts directly linking to the full installer instead of net-based one which initially bootstraps using ClickOnce.
- When GoogleUpdate.exe stops running automatically.
- When Chrome uses an original HTML/CSS rendering engine instead of one mainly developed by another company.
- When it gives me as much choice of configuration and customizability as IE8 and as much choice of addons as Firefox.
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|For all those who don't think speed is important, consider this:
YouTube announced that they are going to adopt OGG as a supported format. While currently only Firefox 3.5 handles OGG natively, it was Opera's idea, and is in Webkit's roadmap - within six months it will be everywhere (except IE, which will rely on Flash).
Google will want to manipulate the video as it plays (as does every other sane developer), and therefore will have to limit to video playback to the speed of the Javascript engine.
If YouTube were to open their ogg site today, and all the browsers were ready, Chrome would play 14FPS, FF would play at about 8FPS, and IE would play at 1FPS.
Again. IE 8 would run at ONE FRAME PER SECOND!
And that is before all the fancy stuff that we devs have in mind and are itching to begin working on.
Speed matters.
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|Well if YouTube wants to die on it's ar$e then that nakes perfect sense. Otherwise this widespread use of OGG that you predict ain't gonne happen. People aren't going to change to Chrome just to use YouTube. You sir are a deluded fool.
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|Google is going after speed by sacrificing functionality. It's interesting but in the end, most users will return to Firefox because they need a browser which addresses all aspects of their browsing experience, not just speed.
If a page's performance is diminished by annoying, animated advertising and the browser cannot block it natively or by extension, how is it faster?
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|I'll be sticking to Firefox even if Chrome is like 50000x faster. What good is all that speed if i can't do anything with their damn browser. And i bet there won't be anything useful in Chrome 3.x either.
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|This is becoming one unreliable browser, always being fixed for something or other. Now the latest Chrome is crashing my machine, and Opera although the best of the others at the moment is not what it once was. So as of today I'm using IE8, and may I say it's no slouch, in fact from the number of fixes the other browsers have needed over the last month, this IE is the safest browser on the block, and I never thought I'd say that, but I just have.
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|From day 1 I never got chrome to act the way I wanted it to. At this point I prefer IE to it, and that is saying a lot...
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|Just a bit of a shame that Chrome can't get it sorted to have the correct "tab" views in the rollover for the new taskbar. Chrome 3.0 might be fast, but it crashes like a beta.
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|If it weren't for the occasional rivalry, these things would never evolve. c'mon fanboys lighten up.
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|I like the way the FF apologists can morph themselves. "Speed? We don't need no stinking speed."
I use Maxthon BTW. I truly do not care how fast it is.
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|Speed is good, stability is better.
FF 4 ever!
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|I agree with dolcesculacciare on this matter. This speed thing is simply so unimportant and he is also right Chrome is a bare browser that offers nothing but speed, well big deal, take everything out of the other browser and they will be faster too. Why all of a sudden is speed so important, the way some act that it is a matter of life and death. Pfft, simply not important to me at least. I like Firefox and Maxthon and how many of these darn things do we need anyway..
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|This speed thing is pretty much nonsense... Chrome has virtually NO functionality... no wonder it's fast... where are the add-on, plug-ins, etc. that will make it really useful, e.g. mouse gestures... if you're content clicking your brains out with IE, Chrome, and a host of others, then use them... if you want to save time and effort and have a rich and efficient browsing experience, use Fire Fox !
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|Amen, brother. I've tried both Safari and Chrome, and found them practically useless.
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|Mozilla's updates come in the wake of Microsoft's massive Patch Tuesday, which saw the first round of Internet Explorer 8 patches for Windows XP, Vista, and surprisingly Win7.
Even though I'm running Win7, the only updates I received on Tuesday were for Office 2007, none for the OS or IE8.
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|all i know is that this google chrome the latest one, Google Chrome 3.0.187.0 Beta
crashes constantly and i had to resort to previous version.
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|The title did say "Chrome 3 explodes in Win7", so it's good that you can confirm that.
I think that Google developers will be in shock trying to re-work its browser to be functional and speedy at the same time. Firefox was once light and quick also, but times change.
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|Chrome 3.0.187.1 is out and seems to have fixed the s***tyness of the .0 version.
Recommended update.
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